SSW Organizers Ben Shneiderman & Jenny Preece with GRAND-sponsored students in front of the White House.
Five doctoral students from universities across Canada were sponsored by GRAND to join twenty-five American peers at the Summer Social Webshop (SSW), held at the University of Maryland August 20-24, 2012.
The SSW in an annual intensive workshop on Technology-Mediated Social Participation (TMSP), encompassing social networking tools, blogs and microblogs, user-generated content sites, discussion groups, problem reporting, recommendation systems and other forms of social media. The event welcomes attendees from a broad range of disciplines, creating a forum for lively banter between students of computer science, iSchool, sociology, communications, political science, anthropology, psychology, journalism and other related fields. The limited number of participants means attendees have ample opportunity to meet and engage with an impressive roster of speakers, many of whom are SSW alumni.
The 2012 SSW marked the second year of Canadian participation in the event, but hopefully not the last. "We learn, not only from each other’s research methods, but also from the socio-political context that our methods and ways of thinking emerge from", writes GRAND participant Claude Fortin. “May many more doctoral students — Canadians included — attend the Summer Social Webshop at College Park in the years to come to keep this tradition alive and well.”
GRAND-sponsord doctoral students who participated in the Summer Social Webshop will share their experience in a series of Q&A style entries linked below:
Summer Social Webshop (Part One): Claude Fortin, Simon Fraser University; Jennifer Wolowic, University of British Columbia; Elizabeth Shaffer, University of British Columbia
Read more real-time updates from GRAND attendees:
Claude Fortun | @ClaudeOrion3
Jenna Jacobson | @jacobsonjenna
Elizabeth Shaffer | @em_shaffer
Jennifer Wolowic | @Wolowic