1. Thomas A. Finholt School of Information University of Michigan
If we build it will they come? Creating the right cyberinfrastructure for dispersed collaboration
Thomas A. Finholt School of Information University of Michigan

2. Outline The field of dreams What did Atkins et al. recommend?
Social networking tools
Social psychological incentives
Evaluating impact

3. 1. The field of dreams
I was sitting on the verandah of my farm house in eastern Iowa when a voice clearly said to me, “If you build it, he will come.” – Ray Kinsella in Shoeless Joe, by W.P. Kinsella
Image source:

4. 2. What did Atkins et al. recommend?
Nothing tends so much to the advancement of knowledge as the application of a new instrument.
Sir Humphrey Davy
Quotation source: Thomas Hager, Force of Nature, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1995, p 86 Image source: Sir Thomas Lawrence, circa 1821, National Portrait Gallery, London

5. 3. If we provide social networking tools, they will collaborate
Figuring out who knows what, who knows who, and who has what are fundamental barriers to dispersed collaboration

6. 4. Social psychological incentives
Scientists and engineers possess important insights about connections between people and information
How do we get them to reveal that information?
Sad history of contributions to online systems
We need experimental exploration of social psychological incentives
e.g., manipulation of the salience of individual contributions (vis Beenan et al. 2004)

7. 5. Evaluating impact
What is the relationship between tool use and collaboration outcomes?
Do outcomes vary as a function of:
…the nature of underlying data (e.g., derived from name generator items VS. automatically harvested from traffic)?
…the form of network analysis (e.g., different operationalizations of centrality)?
…the form of network visualizations?