Jim Porter and Jeff Grabill are featured speakers at the upcoming "Workshop on HCI &
Information Design to Communicate Complex Information," to be held at the
University of Memphis February 16-17, 2007. Porter's presentation, titled "Rhetoric and
the Long Tail: How Digital Economics Changes Invention, Production, and
Interaction," examines the potential impact of two interrelated,
Internet-based phenomena -- the emergence and success of "long-tail" digital
economics and of social networking systems (aka "folksonomies") -- for
professional writers and information systems designers.  Grabill will be presenting on
"The Expertise and Complexity of Citizen Knowledge Work or A Tale of How Information Technologies Move from Being Good Collaborators to Poor Collaborators."

You can catch Porter's and Grabill's presentations, along with other featured presentations by Barbara Mirel, Karen Schriver, and Robert Johnson, to name a few, by registering for the workshop.

On Friday, March 16th, Jim Porter was a featured speaker at the University of Michigan Sweetland Writing Center Seminar, presenting on the topic of "Digital Economics, Social Networking, and the Changing Nature of Professional Writing."

Porter's presentation examined how the emergence and success of “long-tail" digital economics and of social networking systems (aka “folksonomies”) are likely to change rhetorical theory and professional writing practice.  His main hypothesis is that these developments are altering the composing practices of the professional writer, shifting the emphasis from production of original content (a romantic notion of authoring) to delivery and circulation of information, to design of information systems, and to research on and development of the user experience.

Attached is the handout distributed at this presentation.

Perhaps this is a slight exaggeration :)  But, check out the latest issue of the Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 21.2, which features book reviews by Martine Courant Rife and Douglas Eyman.  Rife reviews Technical Communication International: Today and the Future (Vol. 9) Schriften zur Techische Kommunikation, Band 8, and Eyman reviews Communication of Complex Information: User Goals and Information Needs for Dynamic Web Information.

If you are at all interested in teaching at a community college, or the role of community colleges in the US, please join Martine Rife and her colleagues (listed below) from LCC at the good practices workshop this Friday, March 30, 2007 in 132 Erickson Hall at 12:30 PM.

Dedria Humphries, Writing Faculty, Coordinator Mentoring Program; Dan Holt, Writing Faculty, Lead Faculty, Marcy Baumann, Writing Faculty, Coordinator Business Writing, Leslie Farris; Writing Faculty, Coordinator WRIT122; Diane Goff, Writing Faculty, Coordinator WRIT121; Martine Rife, Writing Faculty

East Lansing – Bill Hart-Davidson has been named to the Program Committee for the ACM SIGDOC conference, where he will serve as Promotions Chair for the 2007 event. Dr. Hart-Davidson is Co-Director of the Writing in Digital Environments (WIDE) Research Center and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures.

About the Conference

The 25th Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) International Conference on Design of Communication will be held in El Paso, TX on Oct. 22-24, 2007. Submissions for the conference are still being sought. Participants in the conference are encouraged to submit research papers, workshop proposals, and experience reports concerning processes, methods, and technologies for communicating and designing communication artifacts such as printed documents, online text, and hypermedia applications.

Submissions

To submit a paper, experience report, or workshop proposal for review, e-mail Program Chair Clay Spinuzzi, clay.spinuzzi@mail.utexas.edu , with an attached file. The submission deadline is June 1, 2007. David Novick, of the University of Texas El Paso, is General Chair of the conference. The conference is sponsored by the Special Interest Group for Design of Communication (SIGDOC), which is part of ACM.

About the SIGDOC

The mission of SIGDOC includes:

• promoting the professional development of its members; 
• encouraging interdisciplinary problem solving related to online and print documentation and to communication technologies;
  
• providing avenues for publication and the exchange of professional information;
  
• supporting research that focuses on the needs and goals of humans in technological contexts; and
  
• supporting the development and improvement of communication technologies, including applications, interfaces, and documentation. 

More information regarding the conference and SIGDOC is available online at http://sigdoc2007.org/ and http://sigdoc.org/.

Congratulations to all of the undergraduates and graduate students who have participated in WIDE Research Center Projects, and are graduating this year, including:

Undergraduate (professional writing)

Tyler Smeltekop

Roberto Reyes

Graduate—MA in Digital and Professional Writing

Grace Bernhardt

Mike McLeod

Graduate—PhD in Digital and Professional Writing

Doug Eyman

In the latest issue of Currents in Electronic Literacy, WIDE Co-director Bill Hart Davidson, along with MSU Rhetoric and Writing PhD Students Angela Haas, Qwo-Li Driskill and Douglas Eyman discuss the "the role of networks as critical infrastructure for the development and sustainability of program components" in "A Net-working Community: WIDE and the Rhetoric and Writing Graduate Program at Michigan State University."

The authors discuss four primary social networks at (and outside of) MSU: institutional networks, social networks for research, for teaching, and social networking beyond academe, and specifically the infrastructure that enables social networking in these primary networks, and research and design of social networking tools (such as the WIDE Research Center's Grassroots project ). The article, along with the special issue on social networking, can be accessed at http://currents.cwrl.utexas.edu/Spring2007/profile.

Findlay, Ohio--Current and former Graduate and Undergraduate research assistants Kendall Leon, Matt Penniman, Stacey Pigg, Roberto Reyes and Martine Courant Rife will be discussing the professionalization and mentoring they received through their participation on WIDE research center projects at the University of Findlay at Findlay, Ohio’s S.E.E.D Conference on Teaching, Learning and Technology Centers (TLTCs) : A Snapshot of Teaching, Learning and Technology Centers (TLTCs): Pedagogies and Practicalities, on May 11, 2007.

The WIDE research assistants will discuss how working on WIDE projects enabled them to understand the infrastructure of university administration; expand their conceptions of teaching and learning (particularly in relation to the use of ICTs and social networking technologies); and develop problem solving capabilities for actual clients and projects. They argue that both graduate and undergraduates need the type of mentoring and real professionalization experiences that the WIDE center offers in order to become better teachers and future program directors.

On the same day, William Hart Davidson, WIDE research center co-director, will be giving a talk about the LRE, a WIDE center project: “Building the Literacy Resource Exchange: A Look at the Research Work of a TLTC.”

More information about the SEED conference, including the participants and presentation schedule can be accessed at http://www.findlay.edu/offices/adminoffices/ats/seed2007/default.htm