CALL FOR PAPERS

INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP
PARIS, NOVEMBER 24-25, 2005

Annotation for Collaboration
Methods Tools and Practices

The aim of this workshop is to gather a wide range of researchers involved
in various communities interested in exchanging their experience and
results on the issue of annotation. We consider that annotation is today
an important field which can bring interesting results in collaborative
computer supported mediated activities.
New practices are emerging today related to the use and production of
documents and writings, ranging from the annotation of electronic
documents during their elaboration to the collaborative building of
internet sites using Wikis or Blogs to the use of newsgroups or specific
digital media for the design of complex systems (software, industrial
products, architecture, etc.).
In all these cases, and often complementary to classical synchronous tools
such as videoconferencing, instant messaging, the documents act as a
medium in cooperative professional activities. Unfortunately, these
documents (texts, drawings, images, etc.) are not properly managed, and
the collective process is often not supported. The roles, versioning,
property access, indexing, etc. are not supported and the history of the
various versions and the rationale of the process are often left aside.
The semantic web provides an important field of application for annotation
systems today. The problem of online enriched documents allowing a
collaborative use of the web is not new and numerous tools have been
developed during the 90s. Annotea, a W3C standard is today widely used.
However, research in that field is still important.
Annotations can also be considered in the context of knowledge management
under the perspective of reuse (design solutions, procedures, etc.).
Annotations made by groups or individuals, in the context of teamwork or
individual work allow to capture contextual information, which can improve
or support cooperative knowledge management policies.
In the domain of design some studies have shown the importance of
annotations in the collaborative aspect of design. For instance research
on design rationale capture has highlighted the importance of
argumentative processes in collaborative design. From engineering design
to architectural design, annotations are currently manipulated in
collaborative design sessions and the mediation role played by the
annotations proves to be useful for supporting argumentation and design
rationale. In fact, tracking the design rationale implies tracing the
underlying reasoning process of design, and this argumentation process is
often supported by annotations on various documents. Annotation could then
be an important enabling technology for the design systems.
We invite researchers from various research fields working on annotation
and the related technologies to propose a communication. The topics listed
here are of course not exhaustive and all the original contributions
related to annotation are also warmly welcome.

Format and main topics:
This workshop is planned along two days and structured in four sessions:
… Theoretical approach to annotation and cooperation.
… Empirical studies on annotation practices from various domains.
… Tools: Presentation of tools or prototypes and discussion about their
contributions to actual annotation practices and cooperation models.
… Discussion and debate: an interdisciplinary program for research on
annotation?

Publication: Some selected papers will be published in a special issue of
an international journal.

Venue: PARIS

Inscription: free including lunch and dinner.

Information: http://tech-web-n2.utt.fr/annotation

Important dates:
Abstracts submission (max 5 pages): July, 4 2005
Acceptance: September, 15 2005
Full Paper: October, 13 2005
Workshop: November 24-25 2005

Submission: The abstract should be submitted to the following address:
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Organising committee:
The organizing group is a multidisciplinary team from Computer Science,
Cognitive Ergonomics and Engineering Design that has been working on the
issue of annotation for many years:
Jean-François BOUJUT - GILCO - INP Grenoble Technical University (Fr)
Françoise DARSES - CNAM - Paris (Fr)
Françoise DETIENNE - INRIA - Paris (Fr)
Myriam LEWKOWICZ - ISTIT/TechCico - Technical University of Troyes (Fr)
Manuel ZACKLAD - ISTIT/TechCico - Technical University of Troyes (Fr)

Scientific committee: we are currently setting up an international
scientific committee which will soon be published on the web site.