CFP: DPD Special Issue on Teamware Technologies

Distributed and Parallel Databases
January 2004 Special Issue on 
Teamware Technologies

Important Dates
      
Papers due.................................May 8, 2003
Decision notification... . ...............July 10, 2003
Camera-ready copies due.............August 12, 2003

Aims and Scope

Collaboration takes place whenever humans and/or computer applications work 
together to accomplish a common goal or compatible goals. For the last two 
decades, many organizations and individuals have considered electronic 
collaboration of distributed teams the means of achieving higher productivity 
and improving the quality of their work products. Various collaboration 
technologies have been introduced to provide solutions in the areas of 
electronic communication, coordination, and content sharing. However, 
comprehensive solutions that fully realize the promises of electronic 
collaboration remain an elusive goal. 
Early efforts for developing software systems to support asynchronous 
collaboration where carried out by research projects in CSCW (Computer 
Supported Cooperative Work). While such research efforts resulted in products 
that penetrated the market, such as Lotus Notes, these early groupware products 
failed to deliver anything more than marginal improvements to existing email 
and document management solutions. In the late 90s, the basic ideas found in 
early tools for asynchronous and synchronous collaboration where adopted by web 
browsers and through this path they have impacted the work habits of many 
people. 
Today, technology and tools aimed to support team collaboration are being 
introduced in many product areas in the software industry. New web-based 
groupware systems, such as Groove and NetMeeting, extend the basic web browser 
capabilities by providing joint activity tools (e.g., audio communication, 
instant messaging, and content sharing tools). Traditional groupware vendors 
provide software products (e.g., Lotus Sametime and QuickPlace) supporting more 
specialized collaboration activities such as electronic presentations and 
meetings. Standalone workflow systems (e.g., Staffware) and workflow engines 
embedded in EAI platforms (e.g., Vitria, TIBCO, BEA) and ERP systems (e.g. 
SAP), already support efficient coordination of prescribed collaboration 
activities and begin to introduce flexible workflows to support a combination 
of repetitive and ad hoc/optional collaboration activities. Vendors of 
enterprise-wide content management servers (e.g., Documentum, Vignette, 
OpenMarket,!
 
  BroadVision, FileNET) are introducing new products that include basic tools 
for electronic collaboration. Finally, domain-specific tools for collaborative 
design, learning, and product data management are steadily gaining new users 
and entering new markets.
The landscape of products and the number of technologies aiming to support 
collaboration are expanding and the collaboration technologies are improving. 
However, the current collaboration tool landscape is fragmented, and the 
network infrastructure currently cannot effectively support some collaboration 
tools, such as basic tools for screen and application sharing. The 
fragmentation of the collaboration tool landscape is due to the following 
reasons:
* None of these technologies provides a complete collaboration solution by 
itself. Different technologies and products offer different subsets of 
capabilities and tools. Furthermore, since the majority of the provided tools 
are general purpose, it may be necessary to develop application-specific tools 
and user interfaces, e.g., for intelligence gathering. 
* The scalability, and therefore the size of distributed electronic teams, 
current technologies can support varies significantly. In particular, many 
groupware tools that support joint activities are only appropriate for small 
groups (i.e., teams of less than 10 people). On the other hand, technologies 
that scale well, e.g., systems for content and workflow management, lack 
essential groupware tools. 
Therefore, developing a collaboration solution that scales to an entire 
organization and offers the appropriate collaboration tools will very likely 
involve significant effort to integrate best-of-the-class components.
 
Topics of Interest

This special issue invites submissions on all kinds of topics related to 
teamware, including but not limited to those listed below. Only original papers 
that introduce novel results will be considered.
* Flexible business processes and coordination conflict resolution
* Policy-based team coordination
* Business rules for resource, role, user, and context management
* Policy-based access
* Awareness provisioning and customized monitoring
* Decisison support for teamwork
* Collaboration ontologies
* Dynamic team, workplace, policy, and process creation
* Supply chain management for collaboration products
* Scalable tools for joint activities and  large teams
* Middleware for collaboration technology integration
* Tools developed to support teamwork in specific applications domain (e.g., 
intelligence gathering, crisis management, product data management) 
                        
Guest Editor

Dimitrios Georgakopoulos
Telcordia Technologies
106 E. Sixth Street
Littlefield Building #415
Austin, TX 78701
dimitris-7WuBAv+fczAPbOX99fNFWrahn/p+MhOh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Submission Instructions

- Authors must submit a PDF version of their manuscript via email to: 

dimitris-7WuBAv+fczAPbOX99fNFWrahn/p+MhOh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

- Enclose a separate page with the name and address of a contact author (please 
include a telephone number, fax number and e-mail address). In addition, please 
provide three to five keywords.
- Paper length must not exceed 25 double spaced pages (including figures, 
tables, etc.) and must be in a font equal to or greater than 11 pt.   



--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To subscribe or unsubscribe yourself from
dbworld, send a msg to majordomo-hcNo3dDEHLuVc3sceRu5cw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx with 
one of these lines:
subscribe dbworld OR unsubscribe dbworld
To find out more options send a msg with the line:
help
To post messages, go to URL www.cs.wisc.edu/dbworld
--------------------------------------------------------------------------