Massive Virtual Communities

Call for papers

Scope & Theme
The conference organizers welcome papers related to virtuality, in any
social and business setting. Within this general call, we are emphasizing a
prominent theme that has taken the world by storm recently -- very large
virtual communities. Prominent initially within the gaming community, but
also increasing in many other social and organizational communities, very
large virtual communities are transforming how we experience and
conceptualize social and business life. In internet gaming, for example, the
average number of people simultaneously online is comparable to a small
city, and its characteristics reflect many emerging and surprising
characteristics. In addition to sharing text pictures and videos, and for
meeting and dating, these virtual communities are now starting to transform
the nature of social and organizational life itself, through its sheer size
and ability to cross traditional social boundaries. This has broad
implications for business organizations, and is becoming increasingly
relevant for research and practice on organizational, societal, and
administrative and political movements. And through this, it has and will
continue to have a substantial impact on sociology, psychology, economics,
art, and -- last but not least -- technology. For example, as Second Life
has grown into an enduring phenomenon, even big companies are starting to
develop virtual branches in order to experiment with, among other things,
customer relations.

The conference will bring together experts and practitioners of that field
to collect insights on this, and other, themes in virtuality.

Organizers
Niki Panteli, Martin Warnke

Program committee
Mike Chiasson (Lancaster University, GB) Wolfgang Coy (Humboldt University
Berlin, D) Kevin Crowston (Syracuse University, USA) Ken Eustace (Charles
Sturt University, AUS) Velvet Landingham (Kent State University Geauga, USA)
Niki Panteli (University of Bath, UK) Anthony Papargyris (Athens University
of Economics and Business, GR) Claus Pias (University of Vienna, A) Bryan K.
Temple (Glasgow Caledonian University, UK) Martin Warnke (Leuphana
University Lueneburg, D)

Date
July 1st and 2nd, 2008

Important dates
Due to demand, we have extended the deadline to February 8th, 2008.

For this multidiciplinary conference we call for
- full papers (previously unpublished material, not exceeding 12 pages
single spaced, pdf format),
- shorter reports about work in progress and demonstrations (appr. 2000
words),
- proposals for panels that assemble gamers and experts

to be sent by e-mail to warnke@uni-lueneburg.de

Notification of acceptance: March 15th, 2008 Conference fee: 100 Euro
including an evening program at the first day of the conference and coffee
breaks