Workshop in Community-Maintainable Collaborative Online Spaces

Course participants:

V. Michael Bove Jr. (course co-head)

Michael Bove heads the Object-Based Media Group at the MIT Media Lab, and is interested in building interpersonal communication systems and production/post-production tools that gain some understanding of content and use that to create richer connections among the people at the ends of the system.

Stefan Agamanolis (course co-head)

I was a student at MITML until June 2001. I then founded the Human Connectedness group at Media Lab Europe -- described at http://www.medialabeurope.org/hc. I made Isis, a programming language for multimedia experimentation which is widely used at both labs and is available to play around with in this course. I was born and raised in Ohio, and I studied computer science, philosophy, and film at Oberlin College before coming to the Media Lab. I am an expert at building boat trailers and cabanas, and I have an honorary degree in garage sale management (GSM).

Arianna Bassoli

Master degree in Media Studies from University of Siena, Italy. After working on a thesis about digital and interactive television, i'm now interested on a wide range of socio-economic issues about new media. i'm currently working on an Ad Hoc project to be developed here in Dublin and i'm interested to understand how this new communication model can be optimized for the development of applications (services and contents) more suitable for a particular community or a social context. i would like in the future to analyse the interactions between the local and the global development of the same technology and to understand more deeply how to apply those results to developing societies.

Andy Brady

Hi Im Andy Brady from Dublin. Im into designing and building toys and automata (I love clockwork things). Im currently working with Sile O'Modhrain's group at MLE (Palpable Machines) looking at ways to use the sense of touch to enhance human computer interaction (force-feedback-ish stuff and such).

Jonah Brucker-Cohen

Born in the US, Brucker-Cohen admits that singularity is the opposite of comformity but is quick to point out that conformity lacks singularity. With this premise he has transformed his life goal of making English Toffee into a dream of much greater proportions. Raised in a small village of mostly animated gifs, Brucker-Cohen decided to create meaning from meaning itself. It is with this knowledge that he can perpetuate understanding without believing he is understood.

Cian Cullinan

My name is Cian Cullinan. I'm originally from Limerick, spent a few years as a kid in South Africa and England, and have been living here in Dublin for the last 5 years. I'm in Stefan's group "Human Connectedness" and have mostly been working on a new linux version of Reflection of Presence just called "Reflexion" at the moment. I got my degree in Physics from Trinity College Dublin, and also a Masters in High Performance Computing from the same place. I guess like a lot of the people in this workshop I'm interested in finding out more about the design issues involved in making better Human-Computer and Human-Computer-Human connections.

Jennica Falk

My name is Jennica Falk and I am from Gothenburg in Sweden. I have been at MLE for almost a year now, to do research for my degree in Informatics at Gothenburg University. I guess that translates essentially to applied computer science, at least at my department. At MLE I am in Glorianna Davenport's group, Story Networks, where I am thinking about how to design computer games that extend into the physical world. For this course I am primarily interested in technology that support/create/maintain an awareness of presence between remote people, perhaps as a backdrop to their other daily activities, or perhaps as part of a networked multi-player game environment?

Matt Karau

I am Matt Karau and work in Carol Strohecker's group, Everyday Learning. I graduated EE undergrad from MIT in 2001. My interest in this class stems from a desire to explore low-level communication protocols and ways to construct enabling collaborative learning situations.

Michael Lew

My name is Michael and I am from Switzerland. I speak alot of languages. I just got back from London and I haven't had a chance to write my bio yet, though it is very interesting. I will send it to Stefan soon.

Valentina Nisi

I studied literature and painting in Italy and video at the university of Barcelona . Having completed the MSc Multimedia Systems at Trinity College i am currently a phd candidate in the dep. of Electronics and Electrical Engeneering of Trinity College.I am interested in art and technology (of course), and people in general.

Alison Wood

I come from a daughter of a line of Polish/Slovak Pennsylvania coal miners, bootleggers and salespeople, and a son of experimental Upstate New York Baptist farmers. I would like to turn technology away from empty ideas of Progress and Success, and use it to enable humans to relax and enjoy the Out of Doors.

Ivan Chardin

I am a graduate student in the Speech Interface Group at the MIT Media Laboratory, where I explore a range of ideas about structuring personal audio space that could enable more efficient use of speech and sound in mediated communication. I am from Moscow, Russia. My background is speech, language, and information technology.

Tristan Jehan

Tristan is a 1st year PhD student in Tod Machover's Hyperinstruments Group. He's currently working on the "Hyperviolin" as part of the project "Toy Symphony". His background is in Electrical Engineering, Signal Processing, Computer Science and Music. For the class, he's particularly interested in looking at the issues of sharing live music through the network, and in networked based audio spaces.

Karrie Karahalios

my background is in electrical engineering and networking. i have spend the last couple of years in the sociable media group where i have been looking at what social cues are needed to transmit in networked communication. my current thesis work involves how to connect public spaces using video and audio.

Andrea Lockerd

I'm a second year master's student in the Context-Aware Computing group here at the media lab. My thesis is about automatic social network analysis and how technology can better support people's awareness of social context in electronic communication. I'm originally from Texas, and have a bachelors in Computer Engineering from UT Austin. I have many interests outside of school/work, but will omit the "personals ad" part of my intro...seeing as how we do already have dates after all :-)

Dan Maynes-Aminzade

Dan Maynes-Aminzade is a first year master's candidate in Hiroshi Ishii's Tangible Media Group. As an undergraduate, he studied computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests include unconventional I/O and display devices, techniques for collocated, massively parallel group interaction, and real-time communication infrastructures.

Gian Pangaro

I'm in Hiroshi Ishii's Tangible Media Group, where my work involves "workbench" type interfaces like Sensetable / Senseboard (basically 2d object tracking platforms). Lately I've been working with systems to move these objects around in order to maintain consistency between electronic and physical data, which could be very useful for remote collaboration (creating a "ghostly presence", as Hiroshi would say). I'm also seriously interested in music, but that tends to stay outside my mediaLab research.

Surj Patel

My undergrad was in computer science my heart in broadcasting. So I made the leap over and never regretted it. I love media in all its (sometimes abhorrent) glory. I am interested in expression and shared experience. I think there is a huge potential for the work that emerges from this class. I have a considerable interest in Online spaces as an entertainement medium.

Taly Sharon

I am in Ted Selker's Context-aware computing group in the Media Lab at MIT. I was born and raised in Israel and studied Economics and Computer Science, as well as serving in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as a computer programmer. I like videoconferencing and find online collaboration to be a fascinating area. I love water activities such as scuba diving, windsurfing and swimming, too bad for a currently New England resident:-(( but will settle for downhill skiing. Looking forward to get to know better MITML people and also you guys from MLE!

Edison Thomaz

My name is Edison Thomaz and I am a second year master's student. I am in the Media and Networks Group, headed by Andy Lippman. For my master's, I am working on a contextualized phone system. In terms of research, I am interested in a wide range of things, from AI and common-sense knowledge and reasoning to social connectedness and awareness research. The recurring theme is almost all my academic work is sensibility and responsiveness at the system level. I want to make devices and technologies more responsive and sensible to how they are used and who uses them.

Catherine Vaucelle

Catherine Vaucelle is doing computational toy design using multiple media that stimulates children to tell and share stories. Her resume is online at : http://web.media.mit.edu/~cati/personal.html

Parul Vora

1st year masters student in mike bove jr's object based media group

cognitive science, visual studies/design, computer science

most interested in online spaces (whehter community maintainable or not) as a vehicle for initiating new types of collaboration. taking advantage of the network to create new activities that wouldn't and couldn't exist without it....the types of activities are generally those of artistic creation (artistic here used very loosely) or artistic play with/through/across basically any medium.