I have been arguing for a while that LOLcats belong in graduate courses and they are worthy of scholarly research.

So, here is a presentation about the linguistic study of LOLspeak (the language cats speak). It is analyzed as language play that has a function in the construction of online identity – as a cat and Internet savvy person.

Please keep your presentation short – no more than 5-7 minutes, and follow this structure:

1. Research Question – explain the purpose of the research
2. Methods – explain how you collected and analyzed data
3. Findings – describe your sample and your most important findings
4. So, what? – explain what your findings mean, why they are important and to whom and their implications

The presentation is not graded – but if you do not present or don’t give it due attention, your APP points will suffer.

The main goal is to inform each other about our projects – it will be interesting to see what people did and what they found.

I will bring some snacks. If you’d like to, you’re welcome to bring something, too – but you don’t have to.

Let’s tentatively plan to present remotely (but don’t get out of town yet).

Please use comments to this post to propose & discuss ideas for the Wild Card class on Dec. 1. It is your class, I am open to all ideas.

Call for Participation: 1st International Workshop on User Modeling from Social Media
In conjunction with IUI 2012, Lisbon – Portugal

Massive amounts of data are being generated on social media sites, such as Twitter and Facebook. People from all
walks of life share data about social events, express opinions, discuss their interests, publicize businesses,
recommend products, and, explicitly or implicitly, reveal personal information.

This workshop will focus on the use of social media data for creating models of individual users from the content that
they publish. Deeper understanding of user behavior and associated attributes can benefit a wide range of intelligent
applications, such as social recommender systems and expert finders, as well as provide the foundation in support
of novel user interfaces (e.g., actively engaging the crowd in mixed-initiative question-answering systems). These
applications and interfaces may offer significant benefits to users across a wide variety of domains, such as retail,
government, healthcare and education. User modeling from public social media data may also reveal information that users would prefer to keep private. Such concerns are particularly important because individuals do not have complete control over the information they share about themselves. For example, friends of a user may inadvertently divulge private information about that user in their own posts. In this workshop we will also discuss possible mechanisms that
users might employ to monitor what information has been revealed about themselves on social media and obfuscate
any sensitive information that has been accidentally revealed.

In this workshop, we will discuss related topics:

• What aspects of an individual can be modeled from their public social media postings?
• What aspects cannot be modeled?
• What aspects should not be modeled?
• How accurate are the models that can be extracted?
• What are the best techniques for creating models?
• How might the creation of such models be thwarted?
(e.g. to preserve privacy while still allowing participation on a social network)

We hope to bring together researchers and practitioners from diverse areas, such as user modeling, intelligent user
interaction, social media analysis, natural language processing, data mining, machine learning, privacy and
security, to discuss these issues and share results.

TOPICS OF INTERESTS

Topics of interest may include but not limited to:

• Domain-specific user modeling using public social
media, including twitter, facebook, myspace, social
Q&A sites, and Amazon.com reviews for
- Retail
- Government
- Healthcare
- Education
- Sports
- News

• Domain-independent user modeling using public
social media, such as twitter, facebook, myspace, and
foursquare, to derive a wide variety of user traits
including:
- Locations
- Personality
- Demographics
- Age
- Gender

• Enterprise-focused user modeling using social media
data on public social networks and communications
(e.g., emails and blogs) within an enterprise:
- Employees’ social and collaboration patterns in a
workplace
- Work-related personality traits such as innovativeness, versatility, adaptiveness,
leadership quality, and level of expertise.

• Task-specific user modeling for
- Information recommendation
- Crowd-sourcing
- Expert finding
- Social Q&A

We plan to propose a special issue of ACM Transactions on
Interactive Information Systems (TIIS) on this topic after
the workshop.

PAPER SUBMISSION

We invite submissions in two categories:

• Position papers (2 pages)
• Short papers (4 pages)

All submission should be prepared according to the
standard SIGCHI publications format (available in
http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform) and submitted to jumahmud@us.ibm.com

WORKSHOP FORMAT

We will hold a full-day workshop program on the first day
of IUI 2012. The program begins with a madness session
during which participants introduce themselves and their
work in 5 minutes. Participants will be encouraged to make
slides for the madness session, but this will not be required.
Each paper session will conclude with a discussion led by a
pre-chosen workshop participant. These discussions will tie
together common themes of the presentations and hopefully
lead to insightful discussions about further research
directions. The program will end with a panel discussion
where panelists will discuss the current state of the art,
focus areas, and opportunities for future research.

IMPORTANT DATES

• Paper Submissions – January 6, 2012
• Author Notification – January 20, 2012
• Camera-Ready version – January 27, 2012
• Workshop – February 14, 2012

CONTACT & WEBSITE

jumahmud@us.ibm.com

https://sites.google.com/site/umsocial2012/

ORGANIZATION

Jalal Mahmud, IBM Research – Almaden
Jeffrey Nichols, IBM Research – Almaden
Michelle Zhou, IBM Research – Almaden

• Self-organizing the self – neat video found by Geovon
• Everything is miscellaneous… except towels – loved the application of concepts to everyday life, and the combination of conceptual thinking with a warm, personal tone.(GenXRecon)
• Alex’s reading notes for Everything is Miscellaneous are enthusiastic! So maybe he doesn’t hate (all) reading, after all
• And a neat idea from GenXRecon – demonstrating how, if you make ideas yours by applying them to your own interests, you may come up with interesting new research topics.

What’s been your week’s best? Consider writing such posts now and again – they are a great way of showing what you’ve read (and commented on)!

My students need advice about engaging on Twitter w/ ppl they haven't met before. Advice?—
Mihaela (Dr. V) (@mihaela_v) October 27, 2011

Here’s advice for you TECH 621 students. I met ALL of these people, btw, on Twitter.

@mihaela_v Reply directly to those tweets that truly spark their interest and don't rely on RTs and DMs.—
Erica Buteau (@EricaButeau) October 27, 2011

@mihaela_v Remind them that MOST people we engage with are folks we haven't met before. That's the cool part. Like you and me. —
Bonnie Upright, APR (@bonnieupright) October 27, 2011

@mihaela_v @manamica has great tips on her firm's blog, lightspandigital.com—
Renata Haidle (@conntess) October 27, 2011

@mihaela_v retweet their content if you approve and use that to start a convo—
Teddy Huff (@thuff) October 27, 2011

@mihaela_v Reply to questions they pose. —
Brian (@bgsmithphd) October 28, 2011

And, in response to my thank you Tweet:

@mihaela_v My pleasure! I really liked this post of hers: lightspandigital.com/wp-content/upl… cc@manamica—
Renata Haidle (@conntess) October 28, 2011

You ABSOLUTELY need to check out the Twitter workout [pdf] @conntess mentions. Try it for a week. See what happens.

I just need to remind myself that even though it feels like pulling teeth today, I may hear from you 3-4 years later with one of those notes that make it all worthwhile. Until then, please know that if you need a tooth pulled, I am here to help, patiently and lovingly.

Tweet away,

Dr. V

This is about how tagging has the potential to change information organization – but it has not, really. And the reason why it has not is because it is hard to implement at the interface level in ways that are easy to use and likely to be adopted by users.

I have been thinking that the File Manager on my computer should work very differently. I should have one instance of a file and be able to associate it with various projects (e.g. class readings and a research project). I wonder what an interface for File Manager would look like, what metaphor it would use, to enable a radically different system of file organization. There are a couple of barriers to adoption, and a number of criteria this new interface should meet. Here are some thoughts:

• theoretically, there’s no need for a File Manager. You could just dump all information in one place and retrieve it by searching. This is possible, it works, and I bet some people already do that. However, getting rid of the option to organize files would not be accepted by users, because:
• some people (like me) may not remember what to search for. Instead, they remember information by its location. This method of retrieval by location (see Cooper, About Face, 3rd. ed) is very much ingrained in our cognition and memory. It is often much easier to remember the location of an object than its detailed attributes (which are needed for search).
• In addition, there’s something very comforting about knowing what you know – or knowing what you have. I feel much more in control when my files are organized, and the act of reviewing and organizing lets me know what I have, where I am in the process, what else I need. For example, the Readings folders for each class are organized by week and topic, and within each folder, the readings are numbered and named by title. A quick look at these folders lets me know what readings I have available for each week of class. Dumping everything in a quick pile would enable me to retrieve one file at a time, but I could not easily see my organized library of class readings for a specific course. And given that I am so forgetful, I would probably reinvent the wheel every semester and build the reading lists from scratch. No, thank you.
• Therefore, a new File Manager would have to combine the visual organization of information by location with tagging and search, and enable one leaf to hang on more than one branch.

Right now, I’m thinking of a “master file” and its shadows, or avatars. The master file could sit in the master dumping place, but its shadows could be used for visual organization into files and folders, or possibly an entirely different metaphor.

[So, it took me about 15-20 minutes to write this. It is a reflection on the readings, a way of making the readings mine by applying them to some of my own interests.]

1. Full article citation in APA style, linked to full text if full text is available online.
2. Purpose of the research: Explain what the authors set out to accomplish.
3. Methods: Explain, very briefly, what methods the authors used to accomplish the research goal.
4. Main findings: Summarize the main findings
5. Analysis: Write your own thoughts about the article. You, could, for example, address some of the following: What does this article mean to you, is it useful or not for your research interests and current/future projects? What are the main things you wish to remember about this article? What are some of the limitations of the article? What directions for future research does this article suggest to you? Etc.

Keep them short, concise and very clear. The purpose of these RAAs is to expose each other to research we would not otherwise read or even hear about. So, make them quick and easy summaries that others can read to get an idea about what other social media research is out there.

In addition to writing these, make sure you read your classmates’ article analyses – comment on them so I know you read them.

Please make sure your RAA’s are tagged and categorized as “Research Article Analysis.” It would help me if you begin the title with: RAA# (where the actual number of your RAA – first, second, etc.).

Apologies for not posting this sooner – and shame on you for not asking me

• Mike’s review of Foursquare – I invite you to experiment with new (for you) social media sites and review them. As you do so, consider how they could be used beyond personal means. Imagine scenarios that would make them useful at work, for example.
• GenXRecon’s reading reflections on crowdsourcing.

What post(s) did you enjoy most last week?