Joseph Konstan and …syphilis? o.O

Now that I have your attention. Cheryl Lead, Online Manager over at Virgin Money sent me this info:

In June we are lucky to have Joseph Konstan, a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota and President of ACM SIGCHI talk to us about bridging computer science and behavioral science.

Please note, as Joseph is only in Sydney for one day, this event will be held on the 2nd Tuesday of the month – which is Tuesday the 13th of June.

Further details of the event are provided below.

‘Bridging Computer Science and Behavioral Science: Research Examples’

Summary: As computers and the Internet become tools and “places” for social interaction, computer scientists and behavioral scientists can work together to explore the social and behavioral aspects of this new environment. In this talk, I will discuss two projects: one that is exploring how to induce people to participate in on-line communities (based on theories of collective action), and another that is exploring on-line sexual behavior with the intent of helping prevent HIV and AIDS.

On-line communities have great potential to rebuild the social capital that has been lost as individuals turn away from structured community events, but experience so far has been discouraging. The vast majority of on-line communities fail–they cease to serve their original goals, whether discussion or content-creation. At the same time, some specific on-line communities have succeeded spectacularly. In this part of the talk, I review the research of CommunityLab, a collaboration that brings together psychology, economics, and computer science to better understand, leverage, and design for user motivation to contribution to on-line communities.

Ever since an outbreak of syphilis in San Francisco was traced to an Internet chatroom, researchers have realized that on-line sex-seeking may have serious public health effects. In this part of the talk, I report on the MINTS project, a collaboration of public health experts, sexologists, educational technology experts, computer scientists, statisticians, and others to study men who use the Internet to seek sex with other men, and to develop and test an on-line intervention to reduce sexual risk-taking among the high-risk subset of that population.

Bio: Joseph A. Konstan is Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota. His research addresses a variety of human-computer interaction issues, including personalization (particularly through recommender systems), eliciting on-line participation, and designing computer systems to improve public health.

He is President of ACM SIGCHI, the 4500-member Special Interest Group on Human-Computer Interaction, and serves on two of the ACM’s five governing boards. Dr. Konstan is an active consultant who has worked for more than 15 companies on issues related to human-computer interaction, personalization, and general software issues. He has travelled and lectured extensively, giving over 200 talks in more than 25 countries worldwide.

What: CHISIG NSW and Sydney University present Joseph Konstan, speaking on ” Bridging Computer Science and Behavioral Science: Research Examples”

When: Tuesday, 13 June at 6pm for a 6.30pm start

Where: Room G92, School of Information Technologies, Madsen Building, University of Sydney

Getting there: See map reference L17 at here
To get to the University of Sydney by bus, consult the Sydney Buses map for transport links here
RSVP: by Friday, 9 June so we can cater sufficiently

How much: free for members, $5 for non-members

Who should attend: Anyone interested in HCI, Usability, Design, meeting other HCI researchers and practitioners

I posted the email in full as I didn’t have a link handy to the invite. Go to CHISIG.ORG for more info on Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group. I’m pretty sure you have to email Susan.Hansen at csiro.au for the RSVP but will update this bloglet when its confirmed. Interesting discussion. And remember, boys and girls, practice safe chatting.

Technorati tags: Online Communities, CHISIG, Joseph Konstan