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Sustainable HCI and Human-Food-Interaction research have developed an interest in preventing food waste through food sharing. Sustainability requires attention to both the opportunities and challenges associated with the building of food-sharing groups engaged in the redistribution of food but also in developing a wider agenda which includes, for instance, the local production of food resources. In this paper, we argue for a better understanding of the different conceptions of ‘fairness’ which inform volunteer and guest practice and in turn mediate community-building efforts. We examine the practices surrounding ‘SharingEvent’ and challenges faced to sustainability by the heterogenous, and sometimes contested, commitments of the people involved. We further consider how ICT provided opportunities for explicit examination of ideological differences concerning what ‘sharing’ might mean. Our findings show that community building is dependent on the negotiation of different values and purposes identified. We derive recommendations for action-oriented researchers ultimately concerned with systemic transformation.

The widespread adoption and use of social media in almost every aspect of our daily lives may outpace existing empirical understandings. In organizations, social media are increasingly used by professional individuals and communities to support dynamic collaboration and knowledge sharing. While there is a growing amount of research on this subject, still little is known on how people use different kinds of social media in practice. That is, there is a need for an empirical understanding that addresses actual use practices of social media within the formal boundaries of organizations. To this end, we report on results from a qualitative comparative study of the use of wikis at two global organizations. Our aim is to develop an empirical understanding of the enactment of structures and the ways by which people structure and organize their wiki use practices by drawing on Orlikowski's (2000) practice lens. The findings from the authors analysis suggest a number of enacted structures that reflect diverse wiki use practices. The main contribution centers on developing three key mechanisms that provide means for understanding the structuring of the use of technology.

The aim of the paper is to discuss the rising potential of social software to increase the knowledge management capabilities of virtual product development teams. It presents six fundamental transitions, elaborated from the empirical findings, which justify the rise of a more bottom-up, social creation and sharing of engineering knowledge in the virtual organisation. The study suggests that traditional engineering knowledge management approaches alone are not sufficient to support development activities in the virtual organisation, and that such teams display an increasing demand for social, comparatively lightweight and remixable platforms for bottom-up, social creation and sharing of knowledge.

QC 20110711

This paper describes and discusses a non-traditional approach to participatory design, one which is combined with an agile-like software development process. In this case, the size of the company combined with a distributed population of users has a serious impact on the software development process. The small software company in our study resolves this problem with an unconventional amalgam of participatory design and agile processes which seems to suit their situation. By using different kinds of user participation the small software provider is able to keep in contact with users on a daily basis. Users convey requirements for new functionalities, give feedback and report errors. Users' feedback and proposals form the basis for further development. The paper relates our observations to other research on participatory design in unconventional settings and discusses the conditions under which agile software development can complement participatory design.

Some important research has been undertaken in recent years on knowledgemanagement within the CSCW community, drawing attention to the inherently socialproperties of knowledge and how it is shared. Much of this work has demonstrated thecomplex and sophisticated needs of so-called knowledge workers, and the requirementfor better understandings of knowledge sharing processes. The example we present inthis paper is that of knowledge work in emergency calls at SOS Alarm in Sweden, currentlyof interest because of a planned new system that will allow for centre-to-centrecase coordination and not only within the centre. What makes such a case interesting isthat workers in this context face an unlimited variety of incidents that require interpretation,decision and coordination, many of which require the deployment of local knowledgeand, as importantly, have to be dealt with in a timely fashion. In this paper we focus onhow a number of people work to combine their knowledge and expertise in a time effectiveway., QC 20101014

Based on empirical material from the area of software engineering, this articlediscusses the issue of plans and planning as an integral part of and prerequisite for software development work. It relates observed practices to literature produced by the Computer Supported Cooperative Work community. Empirical studies of software development practice seldom address re-planning. By analyzing the empirical material from one project we are able to show how certain kinds of co-ordination problems arise and how they may be dealt with. The empirical research does not focus primarily on the character of plans; instead, it raises the question ‘what means are necessary and should be provided in order to cope with situations when plans do not work out? In relation to plans, especial emphasis is on ‘‘due process’’, i.e. how the project plan and the company wide project model are maintained to enable the identification and articulation of deviations from it. On the basis of our empirical analysis we propose to support the articulation and coordination work necessary in situations where plans do not adequately work out.

This paper derives from a study undertaken at an emergency service centre by researchers at the Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden. It forms part of a project involving partners at the university and in Swedish emergency service centres. The focus in this project was on the possibility of developing new technology for use in these centres. One vision for the new technology is to support distribution of calls and handling of cases across several centres. Historically the work has been conducted in a number of different centres, where responsibilities are thus primarily geographically localised and where, as a result, practices in the different centres may be distinctively local. The study has focused on features of work familiar to the CSCW community, including documenting and analysing current work practices, understanding the properties of the technology in question, and perhaps most importantly how the technology functions in use. Our focus in this paper exemplifies these themes through the analysis of three cases. In the first, the issue in question is the way in which an emergency is identified and dealt with, it being the case that a typical problem to be dealt with by operators, and more commonly in the days of mobile telephony, is that of multiple reporting of a single case. Of particular interest here is the phenomenon of listening-in, which is a function in the Computer Aided Dispatch system and by contrast that of ‘overhearing’, which is not. The second and third cases focus on the relevance of large paper maps, given the existence of computerized maps in these centres. Based on our own analysis and on work done by others in similar contexts, we develop an argument for a sense of organizational relevance that hopefully integrates existing analytic interests in emergency service work.

To survive in todayrsquos competitive software market, software developers must maintain contact with their customers and users and adopt a flexible organization which allows response to feedback and the changing requirements from the use-context. This also requires a software development that enables change proposals and error reports to be acted upon quickly. The present article uses a case study of a flexible development practice which so far has proved to be sustainable and successful to reconsider user involvement and software development practices of small software providers from an agile perspective. Implementing an agile process may allow for competitive flexibility without necessarily jeopardizing quality.

This paper derives from a study undertaken at an emergency service centre in Sweden. The studies have focused on fea-tures of work familiar to the CSCW community, including the documenting and analysing current work practices, un-derstanding the properties of the technology in question, and perhaps most importantly how the technology func-tions in and through use. Our focus in this paper exempli-fies these themes through the analysis of two cases. In the first, the issue in question is the way in which an emer-gency is identified and dealt with, it being the case that a typical problem to be dealt with by operators, and more commonly in the days of mobile telephony, is that of mul-tiple reporting of a single case. Of particular interest here is listening-in, which is a function in the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system and by contrast that of ?overhear-ing?, which is not. The second case focus on the relevance of wall maps, given the existence of computerized maps in these centres. Based on two cases from emergency service centres, we will show that the concept of awareness needs careful unpacking if we are to understand associated design issues., Accepted November 16-20, 2002 New Orleans, Louisiana, USA