Posted to TechRhet by Clancy Ratliff on behalf of the Computers and Writing Online 2005 conference organizers:

When Content Is No Longer King: Social Networking, Community, and Collaboration

The 2005 Computers and Writing Online Conference begins on Tuesday, May 31, and runs through Monday, June 13. This is the first-ever online conference in our field to be open-access, Creative Commons-licensed, and hosted on a weblog, and it promises to be innovative and insightful. We set out to perform the concepts and values of the conference theme -- networking, community, and collaboration -- in our review process, which was open to the public and emphasized group interaction and helpful, supportive feedback. The responders have done an excellent job engaging the authors' ideas, and the authors' responses to the feedback they received have really demonstrated how enriching this public, collaborative model can be for scholarly work. The conference organizers would like to extend a big "Thank you!" to the authors and the responders. Included with each abstract in this announcement is the link to the original; we strongly encourage you to read the comments.

As with the abstracts, the presentations are accessible to anyone with an internet connection, and anyone with an account at Kairosnews (registration is free) can leave comments. For more information, visit the CW Online 2005 weblog: http://kairosnews.org/cwonline05/home

Drawing upon the conference's theme of exploring the increasing value of the network and collaborative practices within it, presenters examine the role(s) played by social networking applications and other
technologies that are intended to foster social interaction, community, and collaboration. Alongside studying the technologies themselves, presenters will observe and describe the ways that writers and users are engaging the technologies and how such engagement is changing our ideas about writing and teaching writing, and, more broadly, the concepts of rhetoric and composition themselves. We very much hope you'll get involved by leaving your comments, or, if you prefer, respond on your own weblog and leave a trackback! Or write a response on your wiki! Or tag presentations on your del.icio.us or de.lirio.us list! You get the idea. This conference is meant to be networked.

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