ATTW Bulletin

Instructional videos on YouTube . Software documentation on Scribr and Wikipedia. Collaborative projects on Basecamp . Collaborative writing on Google Docs . When you put a networked computer with a browser on every worker's desk, suddenly it becomes feasible — easy, cheap — to use shared online collaborative spaces to perform all sorts of knowledge work, including professional communication. This social software drops the costs, increases the scale, and quickens the pace of collaborative work—for good or ill.

How is this social software being used? How is it changing professional communication practices, environments, expectations, products, ethics, and education? And what will its future impact be? In this special issue of The Journal for Technical and Business Communication, we will examine the role and future of social software in professional communication in the workplace and the classroom; through literature reviews, case studies, textual analyses, and theoretical pieces; via articles and reviews. We'll examine issues such as:

Collaborative writing environments : Vast changes in document authoring and sharing are on the horizon, with collaborative writing environments ranging from wikis and content management systems to writeboards, from word processing environments such as Google Docs and Windows Live , to social document sharing sites such as Scribd . How will these changes affect professional communicators?
Collaborative project management and time management : How are collaborative projects transformed through distributed-control tools such as Basecamp , JotSpot , Wrike , and shared calendars? Do these tools reflect and/or precipitate organizational changes and work changes?
Collaborative analysis : How are distributed knowledge sharing environments changing the face of business and technical analysis? How do collaborative mind mapping, collaborative data visualization, and similar environments ( sense.us , Kit Up , conflictWiki ) affect the way people communicate?
Social networking : Social networking sites have exploded in the past few years, allowing people to form communities spontaneously and share expertise. How are sites like Facebook , MySpace , Ning , Flickr , YouTube , and del.icio.us changing how people share knowledge? What are the professional communication repercussions of political action sites such as Billhop , change.org , and the sites of various presidential candidates?
Mashups : With multiple streams of data online, people have begun combining those streams in radical and unexpected ways. How are RSS feeds, combined services such as GlobalIncidentMap , practices such as workstreaming, and mashup infrastructure such as Yahoo Pipes changing the way that we understand, process, and use information in professional communication? How do desktop visualizations affect how workers see their own work in the aggregate?
Virtual environments : Virtual environments such as World of Warcraft and SecondLife have increasingly become sites of work, innovation, and collaboration. How are these environments likely to change professional communication practices?

Schedule

Submissions (full manuscripts): May 1, 2008
Accepted manuscripts revised for publication: September 1, 2008
Scheduled publication of issue: July 2009

Contact information

Send proposals in .DOC, .RTF, or .HTML to Clay Spinuzzi clay.spinuzzi@mail.utexas.edu

Please contact the editor by email if you would like to be considered a reviewer for this special issue.