A9AdamMork

A9AdamMork

To-Do

please discuss / address the following issues:

1. enumerate, analyze, and discusses different "distances"
2. describe technologies for all the distances (existing ones, envisioned ones) which you identified in (1) which help to overcome and reduce these distances
3. does distance matter?
   1. yes? (under which circumstances)
   2. no? (under which circumstances)
4. describe one example based on your personal experience where distance and diversity was
   1. a positive experience
   2. a negative experience

Group Members

Adam Mork

enumerate, analyze, and discusses different "distances"

1. Spatial - This represents a physical distance between participants. This can often times be a barrier to trust building since face-to-face interaction build trust, but many different open source projects overcome these problems and make effective collaboration on large projects

2. Temporal- This is a distance or seperation across time. A good example is a system that has existed in a community for quite some time, but has been steadily evolving to meet the new demands of the users. This is called design-in-use. 3. Technological - This is the separation created between persons and artifacts. There are many things that can bridge this gap, like IDE, or DODE's which are environments that give feedback to the designer in real time as they create their code. 4.Conceptually - separation across different communities

describe technologies for all the distances (existing ones, envisioned ones) which you identified in (1) which help to overcome and reduce these distances

1. VOIP is a great technology that can bridge the spatial gap between designers. Webcams can be hooked up to the application to provide the illusion that everyone is in the same room talking

2. Temporal - source code repositories and open source projects are a good example, because these projects given enough support from users and designers take on a life of their own beyond what the original designers specified. 3. Technological - IDE's like eclipse provide real time bug reporting and syntax errors while coding. 4. Conceptually - User group meetings or conventions are a good way for people from different communities to rally behind a common goal or belief.

does distance matter?

Sometimes, but for the most part not really, especially since the collaborative work that we are talking about is on a computer. Some things like drawings and high up designs could be better done in person face-to-face, but most everything else like coding and implementation can be done by individuals with occasional collaboration with others over VOIP or in face to face meetings.

describe one example (per group member) based on your personal experience where distance and diversity was

In my senior project our sponsor is in japan, and every 2 weeks we have a VOIP meeting to discuss the current state of our project. We also have a meeting each semester with the ceo and the executives at our sponsor company using a webcam to display the progress of our application. So far it has worked well despite the 12 hour time difference.