Hello everyone,

A proud moment for SIGCIS as we issue the call for our second annual workshop, held in conjunction with the SHOT meeting.

There is a theme we hope will lead to some interesting new ways of thinking about work in the field, but contributions on all topics are welcome. Please contribute your work and help to firmly establish this as the annual peer reviewed academic gathering the field has long needed. We are particularly keen to welcome graduate students for regular presentations and a projected dissertations in progress session. SIGCIS has a little money to assist graduate students with travel costs and we hope to raise a little more before the meeting. (Remember the Mahoney Fund – details at http://www.sigcis.org/?q=mahoney).

See below for the call, and remember to send your questions to the workshop chair Jeff Tang, tangjd@jmu.edu.

Tom Haigh (www.tomandmaria.com/tom)

CALL FOR PAPERS
SIGCIS Workshop 2010: Materiality and Immateriality in the History of Computing

Sunday October 3 2010, Tacoma, Washington

For the latest updates see http://www.sigcis.org/?q=workshop10.

The Society for the History of Technology’s Special Interest Group for Computers, Information and Society (SIGCIS – www.sigcis.org) welcomes submissions for its latest one day scholarly workshop on Materiality and Immateriality in the History of Computing. The workshop will be held in Tacoma Washington all day on Sunday, October 3 2010. This is the final day of the annual SHOT meeting. SHOT has reserved that day for SIG events and therefore the symposium will not overlap scheduled sessions in the main program. For details on the main SHOT meeting see http://www.historyoftechnology.org/annual_meeting.html

In keeping with the conference theme contributions that consider material aspects of the history of information technology (people, things, places, physical technologies and their relationship to work, practice, users, standards, and so on), immaterial aspects of the history of computing (logical standards, program code, theory, virtual technologies/environments/communities) or the relationship between the two are articularly welcome. However our practice is to welcome contributions on all topics related to the history of computing whether or not there is an explicit connection with the annual theme. Our membership is interdisciplinary and proposals are expected from the perspectives of business history, labor history, social history, science studies and the history of science as well as from historians of technology.

Proposals for entire sessions and individual presenters are both welcome. We hope to run special sessions featuring dissertations in progress and other works in progress. The workshop is a great opportunity to get helpful feedback on your projects in a relaxed and supportive environment. All proposals will be subject to a peer review process.

Suggested Formats: Individual contributions can fit one of a variety of formats

1. Traditional 20 to 25-minute presentations followed by a question and answer session with the SIGCIS community. In this case a one-page abstract (maximum 400 words) will be reviewed and included in the electronic conference program. Abstracts should address the paper’s topic, argument, evidence used, and contribution to the existing literature. A full version of the paper should be sent to the session commentator at least a week prior to the meeting.

2. Dissertation proposals. We hope to include a dissertations in progress session, in which individuals will present their ongoing dissertation work and seek feedback from the history of computing community. In this case submit your dissertation proposal, which will be included in the electronic conference program if accepted. Participants will be encouraged to read this prior to the session. You will have five to ten minutes to introduce the material, leaving the bulk of time available for discussion.

3. Works in progress. This is your chance to receive informal and expert discussion of draft dissertation chapters, journal articles, or book chapters. Submit a one page abstract (maximum 400 words) including discussion of the current state of the work and any specific kinds of feedback you are seeking. If your proposal is accepted you will need to supply the draft for discussion by 1 September for inclusion in the electronic program for the workshop. You will have five to ten minutes to introduce the material, leaving the bulk of time available for discussion.

4. Proposals in other formats are also welcome. For example round table discussions, demonstrations of software of interest to historians of computing, or "author meets critics" sessions.

We follow the normal format for a history meeting. That is: selection on abstracts rather than full papers, no submission of full papers for regular sessions (although works in progress and dissertation proposals must be submitted in advance for inclusion on the workshop website), and no publication of proceedings (and presenters are welcome to submit their work the SIGCIS Member Contributions collection). However presenters in regular sessions will be required to share some version of their paper at least two weeks in advance with the session commentator so that he or she can prepare insightful and helpful remarks

People already scheduled to participate on the main SHOT program are welcome to submit an additional proposal to the SIGCIS workshop, but should make sure that there is no overlap between the two presentations

All submissions should be made online via the SIGCIS website.

Individual submissions should be made at http://www.sigcis.org/?q=workshop10a . Note that this requires a one page curriculum vitae as well as the proposal itself in the form described above.

Proposals for complete sessions should be made at http://www.sigcis.org/?q=workshop10b.

They should include:

• a description of the session that explains how
  individual papers contribute to an overall theme
• the names and email addresses of each presenter
• an abstract and title for each presentation (in the form described above)
• a one-page c.v. for each presenter and other participant (including commentator or chair if named)

Travel Support: The top financial priority of SIGCIS is the support of travel expenses for graduate students, visiting faculty without institutional travel support, and others who would be unable to attend the meeting without travel assistance. The submission includes a box to check if you fall into one of these categories and would like to be considered for an award. These is no need to apply separately, though depending on the volume of requests and available resources we may need to contact you for further information before making a decision. Details on our travel grant program are at www.sigcis.org/q=travelaward. Funding sources include donations from SIGCIS members at our annual meeting, income from the Mahoney Fund http://www.sigcis.org/?q=mahoney and support from MIT Press for our annual book auction. Please note that the SHOT Executive Council has told us that presenting at our workshop is not considered as participation in the SHOT program and so does not realistically make you eligible for the main SHOT travel grant program.

Last Year’s Workshop: This is the second annual SIGCIS workshop. The inaugural 2009 event featured a plenary session followed by six further sessions grouped into two tracks. More than fifty people attended, many staying an extra night and attending a group dinner in the evening after the workshop. You can last year’s program at http://www.sigcis.org/?q=workshop09c and a report from the Charles Babbage Institute at http://www.cbi.umn.edu/newsletter/article3.html. We expect to follow a similar format this year.

Questions should be addressed to Jeffrey Tang who is serving as chair of the workshop organizing committee. Email tangjd@jmu.edu.