Dear SIGCIS members,

Time flies, and what back in February seemed the hitherto hugely distant
date of June 15 is now just over two weeks away. So if you've been thinking
about getting together something for our third annual workshop at SHOT now
would be a good time to act.

Full details online at http://www.sigcis.org/workshop11, including online
submission for panels and abstracts, and for your convenience I'm pasting
the original email below.

To get you excited, here are a few updates:

1) Tom Misa has agreed to deliver the keynote plenary lecture, addressing
the workshop theme of "Cultures and Communities in the History of
Computing."

2) Both SIGCIS panels have been accepted for the main SHOT program. One is
"Coded Narratives: Memory, Practice and Community in the History of
Software" with Irina Nikiforova, Hansen Hsu and Joline Zepcevski. The other
is "Geographies of Computing: Straddling the Divide Between the Global and
the Local" with Gerard Alberts, David Nofte, Mark Prisetley, Janet Toland
and Patryk Wasiak (plus Eden Medina as chair). There are also some
interesting sounding panels accepted on communication networks, a panel with
on the political aspects of international communications (including Paul
Edwards speaking on computer modeling).

3) Also the IEEE Annals board meeting is now confirmed to take place just
before SHOT in the same location. So combining that with the sessions in the
main program and the workshop we can be sure that there will be a lively
turnout in our field that should carry over into the workshop.

4) We will be presenting the third Computer History Museum book prize at the
meeting. I have no idea which book the committee will pick, but they tell me
we have a record number of submissions this year so we can be sure it will
be a worthy winner.

Questions should be addressed to Marie Hicks who is serving as chair of the
workshop program committee. Email meh20 at duke.edu. (Marie -- if we need to
update that let me know...)

Best wishes,

Tom Haigh

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(ORIGINAL CALL FOLLOWS)
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CALL FOR PAPERS
SIGCIS Workshop 2011: Cultures and Communities in the History of Computing

For the latest updates see http://www.sigcis.org/workshop11.

DEADLINE for submissions: 15 June 2011

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
Cleveland, OH all day on Sunday, 6th November 2011. 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.

Workshop Theme: Information technologies are created to be used by people,
and thus function within particular human communities. The workshop explores
a range of disciplinary perspectives on the historical development of
computing activity, among them

* Connections between and across communities, for example between
users and producers, experts and non-experts, across disciplinary
communities, within trading zones
* The publics of computing, whether in home, business, or science
* Communities of practice based around the use and/or creation of
information technologies
* Use of computers within particular disciplinary traditions or
institutions
* The cultures and subcultures of information technology

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.
SHOT is collocated with HSS (history of science) and 4S (science studies)
this year, so contributions from those perspectives would be particularly
welcome.

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 based on abstracts.

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 (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.

Submission Procedure: All submissions should be made online via the SIGCIS
website. 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.
However program committee may choose to give higher priority to submissions
from those not already presenting at SHOT. The same person should not be
included as a panelist or speaker in more than one proposal to the SIGCIS
Workshop, though it is OK to appear both as a speaker/panelist in one
session and a chair or discussant in another.

Individual submissions should be made at
http://www.sigcis.org/workshop11a. 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/workshop11b.

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 separate application form, 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 http://www.sigcis.org/travelaward.

Funding sources include donations from SIGCIS members at our annual meeting,
income from the Mahoney Fund http://www.sigcis.org/mahoney and support from
MIT Press for our annual book auction. Please note that the SHOT does not
classify workshop presentations as participation in the SHOT annual meeting
and so acceptance by SIGCIS does not realistically make you eligible for the
main SHOT travel grant program.

Last Year's Workshop: This is the third annual SIGCIS workshop. The 2010
event featured a plenary session with a distinguished keynote speaker
followed by six further sessions grouped into two tracks. Around sixty
people attended, many staying an extra night and attending a group dinner in
the evening after the workshop. You can see last year's program at
http://www.sigcis.org/mahoney and a report from the Charles Babbage
Institute at http://www.cbi.umn.edu/newsletter/article5.html. We expect to
follow a similar format this year.

Questions should be addressed to Marie Hicks who is serving as chair of the
workshop program committee. Email meh20 at duke.edu.

_______________________________________________
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