Computers and Writing Online 2005: Respond to Abstracts!

I'm on the organizing committee for the Computers and Writing Online 2005 Conference, and this year we're doing something that has never been done in our field, or I believe any other: We're having the whole conference on a weblog, including the review process. Actually, we're calling it a "public feedback process," and if you read the guidelines below you'll see that we're less interested in a thumbs-up/thumbs-down accept/reject model and more interested in an abstract-as-conversation-starter, knowledge-making-social model. Anyone with a username at Kairosnews can respond to an abstract (registration is free*), so please provide feedback by May 13.

In keeping with this year's CW Online 2005 conference theme--"When
Content Is No Longer King: Social Networking, Community, and
Collaboration"--conference organizers invite you and other interested
parties to read and respond to the proposals submitted for this year's
conference. These proposals can be found at

http://kairosnews.org/cwonline05/blog

Should you choose to participate in this process, we ask that you
consider the following suggested guidelines:

--Before jumping into the response process, look at some proposals that
already have comments posted and get a feel for what's being done.

--Read the proposal carefully and consider what you think might be
improved, extended, re-focused, clarified or otherwise revised.

--We suggest avoiding a lengthy commentary or review. Instead, introduce
some talking points and engage the author in a conversation about the
topic.

--Gradually, as the dialogue unfolds, bring in the points you'd like to
see addressed.

--Treat your responses as part of an ongoing dialogue with the author,
your fellow respondents, and casual commentators. When possible,
consider referring to previous responses.

--Generally speaking, we are not looking for responses that are overly
evaluative or argumentative, but rather those that encourage dialogue
leading to clarification and understanding.**

* If you're registered here, you don't have to register at Kairosnews. You can login using whateveryourusernamehereis@culturecat.net as the username, and the password is whatever your password here is.

** This isn't to say you shouldn't be critical of an abstract or feel like you can't disagree with something an author has said; we're just, as I said before, trying to get out of a terse, accept/reject mode. Also keep in mind that it takes courage to put one's work out there for public feedback, and many of these people aren't bloggers, so we're trying to make it more supportive and not so snakepitty.