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Participation and organization of the workshop "Hybrid Collaboration - Moving Beyond Purely Co-Located or Remote Collaboration" in Salzburg

 

The workshop took place on Saturday, June 8, 2019 in connection with the 17th European Conference for Computer Aided Cooperation (EGKSW 2019) in Salzburg. Among the organizers were Dr. Mirjam Augstein and Dr. Thomas Neumayr of the research group PEEC.

New collaboration practices and technologies are increasingly blurring the traditional lines between on-the-spot collaboration and remote collaboration. With the help of technologies such as connected interactive whiteboards and mobile devices, team meetings are increasingly being distributed to members who are located and removed together. Collaboration tools like Slack also invite users to overcome the dichotomy between synchronous and asynchronous teamwork.

In a first attempt to shape this new way of working together, Neumayr et al. (2018) formulated the framework for "Hybrid Collaboration" to enable the description and analysis of current practices in hybrid collaboration. Nevertheless, there is a considerable knowledge gap in the area of ​​hybrid cooperation, although it is used in everyday practice.  

The one-day workshop aimed to bring together researchers and practitioners who are working on empirical research methods and current practical applications of hybrid collaboration. Ultimately, the goal was to achieve a high degree of usability and UX in the tools developed, either in the area of ​​co-located or remote collaboration.

The topics dealt with in the workshop included:

  • What are the opportunities and challenges of exploring hybrid collaboration today?
  • How can collaborative practices be explored in hybrid meetings / events in naturalistic environments?
  • How can we prototype hybrid collaboration and conduct controlled experiments?
  • Which established, alternative or completely new research methods can help to address these challenges?
  • How can we achieve a common conceptualization and understanding of hybrid collaboration, meetings and events? These concepts are often expressed through other similar terminology such as remote, online, hybrid or virtual collaboration, meetings and events in partially distributed teams, virtual teams, etc.