Call: The Near Future of Work (A WebSci 2021 Workshop)

Call for Papers and Abstracts: 

The Near Future of Work: Supporting Digital and Remote Collaboration in COVID and Beyond

A Workshop at the 13th ACM Web Science Conference (WebSci 2021)

June 21st or June 22nd

https://sites.northwestern.edu/nearfutureofwork2021

We invite two types of submission: 

Peer-reviewed workshop papers (approx. 9 to 13 pages in length) for 15-minute talks. Participants who submit full papers will have the option of having their workshop papers published as part of a companion collection of the ACM WebSci21 proceedings. 
 

Short abstracts (max 200 words) for lightning talks. Lightning talk presentations will have a 6-minute limit, and speakers will be asked to submit slide decks in advance. Abstracts submitted for lightning talks will not be published in proceedings but will be viewable on the website created for the workshop. 
 

Workshop Motivation and Description:

Web Science has increasingly become relevant to all sectors of work. For much of the workforce, digital tools are either essential to facilitate collaboration with remote workers, or heavily relied upon in face-to-face environments. Never has the state of web-enabled collaboration been in more flux than in the past year in the aftermath of Covid-19. This workshop brings together researchers in a variety of fields - communication, computer science, economics, industrial engineering, organization science, psychology, sociology, engineering, among others - to discuss what remote work and digital collaboration will - and should - look like in the near future.

Goals of the workshop proposal are to:

Share findings about digital and remote work in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, including new and late-breaking work.
Share insights of the impact of new Web/AI-based technologies on the nature of work and the workforce.
Facilitate multidisciplinary discussions to foster new ideas and opportunities to shape the next generation research agenda for the near future of work.  
 

Details: 

The COVID-19 pandemic has provided us an opportunity to participate in a global “beta-test” of web-only-based remote work. No web scientist could have conceived that we would have this “opportunity” to reimagine the Future of Work. The workshop will reflect on the changing nature of work, identify factors that explain these changes, and how we can learn from the “new” normal to prepare for a better “next” normal. By doing so this workshop seeks to facilitate multidisciplinary dialog as well as theory and research examining challenges and opportunities stemming from digital and remote work on the Web. Topics relevant to this workshop include, but are not limited to: remote work, virtual teaming, enterprise social media (ESM), computer-supported cooperative work, digital platforms, human-AI teaming, work in the gig economy, crowdsourced labor, work-life balance in the digital age, the well-being of remote workers, and workplace communication technology. We especially welcome findings of remote work and digital collaboration that are relevant in the aftermath of COVID-19 (but not necessarily relying on COVID-19 related data).

Speakers: 

Opening keynote:  “Implications of Working Without an Office (and Teaching Without a Classroom),”  Ethan Bernstein, the Edward W. Conard Associate Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School.
Closing keynote: “Managing the Reverberations of Remote Work in the Post-COVID era,” Paul Leonardi, the Reece Duca Professor of Technology Management, UC Santa Barbara. 
 

Important Dates: 

Full papers 
Submission deadline: April 23rd 
Camera-ready papers: May 16th
Abstracts for lightning talks 
Submission deadline: May 17th 
 

Submission instructions: 

Please submit a paper or abstract via EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=nfw2021.

The authors shall adopt the current ACM SIG Conference proceedings template (acmart.cls). Please submit papers as PDF files using the ACM Submission template (single column). To create your PDF submission, you may use either Microsoft Word format or the ACM LaTeX template on Overleaf (ACM Conference Proceedings “Master” Template) using the “manuscript” option. A full description of the procedure can be found in this link (https://www.acm.org/publications/taps/word-template-workflow). For the review process, manuscripts should be 9-13 pages length single column (inclusive of references, appendices, etc.).

Workshop Co-Chairs:

Brennan Antone, Northwestern University, brennanantone@u.northwestern.edu

Jasmine Wu, Northwestern University, jasminewu@u.northwestern.edu

Workshop Organizers: 

Feodora Kosasih, SONIC Research Group, feodora.kosasih@northwestern.edu 

Noshir Contractor, Northwestern University, nosh@northwestern.edu