Final Report
Beyond Being There: A Blueprint for Advancing the Design, Development, and Evaluation of Virtual Organizations
[PDF 3.3 MB]
The final report from the workshops on Building Effective Virtual Organizations
The plenary sessions of the workshop are now available for playback viewing. Instructions for viewing the Webcast are accessible from the Webcast menu above. The list of recorded sessions can be found on the workshop agenda page.
Virtual organizations are increasingly central to the science and engineering projects funded by the National Science Foundation. Indeed, if you are a researcher or educator, chances are that you if don't already lead or participate in at least one distributed team, you will soon.
Unfortunately, chances are also that you have never been told how to establish such teams, how to make them successful, or what technologies exist that can help them function effectively. You probably haven't had many opportunities to interact with others building, or just working in, virtual organizations, either.
Our goal at this workshop is to help address this knowledge gap. We have assembled a world-class lineup of speakers, including virtual organization veterans from academia and industry, developers of virtual organization technologies, and social scientists with years of experience studying what makes virtual organizations succeed (and fail). We've put together a program with lots of opportunity for both formal presentations and less formal discussions. We invite you to take this opportunity to come and learn what is required to make virtual organizations successful, and to establish new connections that will help you succeed in your research and education projects in the future.
The workshop will be held at the Fairmont Hotel in Washington, DC from January 14 (starting with a welcoming reception at 7pm) to January 16 (ending late afternoon). There is no fee, but registration is required as space is limited.
The workshop on Building Effective Virtual Organizations is sponsored by the National Science Foundation's Office of Cyberinfrastructure, which has identified virtual organizations as a fundamental element of its infrastructure plans.
