Hey! My name is Sam the socialite, if you have any questions about the LSC, I can help you out!

I am a big fan of social computing and can help you out whenever you need me. Common questions that people ask when they come to the Lab for Social computing website are about the following topics:

If you have a question and can't seem to find an answer by looking through the page, try a quick search. If you still can't find an answer, why don't you just 'Ask Sam' and I will get back to you as soon as possible!

Enjoy your stay!

In an article published in their most recent magazine, the RIT Reporter magazine wrote about social software as well as the Lab for Social Computing here at RIT. Here’s an excerpt from the article The Facebook and the Newest Wave of Social Computing for Us to Surf:

Liz Lawley, an associate professor of IT, is very involved in blogging and social computing. She keeps her own blog at mamamusings.net. She was recently selected by Marqui as one of the twenty-one bloggers they chose nation-wide, to begin their Blogosphere program.

She teaches blogging in her classes and has also recently become the director of the Lab for Social Computing that has been created at RIT. She has many great insights on Social Computing, Blogging, and where RIT fits into both.

“In the classes where I’ve introduced students to blogging, a number have gone on to start and maintain their own blogs. Those students have been able to use their blogs as a way to improve their writing skills as well as their visibility in the technical community. [Also,] Students who read the blogs of their professors are able to develop a better sense of us as people, and often find us more approachable as a result.”

RNews, a local Rochester news station, reported on the creation of the new Lab for Social Computing here at RIT. Here’s an excerpt from the article entitled R.I.T. Studies “Blogging”:

“It’s not so much revolutionary as it is evolutionary,” Liz Lawley, associate professor of information technology at R.I.T., said.

“If my ten-year-old is using instant messenger every day, is that good or bad? Is it hurting or helping his ability to communicate with other people? We don’t know that unless we study these tools,” Lawley said.

The Democrat & Chronicle newspaper of Rochester, New York, covered the weblogging conference put on by Elizabeth Lawley, Director of the Lab for Social Computing. Here is an excerpt from the article RIT explores evolution of social computing:

“Instead of talking about people interacting with computers, we’re talking about people interacting with people,” said Elizabeth Lawley, director of a new laboratory at RIT dedicated to exploring this world of “social computing.”

The lab is not a physical location, an actual laboratory, but an umbrella under which faculty members and students will do research and development. And the lab plans to offer seminars, open to the public, on different aspects of social computing.

The lab will involve not just faculty and students in the Golisano College of Computing and Information Science but also people from other disciplines, including liberal arts, said Lawley, an associate professor of information technology.

In the latest RIT News and Events publication, the Lab for Social Computing was featured as a cover story. Here is an excerpt from the article entitled RIT opens first 'social computing' lab:

RIT, internationally recognized as a leader in computing education, recognizes the need for more research into cyber interaction and has established a groundbreaking lab for "social computing." RIT is the first academic institution to offer research of this kind at the graduate and undergraduate levels.

The social computing lab is part of the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences' new research initiative-Center for Advancing the Study of Cyberinfrastructure. Elizabeth Lane Lawley, associate professor of information technology, is the lab's director.

"Considering the importance of the forms of social software that are altering the way people organize political campaigns, report the news and form social networks, it is particularly important to put together a research group of experienced scholars who are versed in both the academic disciplines and personally immersed in social software practices," explains board member Rheingold.

We’re delighted to see that one of our advisory board members, Mena Trott, has been named one of PC Magazine’s “People of the Year” for 2004.

Congratulations to Mena, her husband Ben, and the whole team at Six Apart—it’s a well-deserved honor!

The Wall Street Journal interviewed Elizabeth Lawley for their December 2004 Journal Report on Technology. Here’s n excerpt from the article, entitled 20 Questions:

18. How do I start blogging?

Like a growing number of citizens of the Net, Elizabeth Lawley, an associate professor of information technology at the Rochester Institute of Technology, has a blog — a personal Web site where she posts a running diary chronicling everything from her Greek vacation to trips to conferences. While Dr. Lawley used blog software from Six Apart Ltd. called MovableType that is geared toward more sophisticated users, she recommends that first-time bloggers try services such as Six Apart’s TypePad or Google’s Blogger.

The Blogger service, for instance, is available free at Blogger.com5, and Google says users can be publishing their thoughts on the Web in about a minute.

Andy Phelps’ MUPPETS project was the subject of a recent Wired News article entitled Gamers Eye Open Virtual Worlds.

MUPPETS, or Multi-User Programming Pedagogy for Enhancing Traditional Study, is the brainchild of Andy Phelps, an assistant information technology professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He uses the project to immerse new students in their coursework even before they develop sophisticated programming skills.

“It’s like a virtual street and a virtual desert,” said Phelps. “You’re basically given a plot of land … and you can do with it what you will, and you can build objects that will interact with anyone else’s objects in the world.”

After being named one of the O’Reilly Alpha Geeks for 2003, Andy went on to write up a follow-up piece for his blog at GotGame? This set off an interesting back-and-forth discussion with Ross Mayfield, and while the discussion is now a bit dated, it is still worth reading.