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!

Mena Trott

Co-founder and President, Six Apart

Bio: Mena Trott is co-founder and President of Six Apart, the creators of the TypePad service and Movable Type software, two of the leading tools for publishing weblogs. In addition to her role helping lead management and business efforts at Six Apart, Mena enjoys working on making the products aesthetically pleasing as well as functionally intuitive. Named one of Fast Company's Fast 50 for 2004, Mena has been involved in the weblogging space since she first began publishing to her own weblog, dollarshort.org in early 2001. She speaks regularly at industry conferences and has appeared at Supernova, South by Southwest, AdTech and DEMO 2004.

Stewart Butterfield

President, Ludicorp Research & Development Ltd.

Bio: Stewart Butterfield is the president and founder of Ludicorp, the makers of Flickr, a collaborative platform for photos. He is a renowned interaction designer and successful entrepreneur with a long history of involvement with the Internet. He founded the 5k competition, has served on the W3C's XForms working group, has been nominated for a Chrysler Design Award, and is a frequent speaker on design and technology topics at professional and academic events across Europe and North America.

Stewart is a recognized leader in the field of online development and design. He directed the 11-member design group (creative/visual/UI, production & QA) at Communicate.com, where he acted as design lead or managed teams on millions of dollars worth of projects for companies like HSBC and Sears Travel. As a principal, he led the re-branding, corporate development and growth — from 100,000 members to 600,000 in under five months — of Gradfinder.com, an alumni community site. He has also had a long consulting interaction design career, most recently with Telus, the CBC and The Economist. He received a BA (Hons. with Distinction) in philosophy from the University of Victoria, and an MPhil in philosophy from Cambridge University, graduating with a First. In 2001, he was nominated for a Chrysler Design Award.

Simon Phipps

Chief Technology Evangelist, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

URL: http://www.webmink.net

Bio: Simon Phipps speaks frequently at industry events on technology trends and futures. At various times he has programmed mainframes, Windows and on the Web. Currently the Chief Technology Evangelist at Sun Microsystems, Inc., he was previously involved in OSI standards in the 80s, in the earliest commercial collaborative conferencing software in the early 90s, in introducing Java and XML to IBM and most recently with Sun's open source strategy. He is also one of the people behind Sun's corporate blog site, blogs.sun.com.

Bio: In 1986, Linda Stone, was persuaded to join Apple Computer to help "change the world." She is passionate about the role technology can play in enhancing our lives. In her 7 years at Apple, she had the opportunity to do pioneering work in multimedia hardware, software and publishing. In her last year at Apple, Stone worked for Chairman and CEO, John Sculley, on special projects. In 1993, Stone joined Microsoft Research under Nathan Myhrvold. She co-founded and directed the Virtual Worlds Group/Social Computing Group, and with her team, researched online social life and virtual communities. In 2000, CEO, Steve Ballmer, tapped Stone to take on a VP role, reporting to him, to help improve industry relationships and contribute to a constructive evolution of the corporate culture. Stone retired from Microsoft in 2002, to work on a variety of writing and creative projects. She began her career as an educator and children's librarian.

Howard Rheingold

Writer and Consultant

Bio: Howard Rheingold is one of the world's foremost authorities on the social implications of technology. Over the past twenty years he has traveled around the world, observing and writing about emerging trends in computing, communications, and culture. One of the creators and former founding executive editor of HotWired, he has served as editor of The Whole Earth Review, editor-in-chief of The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog, and on-line host for The Well. He is also the author of several books, including Smart Mobs, The Virtual Community, Virtual Reality, and Tools for Thought.

Joichi Ito

CEO and Founder, Neoteny Co., Ltd.

VP International and Mobility, Technorati

Chairman, Six Apart Japan

Bio: Joichi Ito is Vice President of international and mobility for Technorati, which indexes and monitors blogs and the Chairman of Six Apart Japan the weblog software company. He is on the board of Creative Commons, a non-profit organization which proposes a middle way to rights management, rather than the extremes of the pure public domain or the reservation of all rights. He is also serving a three year term as board member of Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for a three year term starting December 2004. He has created numerous Internet companies including PSINet Japan, Digital Garage and Infoseek Japan. In 1997 Time Magazine ranked him as a member of the CyberElite. In 2000 he was ranked among the "50 Stars of Asia" by Business Week and commended by the Japanese Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications for supporting the advancement of IT. In 2001 the World Economic Forum chose him as one of the 100 "Global Leaders of Tomorrow" for 2002. He has served and continues to serve on numerous Japanese central as well as local government committees and boards, advising the government on IT, privacy and computer security related issues. He is currently researching "The Sharing Economy" as a Doctor of Business Administration candidate at the Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy at Hitotsubashi University in Japan. He maintains a personal weblog where he regularly shares his thoughts with the online community.

Elizabeth Churchill

Senior Research Scientist

Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), Palo Alto California

Bio: Since her postgraduate work in Cognitive Science at the University of Cambridge in the UK, Ellizabeth Churchill has maintained a keen interest in the human centered design of communication technologies. Her work combines the study of people's practices, proclivities and preferences as well as consideration of opportunities that are afforded by novel technologies and infrastructures. For intellectual inspiration, she draws on ideas from diverse areas, including psychology, computer science, sociology, anthropology and design studies. She has published within the areas of theoretical and applied psychology, cognitive science, human computer interaction, interface design, design methods, computer supportive cooperative work, and system design. She has organized numerous international design workshops and chaired conferences in Collaborative Virtual Environments and Computer Supported Cooperative Work.

Until her move in 2004 to PARC, she was the leader of the Social Computing Group at FX Palo Alto Laboratory (FXPAL) where her team designed and prototyped several successful social technologies for Fuji Xerox in Japan. Their digital community bulletin board design was recognized with design awards from the ACM's Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS). Her most recent role at PARC includes consideration of tools and methods for supporting geographically and culturally diverse teams of software engineers.