Virtual Collaboration and Community

2600 Chapter 8.9 Virtual Collaboration and Community Ann Borda Victorian eResearch Strategic Initiative (VeRSI), Australia Jonathan P. Bowen London South Bank University, UK & Museophile Limited, UK AbstrAct ing area with new technologies becoming rapidly available, but the underlying concepts and reasons This chapter introduces the concept of a Virtual for the existence of VOs in the support of virtual Organization (VO), using the Internet to link collaborative practice remain more stable. geographically separated participants in an effi- cient and novel manner. In particular, the chapter …the manner in which a virtual community contrasts the attributes of Project VOs and Com- develops must be dictated by the organic needs munity VOs. The former tend to be more formal of its members, not the other way around and arise for a particular collaborative goal with —Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community a limited lifetime. The latter are less formal and more open-ended, with a less specific purpose, largely aimed at developing an online community IntroductIon as an end in itself. The features of Project and Community VOs are compared and the various People have collaborated throughout their devel- technologies are discussed. Two case studies are opment. Without collaboration, the human race presented as examples. This is a rapidly chang- would never have survived and indeed thrived. Humans are well adapted to intelligent behavior DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-264-0.ch003 and cooperation when needed but are less well Copyright © 2011, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Virtual Collaboration and Community suited to lone survival. This situation has continued VIrtuAl orgAnIZAtIons (Vo) through from the days when cooperative hunting for food was required to the modern world of The nature of virtual collaboration and community electronic communication, which has developed is manifested in the notion of the Virtual Orga- extremely rapidly over the past decade or two. nization (VO). Such organizations are built upon Despite the pace of change, many people have ‘cyberinfrastructures’ (Internet, web services, etc.) used this new environment to their advantage, to link groups of people and resources distributed whether professional, socially, educationally or across organizational, institutional, and/or geo- commercially. Increasingly, global organizations graphic boundaries. They are formed to leverage see the benefits of collaboration across distances complementarity, core competencies and pooled as a means of providing focused attention to resources to create productive ‘organizations’, be complex problems without physically relocating they not-for-profit, community-focused, corpo- individuals (Malhotra and Majchrzak, 2004). All rate, research or educational, and they may often these aspects require an adaptation to a completely appear to others to be a single unified organization new medium that supports new types of virtual with a real physical location (Churchill et al., 2001; community that were almost unimaginable only Lee et al., 2006). The VO stems from the concept a generation ago. of a distributed virtual networking system, the There have been some forward thinkers who development of which has as its goal to provide can be identified with hindsight. For example, a new and more effective means of using com- Marshall McLuhan coined the now classic expres- puters as tools for communication, collaboration sions “the medium is the message” and “global and information sharing with others (Schraefel village” in the 1960s, in the context of media in et al., 2000). The term VO has also been associ- general, especially the various electronic media. ated with ‘collaboratories’, online communities These concepts have become even more apposite (Preece, 2000) and virtual environments, among with the coming of the Internet, largely after others. VOs as collaborative structures have further McLuhan’s death in 1980. Early virtual communi- been the study of a range of practitioners, includ- ties, such as the WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic ing computer scientists, organizational theorists, Link), started in 1985 originally via dial-up lines sociologists, and business modelers. and then via the Internet, and still continuing to- In the most general terms, what characterizes day, were embryonic examples of what has now VOs are the fact that they are principally computer- become commonplace in the networked world. supported and are underpinned by collaborative The phenomenon of the virtual community has tools and HCI (Borda and Farnhill, 2006; Churchill been tracked by Howard Rheingold (2000) in his et al., 2001; Fitzgerald et al., 2008; Kimble and publication on the topic, which drew attention to Hildreth, 2005). There are a number of ways in this new form of community and the variety of which VOs are currently supported, not least collaborative interactions it can engender via the through web-based services and applications that Internet and web technologies. demonstrate the Web 2.0 concept (O’Reilly, 2005). This chapter considers the current status of These are not technologies as such, but services (or online collaboration and communities. In par- user processes) created using the building blocks ticular, it attempts to categorize different forms of the Internet and the web. These include blogs, of virtual organization that exist for a variety of wikis, multimedia sharing services, content syn- purposes. The technological features available for dication, podcasting, and content tagging services. use are considered with respect to different types Many of these applications of web technology are of virtual organizations and collaborative practice. relatively mature, having been developed and in 2601  10 more pages are available in the full version of this document, which may be purchased using the "Add to Cart" button on the product's webpage: www.igi-global.com/chapter/virtual-collaboration- community/48824?camid=4v1 This title is available in Social Technologies e-Book Collection, Business- Technology-Solution, Communications, Social Science, and Healthcare e- Book Collection, e-Book Collection Select, Contemporary Research in Information Science and Technology Collection - e-Books, e-Book Collection Select, e-Book Collection Select, e-Book Collection Select, e-Book Collection Select, Research Anthologies, E-Access, Research Anthologies. 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