Liebe Kolleginnen und Kollegen, 

anbei der Call for Papers des Minitracks "Virtual Communiites" für die 
AMCIS 2011, wir würden uns sehr über Einreichungen von Ihnen freuen.

Bitte entschuldigen Sie eventuelle Mehrfachzustellungen. 

Beste Grüße aus Kassel, 

Jan Marco Leimeister





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Call for Papers - Mini-Track Virtual Communities
17th Americas Conference on Information Systems
August 4-8 2011, Detroit, Michigan, USA
http://www.virtual-community.org


This Mini-Track builds on the success of the preceding AMCIS mini-tracks 
on virtual communities and Social Networking. During the last ten years we 
have been gathering a community of researchers who are interested in the 
field of virtual communities and social networking and related issues. 
Please visit the mini-track website at http://www.virtual-community.org

Virtual communities and social networking based on message boards, instant 
messaging, user groups, and blogs have emerged as high activity domains on 
the Internet and more and more in the realm of mobile devices and mobile 
internet usage. Virtual communities and social networks are designed for a 
variety of purposes, ranging from Communities of Interest, Communities of 
Relationship (e.g., Facebook), Gaming Communities (e.g., in Wolrd of 
Warcraft, Second Life), and Communities of Transaction to Peer-to-Peer 
Communities or Mobile Communities. Web 2.0 mechanisms are also boosting 
the development of virtual communities and the role of user-generated 
content within virtual communities. The significance of these communities 
is evident by the impact they have on information generation and 
transmission, and socialization. For example, today, blogs are quickly 
becoming a primary source of information in a variety of domains. The 
dynamic and interactive nature of these forums makes them very attractive 
for users and operators. An additional value offered by many of these 
communities is their ability to support socialization and offer an 
identity for the participants. While most virtual communities share these 
characteristics, it is also important to recognize that virtual 
communities are not homogeneous; they differ significantly based on the 
domain, purpose and benefits. Well-organized communities even expand their 
power across various channels and into the Offline world.

Within the field of information systems researchers are interested in 
studying interaction patterns, social structures and interactions, 
transaction processes, management aspects, business models, and design 
aspects of information systems and services for virtual communities. 
Community members interact via digital media and contribute value in the 
form of content, reviews, and recommendations. Related issues are trust, 
network effects, transaction costs and the design of services as well as 
the generation of innovations. "Wisdom of Crowds", "Collective 
Intelligence" and "Crowdsourcing" are important new terms describing 
mechanisms around user-generated content in virtual communities and social 
networks.

This mini-track welcomes empirical, conceptual, and theoretical work. 
Despite the increasing popularity of virtual communities and social 
networking, major questions relating to virtual communities and social 
networking remain largely unexplored. 


We solicit submissions of papers on all aspects of virtual communities. 
Possible topics include (but are not limited to):
    * Social, political and economic impact of virtual communities
    * User-generated content and customer collaboration in virtual 
communities
    * Management and organizational behaviour of communities
    * Innovation generation and virtual communities (e.g., wisdom of 
crowds, collective intelligence)
    * Virtual communities and mobile devices
    * Case studies and empirical studies, best practices, and lessons 
learned
    * Motivation of participants in virtual communities
    * Benefits of participation in and competition among virtual 
communities
    * Information dispersion in virtual communities
    * Typologies and taxonomies of virtual communities
    * Evolution of and innovation in virtual communities
    * Community models, platforms, services, and interactions, 
multi-channel communities
    * Community-related business models

This mini-track builds on the success of the preceding AMCIS mini-track on 
virtual communities. During the last ten years we have been gathering a 
community of researchers who are interested in the field of virtual 
communities and related issues. Please visit the mini-track website at 
http://www.virtual-community.org for more information and accepted papers 
of previous years.


Important Dates
* February 17, 2011: Submission deadline.
* March 24, 2011: Authors notified of paper acceptance decision.
* April 21, 2011: Camera-Ready papers due. 


Mini-Track Chair Information

* Prof. Dr. Jan Marco Leimeister (Primary Contact)
Information Systems, Universität Kassel
leimeister@uni-kassel.de

* Prof. Dr. Ulrike Lechner
Information Systems, Universität der Bundeswehr München
ulrike.lechner@unibw.de

* Christoph Riedl, M.Sc.
Information Systems, Technische Universität München
riedlc@in.tum.de

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