Collocated Interaction: Supported Networking for Collaboration

Academic networking is usually a “same time, same place” activity and its role in forming effective collaborations makes it a prime candidate for enhancement by collocated interaction technology. Our work on research strategy generation has involved us in facilitating many meetings of academic and industry leaders. We have developed successful meeting tools for including attendees in the creation of meeting agendas through remote idea submission and grouping before meetings. We have recently built upon this work by adding structured networking sessions to the meetings. A new prototype tool allows the sessions to be visualized as attendees report their networking conversations. The visualization, when projected during a meeting, can motivate further networking through group awareness and provides an interactive record of the event.