The social (open) workspace

Social networking promises individuals new dimensions of freedom to interact, associate, and give expression to their talents. Recently, systems such as Mechanical Turk have started to facilitate self-organizing collaboration on work-related tasks. Such developments raise interesting questions. Is it possible to create (and sustain) businesses that do not have traditional, formal structure - without traditional "employees"? Can we find and organize (and optimize) talent on the web for task-oriented work - spontaneously and efficiently? How do people relate to one another in possibly evanescent workgroups? One aspect of the challenge in the Social Workspace is understanding and modeling the user behavior and the economic basis for creating, preserving, and exchanging value in the marketplace when workgroup identity, orientations to property, recruiting and managing appropriate talent are not organized under traditional company structures. Another aspect is the technology needed to support virtual organizations and work. The panel will discuss trends in social work and the evolving (scientific) basis of our understanding of new models of workers and organizations.