I got an email from Shelly Farnham announcing a Social Computing Symposium, sponsored by Microsoft Research which will be held at Redmond Town Center on April 25-26. Below is an excerpt from the announcement

In the spring of 2004 a small two-day Social Computing Symposium, sponsored by Microsoft Research, brought together researchers, builders of social software systems, and influential commentators on the social technology scene...A second symposium at Microsoft Research is planned for April 25th-26th, 2005...

If you are interested in attending the symposium, please send a brief, 300-500 word position paper. The symposium is limited to 75 people, and participants will be selected on the basis of submitted position papers.

Position papers should not be narrowly focused on either academic study or industry practice. Rather, submissions should do one or more of the following: address theoretical and methodological issues in the design and development of social computing technologies; reflect on concrete experiences with mobile and online settings; offer glimpses of novel systems; discuss current and evolving practices; offer views as to where research is needed.

We are particularly interested in position papers that explore any of the following areas. However, given the symposium’s focus on new innovation in social technologies, we are open to other topics as well.

a) The digitization of identity and social networks.

b) Proliferation and use of social metadata.

c) Mobile, ubiquitous social technologies changing the way we socialize.

d) Micropublishing of personal content (e.g. blogs), and the democratization of information exchange and knowledge development.

e) Social software on the global scale: the impact of cross-cultural differences in experiences of identity and community.

Please send your symposium applications to scspaper@microsoft.com by February 28th.

I would like to attend which means I have to cough up a position paper. I have 3 ideas for position papers; (i) Harnessing Latent Social Networks: Building a Better Blogroll with XFN and FOAF, (ii) Blurring the Edges of Online Communication Forms by Integrating Email, Blogging and Instant Messaging or (iii) Can Folksonomies Scale to Meet the Challenges of the Global Web?

So far I've shared this ideas with one person and he thought the first idea was the best. I assume some of the readers of my blog will be at this symposium. What would you guys like to get a presentation or panel discussion on?