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Social Software Beyondthe Desktop – Ambient Awarenessand Ubiquitous Activity StreamingSocial Software jenseits des Desktops – Ambient Awareness und Ubiquitous ActivityStreaming

Florian Ott, Michael Koch, Bundeswehr University Munich, Neubiberg

Summary Our daily work in the information society re-lies on creating, editing and collecting different informationobjects. Without additional presentation mechanisms theseactivities of particular knowledge workers remain hidden inthe underlying IT systems. The resulting lack of awarenesscan lead to inefficient coordination as well as to the du-plication of work in the worst case. Activity streams fromSocial Software offer new ways to increase the awareness,but the desktop-based user interfaces in typical organizationalsettings currently only utilize a small portion of their full socio-technical potential. In this paper we present CommunityMirrorsas one potential solution to this problem. ��� Zusam-menfassung Unser Arbeitsalltag in der Informationsge-

sellschaft basiert auf dem Erstellen, Bearbeiten oder Kom-binieren verschiedener Informationsobjekte. Ohne zusätzlichePräsentationsmechanismen bleiben diese Aktivitäten einzel-ner Wissensarbeiter jedoch meist in den zugrundeliegendenIT-Systemen verborgen. Die daraus resultierende fehlendeAwareness kann zu ineffizienter Koordination und schlimmsten-falls zu unnötiger Doppelarbeit führen. Social Software bie-tet durch Activity Streaming neue Ansätze zur Steigerungder Awareness, jedoch nutzen desktop-basierte Benutzer-schnittstellen nur einen gringen Teil dieses sozio-technischenPotenzials. Im vorliegenden Beitrag stellen wir Communi-tyMirrors als einen Lösungsansatz für diese Problematikvor.

Keywords H.5.2 [Information Systems: Information Interfaces and Presentation: User Interfaces]; H.3 [Information Systems:Information Storage and Retrieval]; Social Software, Awareness, Activity Streams, Ubiquitous Natural User Interfaces,CommunityMirrors ��� Schlagwörter Social Software, Awareness, Aktivitätsströme, Ubiquitäre Benutzungsschnittstellen,CommunityMirrors

1 IntroductionMore than ever our daily work in the information societyrelies on creating, searching and combining informationobjects like documents, emails or similar digital content.

1.1 Availability and Visibility of InformationWhile in the recent past, time and location independentaccess to information were main challenges (e. g. [1]),the general availability of information is not a problem

anymore. Information is available in the Internet andin many different data repositories in the organizationalcontext.

Due to the ongoing growth of the information pool,one main challenge for efficient knowledge work isfinding individually relevant content. In the differententerprise data silos pieces of information are not suf-ficiently visible until they are pro-actively viewed orretrieved.

it – Information Technology 54 (2012) 5 / DOI 10.1524/itit.2012.0687 © Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag 243

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Many tasks in knowledge work require coordinationwith other people, which makes awareness about the workof others very important. In current IT systems, however,still most of the interactions with information objects(like edits, comments or other refinements) are hiddenaway from the eyes of (other) knowledge workers.

1.2 Social Media and User Generated ContentThe Web 2.0 has meanwhile arrived in organizations [2].Internal Social Networking Services (SNS), microblog-ging platforms or enterprise wikis have successfullyimplemented the paradigms known from the Internetat the workplace. Enterprise Social Software increases thepossibility to participate which leads to more user gener-ated content. Compared to former cooperation systemsSocial Software has one main difference: it seriously fo-cuses on human activities around information objectsand visualizes them in a person-centric context insteadof “only” supporting the digital storage and retrieval ofinsulated data entities [3].1

This leads to the following two impacts on the problemof missing visibility of enterprise information:1. With the use of Social Software activities of other peo-

ple become more present and visible in IT systems.2. Content is not only anonymous “data” anymore, but

becomes visibly interconnected to the people involvedin its creation and refinements.2

More than ancient “knowledge management systems” So-cial Software supports knowledge workers by offeringperson-centric communication, coordination and co-operation services [4]. By making individual activitiesmore visual for other people it contributes to trans-parency and awareness as well as to the appreciation manyknowledge worker expect for their “participation” [2].

1.3 Missing Social Interfaces for Social SoftwareMost of the daily knowledge work typically still takesplace at single user desktop workplaces, only with a PCand without direct inter-human interaction.

Desktop workplaces with their physical restrictionscurrently constrain the development of the full poten-tial of the “social” software paradigm. There are manysituations during a typical knowledge workers’ day whereadditional information about the activities of others couldbe helpful beyond the own desktop. These range fromubiquitous “discovery” situations (e. g. becoming awarethat someone has uploaded a new presentation on aninteresting topic while walking to the cafeteria) overubiquitous scenarios supporting individual motivation

1 Although individual activities have already been considered an im-portant influencing factor for workspace awareness in earlier CSCWresearch (e. g. [33].), real Activity Streams have not been present untilthe recent success of Social Software.2 Of course, links to people have already been available e. g. as fileattributes in classic data-centric IT systems / groupware (e. g. [34].),but there has not been any dedicated focus on people in form ofactivity streams or similar.

(e. g. seeing positive comments on own activities whilewaiting for the elevator) to real ubiquitous collaborationprocesses (e. g. using information in synchronous teammeetings). Exactly these (by definition) “social” use casesfor interacting with activity streams do still lack respectiveuser interfaces that allow semi-public multi-user interac-tion beyond desktops and personal mobile devices.

1.4 New User Interface Hardwareand the Blank Screen Phenomenon

With the availability of portable and mobile devices wehave meanwhile arrived in the era of ubiquitous comput-ing like proposed by Mark Weiser thirty years ago [5].Different new user interfaces – first and foremost mobilesand tablets – have found their way into organizationalsettings3. Based on the steadily falling prices of LCDhardware [6] many companies have acquired large, partlyinteractive screens. These are typically installed at varioussemi-public places like lobbies, coffee corners or con-ference rooms within companies. In contrast to mobileand tablet devices, the stationary multitouch systems arecurrently rather used as gadgets than being deployed forhelpful business scenarios. In most of the cases the devicesare either turned off or show some static presentation.The potential of using these (touch) screens for real busi-ness objectives so remains unexploited [7].

To summarize the so far described developments see:1. Different data-centric enterprise information systems

storing valuable information objects without makingthem visible to knowledge workers and without di-rectly interconnecting them.

2. Social Software making activities of knowledge workersaround different information objects more visible inform of person-centric activity streams.

3. A demand for more “social” user interfaces beyondclassic desktop workplaces supporting ad-hoc infor-mation discovery and knowledge sharing in moresocial settings.

4. The general availability of new (multitouch) hard-ware at different semi-public places in organizations,but without use cases to support business objectives(“blank screen phenomenon”).

2 Potentials of Ubiquitous Activity StreamsBeyond Desktops

Based on the developments described in the previous sec-tion we have created the idea of “CommunityMirrorsTM”as large interactive screens extending the benefits of SocialSoftware for knowledge work beyond the physical barriersof single user desktops. CommunityMirrors are periph-erally recognizable “information radiators” [8] that show“info particles” from existing enterprise IT systems. The

3 Because of the direct interaction without mediating devices thatallows “walk-up-and-use” without any learning phase these new de-vices are often called “Natural User Interfaces” (NUI) compared toGraphical User Interfaces (GUI) or Command Line Interfaces (CLI);see e. g. [35]

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screens can be installed in different semi-public places,like e. g. beside the elevator, in the coffee corner or othersocial areas where people come together.

As amendments to classic desktops (not replace-ments!) the interfaces can help to create visibility aboutwhat is going on in the organization (awareness) andfacilitate the “accidental” discovery of relevant informa-tion without having to explicitly look for it (serendipity).The re-integration of information objects into their so-cial surrounding enables people to directly talk aboutthe discovered information without computer mediation.Thereby, the additional interfaces can help to efficientlygenerate a better “common ground” [9] for successfulcollaboration.

In this section we present some general potentials ofCommunityMirrors for Social Software. These successfactors have been collected in evaluations of Communi-tyMirror prototypes over the last three years in differentorganization settings by observations and user feedback(e. g. [10–13]).

2.1 Information out-of-the-box and SerendipityBased on the four assumptions stated in the introduction,the principle of success for all following concepts is totake the following three things “out-of-the-box”:1. Information objects out of the different “hidden” data

silos where they are stored.2. Knowledge workers out of their restricted desktop-

based working environment.3. Interconnections between the virtual world of (1) and

the real world of (2) out of activity streams from SocialSoftware.

In general, this means first of all opening up the differentdata silos and taking existing valuable information objectsout of their “box” as shown in Fig. 1.

The next step is to use personal profiles of “natural”human beings as well as user-generated folksonomies(e. g. from Social Software) as linking elements betweenthe different information objects. In contrast to data-centric approaches known e. g. from the Semantic Web,this has the benefit that these profiles have a physicalreal-life representation. They can be used for better in-terconnecting the virtual and the real “knowledge space”and thereby contribute to better socio-technical integra-

Figure 1 Taking information objects “out of the box”.

Figure 2 Linking virtual information objects with “natural” users.

Figure 3 Collaborative discovery of information spaces.

tion of the digital information objects into their corporatesurroundings as shown in Fig. 2.

Of course the interlinking itself is not sufficient to gen-erate the desired awareness for knowledge workers aboutwhat is happening in the enterprise information space.Therefore, the generated “knowledge graphs” from Fig. 2need to be presented somehow. To avoid distractionfrom desktop work on the one hand, and to simultan-eously generate meaningful use cases for the often alreadyexisting hardware this can happen on additional largesemi-public interfaces where people can come togetherand jointly browse in the information space as picturedin Fig. 3.

In a nutshell this is what we call the “out-of-the-box” effect. Of course this cannot be done for all kindof data sources in equal manner. The approach canbe especially helpful for information objects that arenot searched deliberately, but profit a lot from beingdisplayed and consumed peripherally, like e. g. activitystreams and other awareness information. The overallconcept of the out-of-the-box effect is also known as“serendipity” [14; 15], which in general means findinginformation accidentally without having to look for itexplicitly.

2.2 Inter-human Communicationand Social Knowledge Sharing

Another challenge within the IT support for knowledgeintensive collaboration processes is the non-sufficientsocio-technical integration. Knowledge sharing is a socialprocess in which people share information in networksand communities. IT support currently causes original

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Figure 4 Socio-technically integrated user interfaces.

inter-human communication to be artificially digitalizedby using computer systems. This is exactly what manyorganizations are facing with community platforms andSNS at the moment: instead of walking to the next officeand talking to each other (which can be a very efficientprocess for knowledge sharing and the generation of newideas [16]), even office neighbors tend to use digital com-munication [17].

From this perspective the following things are import-ant for the socio-technical integration of collaborativeknowledge processes:1. Open physical spaces where people can come together

and talk to each other willing to share their individualknowledge.

2. Semi-public user interfaces in these natural opencollaboration spaces facilitating the access to relevantenterprise data sources.

3. Visualizations linking the virtual and the (real) phys-ical world and allow “ice breaking” between peoplestanding in front of the screens to motivate them forad-hoc knowledge sharing.

4. New interaction paradigms that enable real “social”multi-user interactions for joint information discov-ery and joyful collaborative browsing in informationspaces.

Figure 4 summarizes these key success factors in formof a schematic overview with the integrated data sourcesof the left, the additional ubiquitous user interfaces aslinking element between computers and humans in themiddle as well as the real-life networks where the inter-human communication and knowledge sharing take placeon the right.

2.3 Information Radiators for Appreciationand Motivation

The concept of awareness as “an understanding of the ac-tivities of others, which provides a context for your ownactivities” [18] is meanwhile widely spread in cooperationsystems. Increased awareness facilitates the digital sup-ported establishment of a “common ground” [9] that isnecessary for meaningful conversations and relationships.Thereby, awareness information is one important pre-requisite for successful collaborative knowledge processes

(e. g. [16; 19; 20]). The value of awareness can be seen inlowering coordination costs by enabling implicit coor-dination, and in supporting different forms of intrinsicmotivation [21]. This “appreciation through awareness”is especially important for knowledge work as the incite-ment of many people relies on their contribution beingseen and recognized.

By the extension of Social Software interfaces beyondthe desktop this potential can be extended to social situa-tions allowing not only individuals to separately consumeawareness information, but also groups of people tojointly watch and talk about activities of others. Thisin turn can help to foster “mutual knowledge” [22; 23]through “consequential communication”4.

Awareness information with their rather short half-lifeperiod profit a lot from being consumable peripher-ally, e. g. while walking from one office to another orwhile standing around talking with others during thecoffee break. Based on this proactive distribution ofawareness information as “info particles” we also speakof CommunityMirrors as “information radiators”. Theterm “information radiator” has first been coined byCockburn for frequently updated posters showing thecurrent state in software development processes in a hightraffic hallway.5 The radiators provide pieces of informa-tion or in other words concrete visual representationsof information objects stored in the underlying datasources in a way that makes them consumable periph-erally. In contrast to most other IT systems which only“provide” information after a certain user interaction(e. g. a search) information radiators proactively dis-tribute their “info particles” independently from any userin order to generate appreciation for the contributors andthereby motivate them for further participation and shar-ing.

3 CommunityMirrors for Social SoftwareThe name “CommunityMirrors” reflects the fact thatthe ubiquitous interface “mirrors” virtual activities of ITsystems in physical spaces and thereby blends betweendigital and non-digital contexts. The core principle ofCommunityMirrors is the re-use of existing enterpriseinformation systems without generating another data silo.Their most important “use case” is the proactive distri-bution of existing information objects as omni-presentinfo particles in semi-public spaces like e. g. hallways orin social areas. CommunityMirrors give employees thechance to recognize valuable information while passingby (e. g. on their way to their desk in the morning, dur-ing the coffee break, or while waiting for the elevator).If someone has been attracted by individually relevant

4 “In addition to explicit communication, people also pick up con-siderable information that is unintentionally ‘given off’ by others asthey go about their activities. This is called consequential communi-cation [. . .].” [36], p. 99.5 Cockburn described an information radiator simply as “informationin a place where passersby can see it.” [37], p. 114.

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information, he can directly use the touch-based inter-face to dive deeper into the information space. Furtherinformation about CommunityMirrors can be found e. g.in [10–13; 24; 25]).

CommunityMirrors are based on the co-called Com-munityMirror Framework (CMF), a flexible toolkit thathelps to create specific CommunityMirror applicationsfor different deployment scenarios. The concept has beenimplemented in various settings during the last threeyears (e. g. [26; 27]) and is currently been introduced ina large company.

All of the potentials and requirements described be-fore have their origin in observations from these settings.Already conducted evaluations have confirmed that theadditional interfaces can indeed help to improve theawareness and participation in the respective commu-nities (e. g. [28]).

In the following section we will focus on recentchanges of the CMF that help to provide ambient aware-ness and ubiquitous activity streaming for Social Softwarebeyond classic desktop workplaces.

3.1 CommunityMashup as new TechnicalFoundation

While integrating different Social Software tools we dis-covered that the existing interfaces of the CMF wouldnot be sufficient to fulfill the requirements described inSects. 1 and 2. Although CommunityMirrors were al-ready able to import information from databases, CSVor XML files and RSS feeds as well as Twitter and cer-tain enterprise wikis, most of the currently establishedSocial Software in organizational contexts uses own APImechanisms as interfaces. Furthermore, the interlinkingbetween social profiles and other existing enterprise datasources was not easily possible with the existing integra-tion mechanisms.

To gain more flexibility and include additional aggre-gation, unification and filtering options for the differententerprise data sources we developed the Community-Mashup, a flexible person-centric data mashup basedon a model-driven development approach [29; 30]. TheCommunityMashup as new technical foundation ofCommunityMirrors provides the following benefits forSocial Software beyond desktops:1. Unified access from stationary as well as from mo-

bile clients to person-centric activity streams that havebeen aggregated from different data sources.

2. Automatic interconnection of different info particlesbased on tagging/folksonomies.

3. High-level API with different search and filtering func-tions.

4. Additional caching for offline deployments.5. Flexible semi-automatic reactions to frequent API

changes in the source systems based on the usedmodel-driven development approach.

By integrating the CommunityMashup with the CMF inthe course of deploying interfaces for Social Software be-

Figure 5 Different CommunityMirror installations in action.

yond the desktop the CommunityMirror concept has be-come even more lightweight and flexible as it was before.

3.2 From Awareness to Engagementand Collaboration

Based on our observations we developed a social in-teraction model for ubiquitous Natural User Interfacesin organizational contexts, which is visualized in Fig. 6.The theory of the interaction zones is mainly derivedfrom [31; 32] and was adapted to the given context. Be-side a semi-public Interaction Zone as well as potentiallyavailable Private Zones we identified three interestingareas:1. The Communication Zone, in which users actively

monitor other people or talk to them while interactingwith the system.

2. The Notification Zone, in which users’ attention canquickly be caught by certain attractors on the screen.

3. The Ambient Zone, which mainly supports thesubmission of peripherally recognizable awareness in-formation (“information radiation”).

The different zones distinguish themselves especially bydifferent levels of attention the respective users pay tothe application. This can be visualized with regard to theview direction of the corresponding users as shown inFig. 7.

Figure 6 Different interaction zones of CommunityMirrors.

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Figure 7 View directions of the different users in the social surrounding.

With the use of Social Software as additional datasource for CommunityMirrors we are confronted withanother level of intensity: the intensity of the user in-teraction with the Activity Stream. In Social Networksthere are typically certain power users with a very strongpresence that frequently comment on posts (domina-tors). In contrast to that, there are many users that donot interact at all and just watch what is happening inthe stream (observers). This spectrum is also valid forsemi-public interaction with Social Software beyond thedesktop. Based on our evaluations we differentiate thefollowing interaction levels beside the ground level “(0)Not Involved”:

(1) Awareness: The first level; users of this level are inmost cases just passing by in the ambient or notificationzone in Fig. 6. This level is also very present in the com-munication zone. Here even twice, once as awareness ofwhat is shown on the screen and once as awareness ofwhat other users are talking about while using the system.Users that have reached this first level can be attractedvery easily to “higher” interaction levels when they seesomething they are interested in personally.

(2) Discovery: The second interaction level is reachedas soon as a user becomes somehow active in the interac-tion zone of Fig. 6, e. g. he wants to display more detailsabout a seen info particle. The typical behavior in thislevel is browsing around for a while in the informationspace. The duration of this discovery phase depends verymuch on whether the users can easily find more infor-mation that he is personally interested in as well as of hispersonal involvement in the information he sees.

(3) Engagement: This third level is very specific forSocial Software and depends much on the personal iden-tification of the user with the content he has discovered.Depending on the individual involvement he will showhis appreciation for some of the displayed info particles.The best-known mechanism Social Software offers forthat is the Like-Button known from facebook. But alsoother engagement mechanisms like e. g. a star rankingsare accepted.

(4) Collaboration: This last and highest interactionlevel is reached as soon as a user decides not only toconsume information or engage for it, but to really con-

tribute to the joint information space. The easiest way ofdoing that is leaving a comment to a certain info par-ticle.

With the use of CommunityMirrors for Social Soft-ware especially engagement and simple ways of col-laboration become more important. By implementingthese mechanisms in the user interface and especiallyby transferring the results back to the source systemsCommunityMirrors can help to foster participation andgenerate more appreciation for contributors. One mainchallenge for the interaction levels 3 and 4 is the requiredidentification of the respective user. This is quite simplein single-user desktop scenarios, but at least somehowchallenging in the semi-public multi-user touchscreensetting. Here, the input of username and password whileuser users are watching is definitely not desirable. Weare currently experimenting with different technical ap-proaches together with industry partners to find bettersolutions for identification as well as for authentication.Methods under investigation range from RFID detectionover capacitive barcode stickers to face detection as wellas combinations of the different methods for differentinteraction levels.

4 Conclusion and Future VisionsCommunityMirrors as ubiquitous Natural User Inter-faces have evolved over the last years from simple researchprototypes that have been built for specific evaluationpurposes and have been restricted to certain sets of datasources to universally deployable interfaces for SocialSoftware beyond the desktop. One of the most importantsteps in this development process was the replacementof the so-far used internal data model in the CMF bythe recently developed CommunityMashup, a flexibleand person-centric data integration solution. With theuse of the CommunityMashup different data sourcescan be aggregated, filtered and provided as a unifiedperson-centric activity stream that can help to supportknowledge-intensive collaboration processes by increas-ing awareness and appreciation.

Figure 8 Quo vadis – Natural Open Collaboration Spaces (NOCS).

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We are currently working with different designers andindustry partners to create more adequate multi-user vi-sualizations and interaction paradigms that especially fitfor peripherally recognizable activity streams. In additionto that we are also working with architects on the betterintegration of the interface hardware into the organiza-tional context.

By that, we hope to support a transition for the cor-porate collaboration space in general. Instead of keepingthe existing often not sufficiently frequented aseptic con-ference rooms that many organizations currently have,we propose to use this space for building Natural OpenCollaboration Spaces (NOCS) like shown in Fig. 8. Inthese NOCS people can come together for socializingand networking as well as for other joint activities, likee. g. brainstorming or simply for talking around a cupof coffee. Simultaneously to all of these activities theknowledge workers can collaboratively browse throughthe information space by using different CommunityMir-ror installations.

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[21] J. Schlichter, M. Koch, and M. Burger, “Workspace Awareness forDistributed Teams,” in Coordination Technology for CollaborativeApplications, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 1364,vol. 1364, W. Conen and G. Neumann, Eds. Berlin, Heidelberg:Springer, 1998, pp. 199–218.

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Behaviour, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 85–102, Mar. 1984.[24] M. Koch and K. Möslein, “Community Mirrors for Supporting

Corporate Innovation and Motivation,” in Proceedings of the 14thEuropean Conference on Information Systems (ECIS’06), 2006.

[25] F. Ott, M. Koch, and A. Richter, “CommunityMirrorsTM – UsingPublic Shared Displays to Move Information ‘out of the box’,”in Competence Management for Open Innovation, J. Hafkesbrink,U. H. Hoppe, and J. Schlichter, Eds. Lohmar, Köln: EUL Verlag,2010, pp. 141–169.

[26] M. Koch, G. Klein, and A. B. Cabrera, “,,MeetingMirror” –Matchmaking- Unterstützung für Community-Treffen,” in Men-sch & Computer 2004: Allgegenwärtige Interaktion, München:Oldenbourg Verlag, 2004, pp. 317–318.

[27] M. Koch and F. Ott, “Idea Mirrors – Einsatz großer Wand-bildschirme zur Förderung diskontinuierlicher Innovation inder Softwarebranche,” in Virtuelle Organisation und Neue Me-dien 2008: Workshop Gemeinschaften in Neuen Medien, 2008,pp. 241–252.

[28] I. Blohm, F. Ott, M. Huber, M. Rieger, F. Glatz, M. Koch, J.-M. Leimeister, and H. Krcmar, “Extending Open InnovationPlatforms into the Real World – Using Large Displays in PublicSpaces,” in Proceedings of the 10th European Academy of Manage-ment (EURAM), 2010, vol. 2010.

[29] P. Lachenmaier and F. Ott, “Building a Person-Centric MashupSystem – CommunityMashup: A Service Oriented Approach,” inProceedings of the 3rd Central-European Workshop on Services andtheir Composition (ZEUS’2011), 2011, pp. 122–129.

[30] P. Lachenmaier, F. Ott, and M. Koch, “Model-driven Devel-opment of a Person-centric Mashup for Social Software,”Social Network Analysis and Mining, vol. online fir, pp. 1–15,2012.

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Received: May 15, 2012

Preview on issue 6/2012

The topic of our next issue will be “Cyber Physical Systems (Part 1)” (Editor: M. Broy) and it willcontain the following articles:

• A. Herkersdorf et al.: Multicore Enablement for Automotive Cyber Physical Systems

• J. Sztipanovits: Cyber Physical Systems – Convergence of Physical and InformationSciences

• O. Gebauer et al.: Autonomously driving trains on open tracksconcepts, systemarchitecture and implementation aspects

Florian Ott is researcher at the Cooperation Sys-tems Center Munich (CSCM) and technical leadof the CommunityMirors project. After havinggraduated in Computer Science and BusinessManagement in a parallel double major, his re-searchfocuses on new multitouch multi-user in-teraction paradigms for wall-sized screens as wellas the suitability of these technologies for buildingsocio-technically integrated ubiquitous NaturalUser Interfaces for Social Software.

Address: Universität der Bundeswehr München,Fakultät für Informatik, Werner-Heisenberg-Weg 39, D-85577 Neubiberg,e-mail: florian.ott@unibw.de

Prof. Dr. Michael Koch is full professor for ap-plied informatics at Bundeswehr University Mu-nich where he is leading the Cooperation SystemsCenter Munich (CSCM). His work is about shap-ing cooperation systems, i. e. bringing collabora-tion technology to use in teams, communities andnetworks. He is member of the boards of the spe-cial interest areas on Human Computer Interac-tion and Information Systems in the Gesellschaftfür Informatik (GI).

Address: Universität der Bundeswehr München,Fakultät für Informatik, Werner-Heisenberg-Weg 39, D-85577 Neubiberg,e-mail: michael.koch@unibw.de

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