Hewitt@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Carl Hewitt) (08/28/86)
Welcome to COIS-86! The Conference on Office Information Systems (COIS) is an interdisciplinary research-oriented conference. The papers prsented here draw on contributions from information system technologies as well as from insights of the social sciences. COIS is sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Office Information Systems (SIGOIS). SIGOIS has recently changed it's name from SIGOA to reflect the emphasis on research in our activities parallel nature of the conference, the special interest group, and of the journal Transactions on Office Information Systems (TOOIS). Clearly, office automation is not the best banner for what we do as a field because our primary purpose is not to ``automate'' office work. Instead our interests lie in understanding the design, implementation, and deployment of office information systems in the broad sense of including people, computing equipment, telecommunications, and paper handling within the system boundaries. Thus, analysis and understanding of office information systems is fundamentally interdisciplinary depending as it does on the fields of anthropology, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science, economics, management science, psychology, and sociology. As you look through the COIS-86 conference record and the conference issue of TOOIS, you will find papers that draw upon results from the social sciences as well as from advanced technologies. There are papers on topics ranging from the analysis of large organizations and office ethnography to the design of intelligent systems and advanced computational models. As demonstrated by the diversity and quality of the papers, we feel that this is an exciting time in an important field. We hope that our enthusiasm is contagious and that you find the conference both enjoyable and informative. Carl E. Hewitt, General Chair Stanley B. Zdonik, Program Chair Monday, October 6, 1986 9:00 - 9:15 am Welcome / Opening remarks 9:15 - 10:15 am Keynote speaker (J.C.R. Licklider) 10:15 - 10:30 Coffee 10:30 - 12:00 Session I Panel: Methods / Ethnography Session chair: Professor Margrethe Olson 12:00 - 1:00 pm Lunch 1:00 - 2:30 pm Session II Models of the Distributed Office Session chair: Dr. Louis Pouzin ``Supporting Distributed Office Problem Solving in Organiza- tions'' Carson C. Woo and Frederick H. Lochovsky University of Toronto ``Envoys in Electronic Mail Systems'' Eric Gold Tektronix, Inc. ``Access to Inter-Organization Computer Networks'' Deborah Estrin University of Southern California 2:30 - 2:45 pm Coffee 2:45 - 4:15 pm Session III Panel: Cooperation vs. Automation Session chair: Dr. James H. Bair 6:00 - 8:00 pm Dinner Tuesday, October 7, 1986 9:00 - 10:15 am Session IV Organizational Analysis: Due Process Session chair: Ms. Leslie Schneider ``On the Malleability of People and Computers: A Focused Approach to Office Ethnography'' John Law and John Whittaker University of Keele ``The Costs of Personal Computing in a Complex Organization: A Comparative Study'' Sonia Nayle and Walt Scacchi University of Southern California ``Mapping Office Work to Office Technology'' William C. Sasso and Sung K. Kim New York University 10:15 - 10:30 am Coffee 10:30 - 11:45 am Session V Panel: Future Directions of Office Technology (KB, DB, ...) Session chair: Prof. Dionysis Tsichritzis 12:00 - 1:00 Lunch 1:00 - 2:30 pm Session VI Interfaces: Database Session chair: Dr. Fanya Montalvo ``Graphical Database Browsing'' Michael Caplinger Bell Communications Research ``A Visual Interface for a Database with Version Management'' Jay W. Davison and Stanley B. Zdonik AT&T Bell Laboratories/Brown University 2:30 - 2:45 pm Coffee 2:45 - 4:15 pm Session VII Interfaces Session chair: Dr. Robert Rosin ``Adaptive Interface Design: A Symmetric Model and a Knowledge- Based Implementation'' Sherman W. Tyler and Siegfried Treu University of Pittsburgh ``Automating Review of Forms for International Trade Transac- tions: A Natural Language Processing Approach'' V. Dhar and P. Ranganathan New York University 4:30 - 5:30 pm Bus ride to Newport 5:30 - 6:30 pm Cocktails 6:30 - 8:00 Dinner 8:00 - 9:00 Distinguished Lecturer 9:00 - 10:00 Return to Providence Wednesday, October 8, 1986 9:00 - 10:15 am Session VIII Panel: AI in the Office Session chair: Dr. Gerald Barber 10:15 - 10:30 am Coffee 10:30 - 12:00 am Session IX Organizational Analysis: Organizational Ecology Session Chair: Dr. Heinz K. Klein ``Modelling Due Process in the Workplace'' Elihu M. Gerson and Susan Leigh Star Tremont Research Institute ``An Empirical Study of the Integration of Computing into Routine Work'' Les Gasser University of Southern California ``Offices Are Open Systems'' Carl Hewitt MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory 12:00 - 1:00 Lunch 1:00 - 2:30 pm Session X Advanced Computational Models Session chair: Mr. Peter de Jong ``Handling Shared Resources in a Temporal Data Base Management System'' Thomas L. Dean Brown University ``Language Constructs for Programming by Example'' Robert V. Rubin Brown University ``Providing Intelligent Assistance in Distributed Office Environ- ments'' Sergei Nirenburg and Victor Lesser Colgate University/University of Massachusetts