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