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                      Workshop on Storytelling in
                   Collaborative Virtual Environments

                       Workshop at the ACM CVE2002
                           30 September 2002
                              Bonn, Germany
            http://www.cve2002.org/cve2002-storytelling.html

                         Call for Participation

Description

Virtual storytelling concepts provide opportunities to engage the users
in activities in virtual environments and to enhance the content
presented through the environment. This workshop will focus on the
requirements, generation and effects of storytelling in CVE's. We will
examine scenarios for storytelling, consider design issues and methods
for the generation of narratives, and discuss the impact of storytelling
on the interaction in virtual environments.


Themes

Themes may  include "What makes a good story - content vs. technology
capability", "Design issues in collaborative storytelling", and
"Supporting the emergent story-who's story is it anyway?" Position
papers should address one of the following topics:

   * Which kinds of activities have been proven useful for
     representation in collaborative storytelling?
   * How do we generate stories based on activities in shared spaces?
   * How do we develop a storyline? What makes a 'good' story?
   * Story development by characters vs. story development by script?
   * What are the design issues in collaborative storytelling?
   * How do we interact with narratives in shared environments? What is
     the role of narrative?
   * Does all the storytelling have to take place within the environment
     in a CVE?

Organisation

We will conduct three (very interactive) panel presentations  and small
and large group discussion sessions, followed by a wrap-up discussion
session on future directions. Each panel will consist of 5-6 short talks
given by a subset of workshop attendees, and followed by intensive
discussion by the entire group. Each attendee will give a brief
(refereed) talk of one of the panels and participate in the audience
discussion for the other two panels.  Speakers on the panels will
present existing collaborative storytelling applications and discuss
requirements to combine collaborative activities with storytelling.

The workshop will close with a group discussion session chaired by the
organizers, in which we will focus on highlights and interconnections
between the three panels. The results will be prepared as a poster for
the conference poster session. We plan to publish a summary of the
workshop and selected position papers in the SIGGROUP bulletin.

Participation

Workshop participants are requested to submit a 2-4-page position paper
that addresses the topic of the workshop. The workshop participants will
be selected based on these position papers. Acceptance of applications
will be based on the quality of the work proposed for presentation and
its relevance to the workshop. Participants will be limited to 20-25
people.

Participants will have opportunities before arriving to the workshop to
get to know each other, and become familiar with the topics being
presented. We plan to maximize interpersonal interactions by suggesting
that workshop participants have lunch and dinner together.

Send submissions to: [log in to unmask]


Important Dates

  6  September 2002  :  Position Paper Submission Deadline
15  September 2002  :  Notification of Acceptance
30  September 2002  :  Workshop on Storytelling in CVE's


Workshop Organizers

Léonie Schäfer, Fraunhofer Institute FIT, Germany
Dr. Elaine Raybourn, Sandia National Laboratories, USA
Amanda Oldroyd, BTexact Technologies, UK
Dr. Kurt Fendt, MIT Comparative Media Studies, USA


Contact

Léonie Schäfer
Fraunhofer FIT
Schloss Birlinghoven
53754 Sankt Augustin
Germany
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web:  http://www.cve2002.org/cve2002-storytelling.html