HTF Workshop Series

PROPOSAL for the Sixth International Workshop on Incorporating Hypertext Functionality Into Software Systems (HTF VI)

The Hypertext Functionality Workshops

The Hypertext Functionality workshop series has grown out of the need for hypertext practitioners and designers to work out best practice for the design and implementation of hypertext systems, and to determine how to best incorporate hypertext functionality (HTF) into new and existing information systems.

As hypertext researchers, our aim has been the propagation of information about good hypertext design and implementation, communicating the benefits of hypertext to information systems designers and administrators, and creating an open discussion environment where hypertext researchers, practitioners and designers alike can meet and exchange information about the use of hypertext.

HTF Workshop Series Theme

Work in the intersection of hypertext and software systems has grown significantly in volume, quality, and diversity. In addition to incorporating hypertext functionality into software systems, new areas of interest include engineering of hypertext capabilities, conceptual and practical metaphors for software architectures and, most importantly, areas of overlap with the WWW community, the MIS field, and the Open Hypermedia Systems (OHS) community. Therefore, whereas the first three HTF workshops were held in association with the hypertext conference series, the next four incarnations are planned in conjunction with the WWW7 conference at Brisbane, ICSE '98 at Kyoto, Hypertext '98 in Pittsburgh, and ICIS '98 at Helsinki. The workshops will be named HTF IV, HTF V, HTF VI and HTF VII, respectively.

While all upcoming workshops still share the underlying theme of hypertext functionality, each will be tailored to the emphasis and unique interests of the adjoining conference. In summary, our goal is to expand the scope of the HTF workshop series, reach out to a broader, more diverse audience and influence and be influenced by the SE, WWW, OHS, and MIS fields.

Objectives of the Proposed Workshop

The objectives of the HTF VI workshop proposed for Hypertext 98 are the following:

To build upon previous workshops in the series, by inviting new researchers to join the HTF community via submission of position papers (as in previous workshops);
to report to the Hypertext community the outcomes of the HTF IV and and HTF V workshops, held during the 7th International World Wide Web Conference and at the International Conference on Software Engineering. These will be the first of the HTF workshops held outside the Hypertext conference series;
To discuss the acceptance of Hypertext Functionality by researchers and developers from all fields outside the Hypertext community;
to report on the development of hypertext technologies in the World Wide Web research community, in particular the impact of the larger hypertext contingent at WWW7. Hypertext will have a higher profile at WWW7 than it has had at previous WWW conferences, with members from the hypertext community in notable positions such as keynote speaker, programme chair, programme committee and programme review committee. Also ACM's special interest group on hypertext and hypermedia (SIGLINK) will be actively involved in WWW7. Finally many workshops, tutorials and panels on hypertext issues have been proposed for WWW7.
NB This WWW7 session may be of more general interest, and there is the potential for opening this session to a wider audience, or perhaps even holding this session during the main conference.
To determine future directions for promoting the use and good practice of HTF throughout all fields of computer science.

For Hypertext 98, the HTF organisers will be in a particularly good position to report back on the impact that Hypertext research is having on other research communities. Our aim has been to take the workshop series out to new communities, but we also want to report back on our work to the Hypertext community, and to encourage others to do the same.

At Hypertext 98, we will be in a position to report on the impact we as hypertext researchers are having on the WWW community, in particular following the WWW7 conference in Australia where we are for the first time making a concerted effort to make our work visible to this large body of researchers and developers. We would particularly like to propose an open session as described in the bullet point above, preferably as part of the main conference programme, in order to report on our success at this major event.

Publications

The HTF workshop activities are being reported in the following journals:

Updated versions of selected papers from the HTF I, II and III workshops will appear in a forthcoming special issue of the Journal of Digital Information on Hypertext Functionality.
The HTF V organisers have negotiated an agreement with Addison-Wesley to create a monograph series based on the HTF workshop series. Updates of selected papers will be invited for inclusion.
- The HTF IV and HTF V workshops will appear in a 1998 monograph.
- The HTF VI and HTF VII workshops will appear in a 1999 monograph,
(assuming of course that the proposals for HTF IV and HTF VI are accepted).

The Workshop Series - calls, reports and proceedings

HTF I, held in conjunction with the ACM ECHT '94 conference, Edinburgh UK, September 1994:
Call for Participation; Position Papers; Post-workshop report to SIGLINK newsletter.
HTF II, held in conjunction with the ACM Hypertext '96 conference, Washington USA, March 1996:
Position Papers;
HTF III, held in conjunction with the ACM Hypertext '97 conference, Southampton UK, April 1997:
Proposal; Call for Participation; mirror of Call for Participation; Position papers
HTF IV, proposed for the IW3C2's Seventh International World Wide Web Conference, Brisbane Australia, April 1998:
Proposal;
HTF V, proposed for the International Conference on Software Engineering, to be held in Kyoto Japan, April 1998:
Proposal; Call for Participation; mirror for Call for Participation;
HTF VI, to be proposed for ACM Hypertext '98 conference, Pittsburgh USA, June 1998:
Proposal
HTF VII, to be held in conjunction with the International Conference on Information Systems, Helsinki Finland, December 1998:
Call for Participation; mirror for Call for Participation;

Draft agenda

The workshop will be a one-and-a-half day day event. The first day will be closed, with only invited workshop participants attending. The following half-day of the workshop will be generally open, with discussion specific to the impact that the Hypertext community is having on to the World Wide Web community.

The open half-day of the workshop would be best-scheduled during the main conference, perhaps as a WWW session or a panel discussion.

Closed workshop day

08:30-09:00     Registration
09:00-09:30     Welcome
09:30-10:30     HTF IV workshop report
10:30-11:00     Coffee break
11:00-12:30     Position papers and discussion
12:30-14:00     Lunch break
14:00-15:30     Position papers and discussion
15:30-16:00     Coffee break
16:00-17:00     HTF V workshop report
17:00-17:30     Planning for open half-day presentation
17:30           Close

19:00-late      Informal workshop dinner

As in previous workshops, there are many opportunities for informal discussion between participants, in particular the Workshop Dinner, a popular feature of previous workshops. Previous experience shows that these informal discussion breaks are particularly useful for participants to talk more freely and to establish useful contacts.

Organisers

Helen Ashman has been working on the modelling of hypermedia concepts, hypermedia developments in the World Wide Web and hypermedia integration in distributed systems. She is joint Programme Chair (with Paul Thistlewaite of ANU) of the forthcoming IW3C2 7th International World Wide Web conference, to be held in Australia in 1998. She is a foundation member of the HTF workshop series, having been involved in all of them since HTF I.

V. Balasubramanian ("Bala") is a research-oriented practitioner with over ten years of experience designing and developing information systems. He heads E-Papyrus, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in hypermedia design, Web-based information systems, document management/workflow applications and user interface design. He has been a hypertext researcher for over 5 years. He holds a Ph.D. in Management from Rutgers University.

Michael Bieber is Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He is an Associate Director of the Electronic Enterprise Engineering Initiative. He holds a Ph.D. in Decision Sciences from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Bieber has been performing hypermedia research since 1987, when he embarked on a research path in automating hypermedia support for analytical information systems. Dr. Bieber is active in the hypertext community, co-organizing conference minitracks and co-editing special journal issues about hypermedia topics. He has published many articles in this and other areas. He recently was the treasurer of ACM SIGLINK, the ACM's special interest group on hypermedia. See http://megahertz.njit.edu/~bieber for further details. Dr. Bieber may be reached at bieber@njit.edu.

Dr Harri Oinas-Kukkonen works currently as an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the University of Oulu. His research interests lie in the information systems development and software engineering, including CASE (Computer-Aided Software/Systems Engineering), teamwork, electronic commerce, hypertext and digital media. He has ten years of experience with various aspects of hypertext and digital media in practice and research. Since 1991 he has been part of the MetaPHOR research project, which aims at the development of modern software design systems. In this project he has been working on the integration of hypermedia features into a meta-CASE environment called MetaEdit+. He is one of the originators of the HTF workshop series.

Contact

Helen Ashman,
Electronic Publishing Research Group,
Department of Computer Science,
University of Nottingham.
University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK.

Email: hla@cs.nott.ac.uk
Phone: +44 115 951 4237
Fax: +44 115 951 4254

Created By Helen Ashman, 18 November 1997.