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"Webshop 2003"
06/13/2003 Entry
I spent most of today at the 2003 Webshop at the University of Maryland. For the third summer in a row, graduate students from various disciplines with interests in Internet research came together for the past two weeks to hear-, talk about and engage in research on IT and society.
It's fun to give a talk at the Webshop because you get to meet the youngest generation of scholars interested in this type of research. It's interesting to observe the fields represented. Although the program is organized out of the Sociology Department at Maryland, this year, students from communication departments seemed to be in the majority. This suggests to me - as other things have in the past - that I made a good decision in moving into the Comm field with my forthcoming academic appointment at Northwestern's School of Communication.
Today's panel was about clickstream data, which are logs of what sites people visit. Representatives of Nielsen/NetRatings gave a presentation on speakerphone while we watched their Web clicks in their office on the overhead. Next, Alan Montgomery of Carnegie Mellon's B-school talked about his research on using clickstream data to figure out user profiles and in particular the chances that a user would make a purchase during a given visit to an e-commerce Web site. Although the questions that motivate our work may be different, I found the methods Alan described quite interesting and helpful. (Check out his Web site for examples of his work.)
As he noted, this field has a lot to gain from interdisciplinary collaborations.
So in addition to meeting the newest generation of Internet scholars, the Webshop is also a great opportunity to hear what colleagues all over are up to these days.
Hopefully the National Science Foundation will decide to continue funding the Webshop and others can benefit in the future as well.
Replies: 1 Comment has been posted, click here to see it and add your own
I didn't know that you landed on Northwestern. Congratulations!!
And you're going to kick ass on your defense. I wish I could join you at the party!
Posted by Tina @ 06/16/2003 09:06 PM CST
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