Answers to questions like these provide developers with the mental models they need to design and implement effective tools to support social networks and participation in civic society.

The goal of this session will be to reach a rough consensus on a small set of the most important scenarios for the use of social networking tools. Specifically, what are representative users trying to do today and how, from the user's perspective, will the tools and organizations help them do it better tomorrow. The output of the session will (hopefully) be a clear statement of benefits and hurdles to adoption of social networking technology that can help drive many related development efforts towards a common vision grounded in everyday experience.

Note my original proposal, now called "Social Networks and Digital Capital," addresses the relationship between social networking tools and society -- the question of "why". In contrast, this proposal focuses on the practical "how-to" steps of developing effective collaborative systems. This approach draws heavily on my background and experience as a cognitive psychologist and team leader at a large office automation manufacturer creating new products and systems for workgroups. To begin the discussion, I provide detailed walk-throughs of how typical users today accomplish the tasks of hiring someone and publishing a document and how those processes could be improved by an effective combination of file sharing tools, ID Commons, Creative Commons, Time Dollars, Square Trade, and the like. This approach brings together both potential end users and developers to participate in complex system design.