Facilitating Exploratory Conversations: Here and Now.

The format of academic conferences has generally remained unchanged for decades. It has on the whole been taken for granted despite major advances in communication technologies. The panel's objective is to learn if and how computer-mediated conversations increase the audience's participation level and capability to offer, discuss, and refine exploratory comments that a speaker's paper might stimulate. To this end, we propose an experiential exercise in which the audience will use an internet-based wiki to support exploratory conversations while listening to Bob Zmud's lecture about 'Overcoming Cognitive Boundaries in Knowledge Sharing' and then discussing it. To manage the complexity and risk of the experiment, we will offer access to the wiki to the FIRST 20 registrants. (If interested, please email Dov.Teeni@case.edu.) Therefore, while the panel will be open to all ICIS conference participants, 20 of the participants will be engaged in the exploration via the internet and other participants are invited to participate orally in the face-to-face discussions.