This week marks the last week of classes this Spring Quarter before finals week begin. Here’s some snapshot of our lovely Graduate Student and Lab Director teaching the class.

Describing how professionals can learn from NASA’s research on assembling a mission-critical team for space travel, Noshir Contractor recently presented a keynote titled “Designing and Keeping Great Teams. Lessons from Preparing for Mars. What Can PLM Professionals Learn from This?”

KEYNOTE: Designing and Keeping Great Teams. Lessons from Preparing for Mars. What Can PLM Professionals Learn from This?

Cooperation is critical in space, and NASA has identified important traits for successful teamwork in anticipation of an upcoming Mars expedition. To help assemble a team for the three-year mission, NASA is working with researchers to develop a predictive model of group performance, one which anticipates conflicts and communication breakdowns based on personality traits. PLM conference presentations often mention the dependency on technology, people, and processes for success, but mostly focus only on the technology. The introduction of disruptive technologies puts even more pressure on the people aspect. This presentation will share research findings on assembling a mission-critical team for space travel that might well apply to setting up your mission-critical team for a multi-year PLM implementation.

For more details, please refer to the agenda: https://www.cimdata.com/en/education/plm-conferences/plmrm-pdt-spring-2021/agenda

citation: 

Contractor, N. (May 20, 2021). Designing and Keeping Great Teams: Lessons from Preparing for Mars – What can PLM Professionals Learn from This? Keynote address at the PLM Road Map & PDT Spring 2021, Virtual.

On Wednesday (04/28), Professor Contractor presented a talk on “People Analytics: Using Digital Exhaust from the Web to Leverage Network Insights in the Workplace” during his virtual visit to the University of Minnesota’s Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE).

Sharing insights from our current work, Noshir Contractor recently presented the keynote “Emerging Communication Architectures and the Changing Nature of Work” at The 9th International Conference ‘Сomparative Media Studies in Today’s World’ (CMSTW).

For more info about the conference: http://cmstw2021.org

Call for Papers and Abstracts:  

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The Near Future of Work: Supporting Digital and Remote Collaboration in COVID and Beyond 

A Workshop at the 13th ACM Web Science Conference (WebSci 2021) 

June 21st or June 22nd 

https://sites.northwestern.edu/nearfutureofwork2021 

The COVID-19 pandemic has provided us an opportunity to participate in a global “beta-test” of web-only-based remote work. The workshop will reflect on the changing nature of work, identify factors that explain these changes, and how we can learn from the “new” normal to prepare for a better “next” normal. By doing so this workshop seeks to facilitate multidisciplinary dialog as well as theory and research examining challenges and opportunities stemming from digital and remote work on the Web. Topics relevant to this workshop include, but are not limited to: remote work, virtual teaming, enterprise social media (ESM), computer-supported cooperative work, digital platforms, human-AI teaming, work in the gig economy, crowdsourced labor, work-life balance in the digital age, the well-being of remote workers, and workplace communication technology. We especially welcome findings of remote work and digital collaboration that are relevant in the aftermath of COVID-19 (but not necessarily relying on COVID-19 related data). 

Important Dates:  

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• Full papers – Submission deadline: April 23rd , Camera-ready papers: May 16th 

• Abstracts for lightning talks – Submission deadline: May 17th