# Having Fun on the Access Grid: Building Informal Relationships through "The Beer Symposium"

## 

+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| # Crysta J. Metcalf               | # Donald J. Morton                |
|                                   |                                   |
| Applications Research Lab         | Department of Computer Science    |
|                                   |                                   |
| Motorola Labs                     | The University of Montana         |
|                                   |                                   |
| 1301 E. Algonquin Rd. Rm. 2230    | Missoula, MT 59812                |
|                                   |                                   |
| Schaumburg, IL 60196              | morton@cs.umt.edu                 |
|                                   |                                   |
| Crysta.Metcalf@motorola.com       |                                   |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+

**[Introduction:]{.underline}**

During the Autumn 2001 academic semester, The University of Montana, the
Arctic Region Supercomputing Center and the Albuquerque High Performance
Computing Center delivered a shared college course in High Performance
Computing across the Access Grid, with the intent of creating a virtual,
geographically distributed classroom. Initial technical glitches were
such that the hoped-for "community" did not develop at the beginning of
the semester, and students seemed a bit shy of the technology for the
remainder of the course. Instructors felt that some sort of social
activity, apart from the formal class, might help to bring students
together, but nothing really materialized. Experiences garnered in this
attempt to build a true virtual classroom led to broader thinking of how
people might build communities across the Access Grid, culminating in
the decision to launch a "fun event" related to beer and simply observe
what happened in terms of human and technological issues in the context
of "having fun" in informal activities over the AG. Access Grid
technology has many of the characteristics listed in the literature as
important for building strong social ties in a group -- it is a
persistent public space, it allows for simultaneous multiple users with
different interaction styles, and it supports real-time interaction. The
beer symposium was designed as a preliminary step towards investigating
whether or not Access Grid technology can be used to create and maintain
informal social connections (the interpersonal relationships necessary
for both building community and creating effective distributed teams) by
acting as a space for conviviality.

Based on the assumptions that having fun can contribute to the
development of strong informal social ties, and (perhaps more
importantly) that the Access Grid will some day be used for more than
just science, technical, and business collaboration, the goals of "The
Beer Symposium" were simply 1) to see if there was an interest in this
kind of fun event on the AG, 2) to begin to figure out how to put
together an event that is based on having fun instead of doing work -
fundamentally a new way of using the AG, with different requirements for
event organization and participation, and 3) to set the stage for more
exploratory ethnographic (anthropological) research on the use of the AG
for non-work-related activities. We wanted to use this symposium as a
way to gauge whether or not we will be able to do more of these kinds of
things in the future, so we can begin to answer such questions as: What
kinds of relationships are formed through the use of the AG during
non-work related events? How can the AG be used to facilitate the
creation and maintenance of informal social bonds? What components of
the AG are essential to both having fun and the formation of informal
relationships? How and why are these components necessary? What other
technologies could be added to the AG to enhance the social experience?
If the AG is to serve more than a purely formalized medium of exchange
of ideas, all of these questions (and many more) need to be explored.

**[Background:]{.underline}**

Humans are social animals -- we look to others for support, affiliation,
and affirmation (Donath 1996). In our socializing, we build various
kinds of communities: we can associate with those who like to do what we
like to do (creating communities of interest), we can create bonds with
those who are striving toward the same goals as we are (creating
communities of purpose), we can network with people who make their
living in the same way we do (creating communities of practice), and we
can build social capital with those who are experiencing the same things
in life as we are (creating communities of circumstance) (Marathe 1999).
In both geographical and virtual communities (or on-line communities, or
electronic communities, or cyber-communities), such as the ones just
described, the essential element to the creation and maintenance of
community bonds is enabling the interpersonal connections that are
fundamental to feeling like you are a member of a group. Indeed, the
ability to build strong social ties with others is often viewed as one
of the defining factors of "community." (See, for example, Wellman and
Gulia 1996.)

Throughout the literature on virtual communities, authors talk about the
differences between the types of computer-mediated communication, and
how this affects the relationships that are built (see, for example,
Turkle 1998). Indeed, multiple authors argue that strong social bonds
are created and maintained in chat rooms and multi-user dungeons (MUDs)
especially (see, for example Dibbell 1998, and Rheingold 1998). But
"there have been few detailed ethnographic studies of virtual
communities..." (Wellman and Gulia 1996), and there have been even fewer
ethnographic studies of the creation and maintenance of informal
relationships in the video-mediated environment, because research in
video-mediated communication has been focused primarily on formal work
activities.

There is, however, some information on what communication technologies
and applications researchers *believe* influence the development of
strong social ties. Many of them have to do with attempting, somehow, to
recreate a feeling of "presence" in the computer-mediated environment.
For example, Jenny Preece, who wrote an entire book on facilitating
on-line communities (Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting
Sociability), writes "Social presence, or more particularly lack of
social presence, can critically influence how people behave online, form
impressions of others, and negotiate common ground..." (165).

Judith Donath argues that a social environment requires "exchanging cues
and social information, observing the appearance and behavior of
others," (<http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Thesis>). The most
important aspect of technology for community building, as far as Donath
is concerned, is that it supports a wide range of interactions and
relationships. Another interesting viewpoint on creating technology that
facilitates the formation and maintenance of strong social ties comes
from Mynatt et al. who argue that to support community the technology
must be persistent, support multiple interaction styles, support the
capability for real-time interaction, and be multi-user. From this
perspective, the key to creating community is creating webs of personal
relationships, so the technology must facilitate the formation and
maintenance of a "group." The ability to network, or interact, with
multiple people simultaneously is a primary factor. Similarly, Quentin
Jones from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem argues that to facilitate
group identification and cohesion, a communication technology must
promote interactivity, it must allow for a variety of communicators
(more than two), the communication space must be a common public space,
and there must be sustained membership
([www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol3/issue3/jones.html](http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol3/issue3/jones.html)).

It used to be that we could only look to those in our geographic
communities for belonging, but through the rapid advance of
technological communication devices, we can now look much further
afield. We are looking not just to the people who used to live around
us, we are also looking across the country and across the world. It is
in this context that virtual on-line communities become separated from
geographical communities, and become much more dependent on technology
for their facilitation. Much of the current literature about virtual
on-line communities can be divided into 3 main topic areas: 1) whether
or not these on-line groups can really be defined as communities, 2)
what the social impact of on-line communities is, and 3) what enabling
technologies and applications can be used to facilitate a "feeling" of
community. The major question that links these three topic areas seems
to be the following: Can we make strong intimate ties through
technology? Each of the three main topic areas in the literature on
virtual communities is dealing, somehow, with this question. But even in
distributed work, informal interpersonal relations are vitally
important. Establishing a high performing team requires informal social
interaction, including, but not limited to trust development, the
stimulation of cohesiveness, the formation of a sense of shared
responsibility, and the creation of common ground (see Hellreigel,
Slocum, and Woodman 1998; Bellotti and Bly 1996; Fussell, Kraut and
Siegel 2000). Interpersonal and informal relationships that foster
collaboration often come "naturally" with face-to-face interaction, but
developing these relationships is much more difficult when team members
are not collocated (Mackay 1999; Ackerman 2000). While project teamwork
is being accomplished across distance, there are a number of drawbacks
to distributed collaborative work, such as low individual commitment,
role ambiguity, and communication delays and breakdowns (Teasley et al.
2000; Jarvenpaa and Leidner 1998). Technology that contributes to the
development of strong informal interpersonal connections, then, is not
only appropriate for community building, but also creates a productive
atmosphere for doing effective collaborative work.

**[The Beer Symposium:]{.underline}**

The planning for "The Beer Symposium" was a challenge. We spent a great
deal of time asking ourselves: How do we resolve the inherent tensions
in trying to plan a "party" where we have to give the "party-goers" a
common focus? And, how do we have an informal event at which people
cannot just mingle with anyone they want to? We found these questions
very difficult to answer, and we ended up asking for participants to
volunteer to stimulate discussion through brief "presentations." But
then the question became: How do we juggle the focus on "presentations"
(because we expected these to provide the basis of informal discussion),
and the desire to make the symposium as informal and fun as possible? We
decided to prohibit use of power point slides (based on a common
Motorola cultural belief that power point slides means "formal
distribution of information"), and the word "presenter" was stricken
from the vocabulary in favor of words like "contributor" or
"participant" in order to reinforce the idea that they were there to
stimulate discussion. We knew it was still going to be a struggle,
however, to balance the formal aspects of people talking in sequence
about one topic, and the informal aspects of attempting to stimulate
"natural" conversation about the topic in a "party-like" atmosphere.
Thinking we might need to stimulate conversation we developed a list of
general topics to bring up should there be a lull in the conversation.

Once we had decided what we wanted the symposium to be like, we had more
questions: How do we communicate our desire to "do something fun on the
AG" to the rest of the AG community? How do we get people interested?
Advertising the symposium on the AG tech list provided a number of
lessons, one of which we should have learned long ago -- be very clear
when you are being sarcastic in e-mail. We asked for abstract
submissions, believing there were enough cues in the e-mail to indicate
that we were joking (including suggesting bribes of beer), but people
took us seriously (though not so seriously that they sent the beer). We
had to assure people that we did not want abstracts, and simply wanted
people to come, and wanted some folks to volunteer to talk. Once we
indicated that we were joking about abstracts and stressed the
informality of the event, we got more people interested in "presenting"
at the symposium. Another lesson was that we needed to "advertise" and
ask for participation through means other than the AG tech list. We got
a fairly good response from people on the list who were interested in
attending, but most "presenters" came from outside the AG community. And
scheduling across time zones was also a problem -- while interest in
attending was expressed by AG members in several countries, only people
from the U.S. and Australia showed up. People in England and Italy,
while intrigued by the symposium, were not in a position (because of the
arranged time of the event) to join. The final lesson was simply to
relax...we realized that we had no control over attendance, and as with
hosting any "party," we would just have to "wait and see" who came, and
how it would go.

The event commenced in an atmosphere of rowdiness and festivity and,
immediately, audio issues were apparent. For the most part, people were
interacting with others at their own sites but, since microphones were
turned on, attempts to actually communicate across the AG became
fruitless due to the high background noise of festive participants at
their own sites. The "appearance" was of a bustling bar scene, and, much
as in a "real life" bar, the reality was of separate groups each making
their own noise. But it was impossible to pick out threads of
conversation from the different sites. Audio signals were mixed
together, uncoupled from location, so that, unlike being in a real life
bar, one could not simply "tune in" to particular conversations to hear
what was going on. Individual conversations were not distinguishable,
inhibiting the kind of natural interaction between groups that usually
occurs in real life, and reinforcing the boundaries between sites. In
other words, no one could comment on something said in another group
(group, here, referring to an AG node site), because it was impossible
to hear the conversation. Not only were audio problems apparent right
from the beginning -- network problems were experienced as well. The
University of Montana site had to leave the venue and return in order to
fix their audio machine.

Ten AG node sites ended up participating, with multiple attendees at
each site (in some locales 5 to 6 people were present at the beginning
of the symposium). The audience dwindled as the night wore on, but this
was expected. The event was held on a Friday night, the day after
Valentine's Day, and a couple of people had to leave because they had
"Valentine's dinners" to go home to, while others simply needed to get
home to their families. One site was having network troubles and
eventually gave up trying to attend. Most people, however, stayed for
the entirety of the symposium, and were not in a rush to leave after the
last scheduled speaker was finished.

The first participant, president of Big Sky Brewing Company, was
engaging and appeared to keep the audience's attention. He spoke briefly
about the history of the company, and the beers that they brew, and
fielded a number of questions about how much beer the company brews, the
experience of going from home brewing to professional brewing, ordering
t-shirts with the "Moose Drool" logo, and a number of others. This
participant brought with him a poster -- an advertisement for one of
their popular beers ("Moose Drool") -- and held it up to the camera, for
other attendees to see. At this point another limitation of AG
technology for this kind of event became apparent...the participant was
relying on the node operator to position the camera so that the poster
was visible, centered, and zoomed in appropriately. Simply holding up
the poster was not good enough -- when he held up the poster, he was
prevented from seeing the window at his node, so he did not know what
the poster looked like to the people at other sites. The lack of being
able to simply "show" something, without the need for formalized control
over the viewing window, potentially diminishes the air of informality
of the event. Also, audio at the Missoula site (where the president of
Big Sky Brewing Co. was located) was breaking up, detracting from the
experience for those at other sites, and causing node operators to go
into a "technical" mode of problem solving rather than staying in an
"informal mode" of "having fun." This participant talked and answered
questions for close to 30 minutes and while he was keeping the
audience's attention, we worried that some attendees might get restless,
or impatient with the pace -- especially since there were 8 more
scheduled "contributors," who could also stimulate lengthy conversation.
We decided to cut the discussion short and asked for the second
participant to step in.

The second participant was a University of Montana (UM) faculty member,
who spoke about beer ingredients and recipes. He was also engaging the
audience, but "local" discussions between UM participants appeared to
distract slightly from the overall global community feeling. Still,
there was sufficient outside interaction. A lot of the AG-wide
discussion about beer and brewing was somewhat technical in nature,
leaving part of the audience, who did not understand the lingo, out of
the loop. The dynamic of discussion is significant because in a "party"
where all attendees are co-located, side conversations spring up
naturally between those people who are not fully conversant in the topic
at hand, or who are not interested in the topic at hand (these side
conversations can even be dropped -- to rejoin the primary group once
the conversation turns). But in this situation, where some attendees at
a specific AG site were brewers and others were not, side conversations
were more difficult. Two people at different locations (neither
interested in the answers to the questions being asked) could not start
their own side conversation. Instead, any side conversation that
occurred had to occur between people at the same site. Instead of the AG
technology making it easier to have informal interaction between
distributed attendees, the conversation ended up being more localized.

The spontaneous nature of the event led to a shifting in the scheduled
order of "participants" and a home brewer in North Dakota (NDSU)
presented a live demonstration of the steps in making beer. Both the
equipment used, and the ingredients used, were highlighted. The NDSU
folks are to be commended for their ingenuity and willingness to push
the limits of AG technology by attempting such a live demonstration and,
it went remarkably well. The cameras had to be manipulated constantly
during the demonstration -- to zoom in on ingredients and equipment, as
well as to follow the demonstrator as he moved. Again, the attendance of
the node operator became accented, and their role highlighted as a
formal one. Furthermore, around this time, attendees started to become
restless at the various sites, engaging in private conversations, fairly
removed from the central activities of the event. Eventually, the MUD
came alive with calls from apparently restless attendees to keep the
show moving. Indeed, during the entire event the MUD was a form of
distributed chat between non-co-located participants -- but primarily
node operators and others conversant in AG technology had this
capability. Those of us on-line also used e-mail to "talk" to
non-co-located attendees, as we attempted to chat with others at remote
sites.

After the NDSU "participant" finished, the distributed crowd had grown
more restless, and keeping the event together was becoming more of a
challenge. A participant from the University of Illinois talked about
Trappist beers, and then a participant from Argonne elicited a wide
range of attendee comments, often inciting laughter, by talking about
why he likes beer and why he started home brewing. The video from UM
went down again, but all of the sites could hear them. Instead of
waiting for them to bring back their video feed, the participant at the
University of New Mexico was asked to continue with his scheduled
activity -- singing beer drinking songs. This created an uproar, and
again audio issues became apparent. However, the songs were much
appreciated and applauded, and he was even successful at getting others
to sing with him for the last song. The symposium ended, over two and a
half hours after it started, as the crowd became more rowdy, and their
conversations increasingly narrowed to their own co-located groups.

**[Analysis:]{.underline}**

After the event, attendees at The University of Montana (UM) were asked
informally for their feedback. The consensus amongst the UM student
attendees was that there were many similarities to the "real bar"
experience -- some people drank, some people were rowdy and, in general,
the mood was at times a little loud and raucous. One student commented
that, just like in a real bar, rowdier people tend to dominate the
conversation and activities. All UM students commented very favorably on
the uniqueness of the activity, saying that it was, in many ways, like a
Friday afternoon happy hour, but that the crowd was more intelligent.
There was tremendous excitement in interacting with people from around
the world. Hence, it appears that students definitely enjoyed the chance
to meet people they would not normally meet at their local, typical,
Friday afternoon watering hole. One SC Global veteran from UM favorably
commented that he had never been in such an interactive session on the
AG, raising the notion that, indeed, this was a new paradigm for the AG
community, worthy of additional exploration. On the MUD were comments
about how much fun people at different sites were having, and a question
about getting an AG node in a "real bar." One, more "objective,"
indication that people were engaged in the symposium was that we did not
have to artificially stimulate discussion through the use of
pre-arranged topics and questions. More positive feedback came from the
length of time people stayed at the event.

We believe one of the most difficult problems to overcome in planning
such an event is balancing the need to bring people together for a
"reason" (having a formal focus to the event in order to motivate people
who don't know each other well to attend) and the desire to maintain
informality and a sense of conviviality (in order to keep it "fun").
Perhaps trying to strike a balance was the wrong approach -- there were
clearly attendees with a serious interest in learning about beer, and
there were those with a serious interest in partying. Just as in the
real world, this kind of combination of desired outcomes inevitably
leads to conflict. We attempted to walk a fine line between formality
and informality, thus leaving the possibility that when a part of the
event was at odds with attendee expectations, it could create
restlessness. Restlessness was especially apparent during one particular
portion of the symposium. The home brewing demonstration at NDSU had
initially been viewed as a cornerstone of the symposium, given its
hands-on nature but, it came an hour into the event and followed two
long presentations. There were some that were "riveted" to this demo,
and it is still not clear whether it was the timing of the demo or
conflicting expectations that played a role in the restlessness of some
of the participants.

Technological issues were also highlighted by this event. A number of
attendees, in side conversations during the event as well as after the
event, commented on the problems they had following the conversations
that were going on at remote locations. While people wanted to "talk all
at once," and indeed did do this, audio capabilities limited the
capability of people at the different locations to hear the
conversations at other sites. Audio came in from all sites at once, and
there was no associated "directionality" pointing to which words came
from which site, preventing conversational "threads" from emerging. An
associated problem with the video and audio portion of the AG technology
is that it does not adequately support "side conversations"
(conversations that the entire group is not meant to hear) between
non-co-located attendees. It is apparent that this kind of interaction
needs to be supported. Illustrating that this kind of "side
conversation" is something people find useful and desirable, is the fact
that various side conversations using alternative technologies
originated...e-mail was used for coordination, and to make comments on
how the symposium was going, and the AG MUD was used to have
conversations not only about the technology and glitches, but also to
"talk" about the participants. The fact that supplemental technology was
sought out to provide a means of having side conversations indicates a
need for technology that [all]{.underline} attendees at a site have
access to, so they can "talk" with others who are not at their same
site, and do this without disturbing the entire group.

**[Discussion:]{.underline}**

Facilitating collaborative activities, whether as part of a community or
part of a work team, often means creating and maintaining connections
that help people feel like they are part of a group. To get people who
are located in different geographical areas to feel like they are part
of the same group is often difficult, and relies on blurring the
boundaries between the distributed groups -- getting the groups in the
various locations to feel like they are part of the one larger group,
instead of isolated smaller groups. The perception of "my group" as
distinct from "other groups" is reinforced when there is little chance
for interpersonal interaction between groups, thus the perception of
boundaries between groups could possibly be reduced by allowing
cross-group side conversations. Side conversations did seem to be
occurring within the groups at each site during the symposium, but
restricting side conversations to those who are co-located
(intentionally or unintentionally) reinforces boundaries between
locales, instead of blurring them. The people who were using the MUD to
engage in cross-group side conversations already feel like part of a
larger distributed group (the Access Grid community). The key is
providing a means for other people who use the AG to engage in similar
kinds of conversations and interactions with those outside their local
group. Even with the ability to engage in side conversations, however,
the characteristics of the audio may inhibit group formation and
cohesion. When multiple people are talking at once on the AG it is very
difficult, if not impossible, to follow the conversation. It is possible
that this characteristic of audio on the AG -- requiring turn-taking in
order to have understandable conversation -- could so interfere with the
perceived "naturalness" of multi-user communication (in cultures where
turn-taking during informal interaction is not the norm), that it
prevents informal social interaction between groups at different sites
from ever developing.

But the beer symposium already showed that mapping from "real life"
spaces to virtual spaces is feasible, and that people act similarly to
the way they would in "real life" when they are using the AG. In many
ways, the crowd at "The Beer Symposium" acted like they might in any
drinking scenario. People started off friendly, had some attention span,
but eventually "the group" became less cohesive and splintered, mostly
into "local" groups. It is possible, however, that this "splintering"
was produced by the limitations of the technology to facilitate
cross-group interaction. More research is needed. We did show that
organizing an event such as this is possible, and that people can have
fun interacting informally on the AG. We believe that "The Beer
Symposium" was a fruitful beginning, in the attempt to bring more "fun"
to the Access Grid, experimenting with its usefulness as a technology to
foster informal interpersonal relationships, and learning how the AG can
serve as a group-to-group binding mechanism for a broad array of
geographically distributed activities. Furthermore, participating in
"The Beer Symposium" gave us some ideas for future events -- a "happy
hour" (the same kind of event, but less "presentation" and more just
"getting together" and "getting to know each other"), and a "virtual
sports bar" (where people from different locations get together on the
AG and watch a game on TV). If informal relationships cannot be built
across the AG, it will never become a place to simply "hang out" and
meet people and have fun. But we believe informal relationships can be
built over the AG, and that future events will illustrate this.

**[Conclusion:]{.underline}**

This "beer event" was the end result of a broader desire to use the AG
for activities far beyond the traditional science and technology
applications. We believe the Access Grid has the potential to deeply
affect the way people interact in the future, providing
heretofore-unimagined possibilities for building bonds and relationships
among groups separated by vast distances. Building informal
relationships is important not just for developing "friendships" -- it
is also important for good working relationships, community
facilitation, and developing shared mutual understandings in the global
village. Access Grid technology -- because it is persistent, public,
accommodates real-time group-to-group interaction, and permits different
interaction styles -- has the characteristics that are often cited as
necessary for fostering strong informal interpersonal connections, and a
sense of community. The Beer Symposium illustrated both the shortcomings
of the AG technology and its usefulness for fostering informal
relationships. Technological limitations, glitches, and missing pieces
of technology hampered some of the interaction during the event, and
still people had fun...they enjoyed the experience. This vividly
illustrates how compelling the AG experience is -- despite problems,
people like it.

The AG has the potential to bridge distances in ways yet unseen, by
supporting distributed "community activities." One can envision, for
example, virtual cultural exchanges across the planet and distributed
"town hall" meetings for various forms of governance. Many of these
activities do not fall into the formality required by current AG events
and pose challenges yet to be addressed by the AG community. Clearly,
the current mode of operation, centered on the presence of highly
trained technical personnel, is not feasible for the large majority of
distributed groups that might want to, simply, interact with others
around the world but lack local technical expertise.

We believe that many of the requirements to facilitate non-technical
interactions over the AG can be discovered by looking closely at fun,
informal events such as The Beer Symposium. By launching a series of
events like this, we can begin to explore previously unknown needs
associated with distributed collaborations, and examine suitability
and/or shortcomings in the technology related to the creation and
maintenance of informal interpersonal bonds. The beer symposium was a
wild plan -- a "what happens if we try this" experiment -- with no real
guarantee of a "successful" outcome. Just from planning and
participating in this event we learned a lot about the needs of
participants engaging in informal group-to-group interactions over the
AG, and about technology that might help satisfy these needs. We suggest
that more rigorous research of such informal events would be beneficial
to further our understanding of the usefulness and flexibility of AG
technology for creating and maintaining community bonds. Through the
refinements that come with the application of research findings, the
Access Grid might just be the technology that will help groups across
the world bridge the gap that comes with social and geographical
distance.

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