News

(06-03-08) workshop schedule available

(20-02-08) electronic versions of papers available

(10-12-07) list of accepted papers available

Introduction

Personal information management (PIM) is the practice and study of the activities people perform to acquire, organize, maintain, and retrieve information for everyday use. PIM is a growing area of interest as we all strive for better use of our limited personal resources of time, money, and energy, as well as greater workplace efficiency and productivity. Good research on the topic is being done in several disciplines, including human-computer interaction, database management, information retrieval, and artificial intelligence. This two-day workshop will continue momentum towards building a community of researchers doing PIM-related research.

PAST PIM WORKSHOPS

This workshop is part of a meeting held every year and a half on personal information management, organized in connection with related conferences including SIGCHI, SIGIR, and ASIST. Each related conference attracts a substantial subset of people conducting PIM-related research. The upcoming SIGCHI 2008 conference in Florence, Italy, represents an excellent opportunity to continue the existing momentum behind the topic and to engage a larger community of people involved in human-computer interaction research that relates directly to PIM. Information about the previous two PIM meetings can be found at the following Web sites:

PIM 2005 in Seattle.
PIM 2006 at SIGIR 2006.

GOALS

The following are the workshop goals:

• To identify promising approaches to PIM.
• To explore the ramifications of mobile and Web-based computing for PIM.
• To determine how to measure progress in the study of PIM and its practice.
• To identify specific opportunities for exchange between PIM researchers and HCI researchers.

Workshop Theme: The Disappearing Desktop

The traditional desktop computer and even the desktop computing metaphor may soon be relics of our digital information past. Many people now rely primarily on mobile computers, docking only on occasion to a larger keyboard and display. Other people do not rely on a single device, but rather access, organize, and manage their personal information through any device that provides access the Web. A rush of developments with mobile and Web-based computing are pulling the traditional digital desktop apart. As this happens, we face new challenges and opportunities in personal information management. PIM 2008 will provide a forum for discussion of a wide range of PIM-related issues. However, in keeping with the disappearing desktop theme, special focus will be given to challenges and opportunities created by an ongoing revolution in mobile and Web-based tools and technologies for information management.