Open and social technologies play an increasingly important role in many educational settings. Social technologies are entering primary, secondary, and higher education, blurring the boundaries between formal and informal learning. Social technologies have also entered the workplaces, connecting learners and bridging the boundaries between individual learning and the organizational knowledge processes.

Not only do these technologies connect learners independent of place and time; they have also been found to exert emergent properties. For example, wikis or social tagging environments are increasingly used for collaborative knowledge construction where new knowledge emerges from large-scale interaction among individuals. These properties and their impact on individual, group, and organizational learning have only started to be researched.

Open-source software (OSS) and technologies have received extensive research attention due to some favourable properties contrasting with a traditional understanding of software development and the use of those systems. Important research areas in OSS are product and implementation success and the use of OSS in different educational and enterprise settings.

OSS can also serve as a platform for providing services to user communities. Especially in developing countries, OSS provides an attractive opportunity.

The Conference will discuss the issues above and features keynotes from Stefanie Lindstaedt, Professor for Knowledge Management at Graz University of Technology, Austria, and from Jari Multisilta, the Director of CICERO Learning hosted by University of Helsinki, Finland.