The Role of Place in Shaping Virtual Community : a workshop organized by Quentin Jones (New Jersey Institute of Technology) and Christine Halverson (IBM T.J. Watson Research Center) in 2002 and 2003 I should check the 2004 edition !!

This workshop aims to explore the myriad of ways that: 1. the design of virtual or hybrid spaces / places directly provides common ground for user interactions; and 2. communities use public interactions in virtual spaces to create shared meaning.

"These places where virtual community members interact are referred to by a wide variety of labels including chat rooms, cyber-inns, virtual settlements, commons, and conferences. The provision of such labels highlights the role of virtual places in providing context for discourse. Of course, the context of place both affects, and is affected by associated user interactions and the nature and form of the client technologies used by members to interact." That reminds me this quote from Rem Koolhas, the famous architect who claimes that words that are dying in the real world (wall, room) rebirth in the virtual world (firewall, chatroom).