A new center is to be planned based at Clemson University named the Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC) for Social Technologies and Analytics. The planned I/UCRC intends to conducts research of high-end applications for accessing the Social Media data ecosystem, where Social Media refers to how users generate content, exchange information and share ideas in public and private platforms over the Internet. Research foci of the planned center include Big Data analysis, cyberinfrastructure, mobile applications, technology and people, business intelligence and society and computing.
The social media ecosystem represents a significant and growing global resource that offers a wide and varied set of new applications with potential impact spanning the private and public sector. The planned center has the potential to build a corporate, government and university cooperative to address research challenges in this area and accelerate its growth. The planned center would engage students at all levels and train them in through its research. The effort will draw on existing university programs to engage a diverse set of participants.
The purpose of this project was to provide funding support for a planning workshop that will result in the establishment of the Consortium for Social Technologies and Analytics (COSTA). COSTA was designed to focus on computational, analytics, and data managmeent issues associated with the growing "social technologies ecosystem". The investigators attended the I/UCRC bootcamp and planning meetings. They also developed plans to hold a workshop. The planning workshop was designed to engage organizations from all regions of the United States. The Investigators worked with several potential partners to define the scope. revenue model, and structure of the I/UCRC. We solicited feedback on plans through a series of conference calls and face to face meetings. Reflecting rapidly changing economic and technological social markets, potential partners reported quickly shifitng goals and priorities for potential projects. Consequently, it was difficult to reach convergence on how to organize, fund, and set goals for the proposed I/UCRC. It was determined during the workshop planning process in conversations with our targeted industrial partners that I/UCRC is not a good match for their business model and for the general problem area of social technologies. The decision was made to terminate the planning process for the Consortium for Social Technologies and Analytics (COSTA).
