The second international conference on Collaborative Innovation Networks (COINs) brings together a multi-disciplinary international group of practitioners, researchers and students of the emerging science of collaboration. Sponsored by the Savannah College of Art and Design, MIT Center for Collective Intelligence and Wayne State University College of Engineering?Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and hosted by SCAD.

Collaborative Innovation Networks, or COINs, are cyberteams of self-motivated people with a collective vision, to innovatively collaborate by sharing ideas, information, and work enabled by technology. Although COINs have been around for hundreds of years, they are especially relevant today because the concept has reached its tipping point thanks to the Internet. COINs are powered by swarm creativity, wherein people work together in a structure that enables a fluid creation and exchange of ideas.

'Coolhunting'?discovering, analyzing and measuring trends and trendsetters?puts COINs to productive use. Patterns of collaborative innovation frequently follow an identical path, from creator to COIN to collaborative learning network to collaborative interest network.

The theme of the conference combines a wide range of interdisciplinary fields such as social network analysis, social networking, group dynamics, design and visualization, information systems, and the psychology and sociality of collaboration.

Twitter: @COINs2010