Formation and temporal evolution of social groups during coffee breaks

Group formation and evolution are prominent topics in social contexts. This paper focuses on the analysis of group evolution events in networks of face-to-face proximity. We first analyze statistical properties of group evolution, e.g., individual activity and typical group sizes. After that, we define a set of specific group evolution events. These are analyzed in the context of an academic conference, where we provide different patterns according to phases of the conference. Specifically, we investigate group formation and evolution using real-world data collected at the LWA 2010 conference utilizing the Conferator system, and discuss patterns according to different phases of the conference.