No worries, I have just lost my mind

Seriously, I think I dropped it somewhere between baking cookies and watching Dancing with the Stars – so don’t move I should probably look for it.

I am sitting here waiting to teach my final tutorial of the day and I thought “hey, I haven’t blogged in a while, I should talk about how I am losing my memory”.  So I of course when I see my last post (yes I did forget!), I decided to switch to losing my mind which is probably related to my memory loss.  I would like to drag out one of my common excuses for going completely nutty, like I have been staying up all night working on my methodology chapter due tomorrow (nope), or heavy teaching load (nope) or even just thinking really deep thoughts (nope – see Dancing with the Stars above).

So why am I losing my mind?  And why don’t I even care anymore?  I have slowly gotten used to it.  Just like the choas of student life which used to freak me out when I started, seems ordinary.  Chapter due tomorrow, tutorial starting in 10 minutes, scholarship ending in June – no worries.  I actually only have one worry now, how big, awful, and ugly does something have to be to shake me out of my postgraduate indifference?  Hopefully, I will never have to find out – but if I do at least I won’t remember it for long.  Now let’s start talking about memory loss…

Suffering from short-term (uh) memory loss

Warning!  Prolonged exposure to academic research may cause short-term memory loss.

Years ago when I was an undergrad my (premed) roommates used to torture me by reading from their very graphic biology textbooks.  I heard all about diseases with grusome symptoms as I went to sleep each night.  However, the most memorable thing they retold to me was about a man named JM.  He went in for a routine lobotomy (it was the 1940s I think) and the surgeons accidentally knicked his short-term memory centre.  So (as the medical establishment did in the 40s), they decided to conduct experiments on this poor man with no short-term memory.  They gave him tennis lessons, which he never remembered taking, but he did improve – thanks to muscle memory.  They also gave him a mirror everyday which completely freaked him out since he didn’t understand why he was aging.  And the worst was every day they would tell him that his auntie had died and he would mourn for her over and over again.

Well I am not JM (yet) but sometimes I think I may be losing my short-term (uh) memory.  For instance, today I decided that I needed some more books from the library.  I do this every time I am meant to be writing (not reading!).  So I logged on to the library catalogue and started to search for my favourite terms and authors and threw in a couple new ones (so I thought) to boot.  Well I recognised some of the titles, because the books were still sitting mostly unread all over my desk.  However, there were a couple that I tried to recall (meaning get them back early from the person who has them currently checked out ) only to realise I was the one who had them checked out (yes they were sitting right in front of me).  Now that is worrisome that I do not recognise books that I have recently read.

But it is not all bad losing your memory, the upside is that I often forget that I am losing my (uh) memory and ignorance is truly bliss.

Inflation is bad

If I ever get too confident in my intellectual abilities or quick wit or general cleverness – all I have to do is review my old notes from Economics because one day after 5 hours of lecture the only notes I had were “Inflation is bad” (true story).

So now I find myself 2 years later sitting in a packed lecture theatre face to face w my old economics professor, John McDermott, and I am a little nervous.  My nervousness prompted me to take better notes which involved me knocking over my full (and open) mug of tea and then wiping it up w the sleeve of my jumper as people around me rolled their eyes (also true story).

When he walked in an excited mummer tittered around the stand-room-only venue.  He is a little like a rock star – really all economists are.  They are this brilliant combination of the Man behind the Curtain who secretly controls the (economic) world and the incredibly charismatic storyteller that has you drinking the Koolaid as soon as he describes how financial alchemists and “NINJas” (no incomes, no jobs) brought down the housing markets and most of the world’s economies.  Economists are the modern day philosopher-warriors, like archaeology’s Indy Jones, Alan Greenspan and crew introduced concepts such as central banks, interest rates, free markets, and yes inflation to the masses whilst pulling the levers and predicting/controlling economic behaviours.

Economics is a difficult discipline and most of us are not particularly financially literate, which makes economists even more mysterious and appealing.  They are seers of economic trends reading world events like fortune-tellers read tea leaves.  The difference being that they only give their prophecies after the fact.  But while you are in their presence, they are rock stars and they make you feel like world economies as well as your own little nest egg are in capable hands, from financial crisis hope eternal springs of record setting markets and sustainable growth (you know 1 – 3% because inflation is still bad) -  which is a wonderful feeling.

Rock on! (and pay no attention to that man behind the curtain)

Timing is the new Location

You know 40 is the new 30.  Brown is the new black (or is orange now the new brown?).   So I say that timing is the new location.  Proximity, relation, relevance these have now surpassed mere place-based traits.  Location, location, location – hardly – now the rally cry should be timing, timing, timing.  And for me the wrong time is the new wrong place.

It is fair to say that it is occasionally challenging for me to stop being a technology advocate (evangelist?) and remember that I am an objective, impartial researcher. Today however, my irritation with technology and technology implementation far out-weighed my love affair with the digital. Our division’s IT decided to migrate our exchange mailboxes to new servers (and network?) on the 4th day of the term.  Four days into the busiest week of the entire year.  The communication has been minimal and there was heaps of confusion today as people struggled to figure out how and where to find our current email (and use it!) while we are undergoing the change.

So what’s the big deal?  Anybody who has been around the technology block has been through a similar situation at least a dozen times and it usually involves data loss and 20 hour days.  But for me, it was this on top of a blown motherboard which left my laptop dead for almost 2 weeks and then 2 more days of not being able to get on the division network because “changing your motherboard has unregistered your laptop and you will need to re-register to gain network access”  – aaaaaaaah!

In the middle of this I am advocating for the use of computer-mediated social networking (i.e. Facebook or something similar) to facilitate community development for the SoB (that’s school of business) postgraduates.  Do I need to rethink this or am I over-reacting to the techno-frak-up-trifecta?  Help – time is of the essence.

Looking for tools to model blog conversations

As I start my analysis of blog posts and comments – I can see I am going to need some method of organising and graphically representing the conversations. I have been looking at a couple of tools like NodeXL, but need to capture the sender/receiver relationship as well as the message/post/comment and the time/chronology.

Any thoughts?

Losing (and finding) my religion

Over the past few weeks I have been in search of a methodology – or more correctly my methodology. I have found the search to be a spiritual journey – both an external investigation of theories and a personal introspection of my values and beliefs.  That sounds a bit melodramatic – but it is a pretty accurate description of how it feels.  I was in a bit of  a panic a while back (no surprises there) about how to analyse the conversations and behaviours in blogging communities (lets just assume for a mo that I can actually identify blog communities).  Most blogging research uses either SNA (social network analysis) of the nodes and links or content analysis of surveys and interviews.

I spent a bit of time coming to terms w SNA, content analysis and even discourse analysis – in the end realising that none of those felt right.  I keep coming back to the feeling that to understand the motivations and behaviours of members of a blog community, I need to be as true as possible to their (our) world.  As I struggle w how to remain true to this environment while objectively researching it – I thought of a term that Aussie director Baz Luhrmann uses “real artificiality”.

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) and now blog research often suffers from an inferiority complex.  With no face-to-face (FTF) interaction, it is often seen as a poor imitation of real life (RL).  But blog communities are not an imitation (artificial reality) of RL.  They are in fact real artificialities, that is completely constructed realities in their own right which allow members/inhabitants to have a natural experience of that reality (not RL).

So I have returned to ethnography as my methodology/philosophy (although I am still trying to understand ethonomethodology).  As part of that, trying to stay true to my overarching philosophy as I find the tools/techniques/methods for analysing and making sense of what I have observed – I try to approach it as a blog community member.  One of the ways that this paradigm shift changes my methods is that instead of fixating on categorising, ordering, and grouping text – I am trying to tag the conversation threads, themes, and topics in order to view the behaviours through blogging eyes.

Well that is where I am at the mo.  I could probably write on and on about this – I think I am feeling a bit euphoric about completing the first draft of my lit review (yuck – glad that is behind me) and having my laptop Xena back.

A Dun-din State of Mind

I could bore you with my long list of reasons/excuses for not blogging this month, but I haven’t got the energy to dig up that list right now. In fact, if I did keep a list, it would be on my laptop, Xena (yes I named her), which is still dead – no thanks to Dell.

I have spent a Hellish two weeks (yes count um – two weeks!) dealing Dell technical support.  The sad story actually started last year about 6 months after I bought her.  I was right at the middle of my MBA dissertation and under a huge amount of stress.  I saved backups religiously, but always on my internal harddrive (you can see where this is going).  So of course when the video started flickering and then the motherboard failed (number 1) - I freaked out.  Really freaked.

I managed to get my documents off the harddrive and the service guy replaced the motherboard (number 2) and then the next day again because that one had faulty USB ports (number 3).  The USB ports were still flakey, but she basically worked, so I didn’t pay much attention until a few months ago.

It is also worth mentioning that my friend bought the same laptop (Xora – yes she names stuff too) about six months after me and has a similar tale of woe.  There is a major design flaw with the XPS 1330 where the motherboard over heats and blows out the video and other bits that live on the motherboard.  Dell’s solution has been to update the bios to have the fan running all of the time in a desparate attempt to keep the thing cool – but it still tends to fail about every 6 months to one year.  Thank God for extended warranties!

Anyway, I now recognise the signs of failure and have an external harddrive for backup – but I am still incredibly dependent on Xena for my thesis because I can only really write on her (excuse number 5 one why I haven’t blogged btw).  So the USB ports really started misbehaving to the point that they were practically unusuable and I decided (heavy sigh) to contact Dell.  After a few emails of “troubleshooting” instructions, my video started to flicker and I knew that Xena’s motherboard was near the end.  It died last week and the service technician came out and replaced it (number 4), but that one didn’t work either and that is really when the fun began.

Since then I have been at my wits end, because apparently the Dell technicians in Oz, India, Singapore or who knows where? – do not know the difference between Christchurch and Dunedin.  My replacement motherboard (number 5) was sent to Christchurch and for the past week I have been trying to explain that (1) Dunedin is not in Christchurch and (2) Dunedin is not a state and (3) Dunedin is not pronounced “Dun-din”.

Dell claims that all will be well on Tuesday (yeah, right!), so I guess for one more weekend I will be without my Xena experiencing a Dun-din state of mind.

I can’t believe I live in New Zealand

I just returned home from an amazing Waitangi Day/birthday weekend in Akaroa with my friends and family. The weather was fabulous (a wee too hot actually), the town was lovely, the company was just perfect. It is times like these when I have the little epiphany that I actually live here. It is easy to forget in the throws of the postgraduate blues when everything seems bleak and pointless that life is actually pretty darn good. I live in an incredible place with awesome people. I get to read and discuss things that are very interesting to me. If I play my cards right, I’ll never have a 9-to-5 job again.  Yet, I still can’t believe that I live in New Zealand – life is good.

And that is all I have to say about that.

Virtual communities and virtual blogging

I think my best blog posts are “written” in my head as I walk to school in the morning.  By the time I have had my coffee, read my email, and settle down to get some work done – poof – I can’t even remember what I was going to write about.  For the past couple of days, though, I have been thinking about a comment from my last post on the characteristics of blog communities – so I have been hiding from my blog because I don’t have a good response.  It is my own personal $64K question:

What are the traits of blog communities and are they a mechanism for knowledge conversion?

For the next few posts I am going to try and discuss this question, if not answer it.  So for today, I would like to talk about the time dimension of blog communities.  Blogs are kind of funny beasts compared to RL because members interact with each other asychronously, coming and going as they please.  Very different from RL conversations with members of a place-based community.  Imagine asking someone a question and then having them walk away and answer you three days later.  Sometimes blogs remind me of the little notes on the fridge for my family.  You can never count on them getting read when you need them to.  I have learned not to leave time-sensitive notes, because if they do get read, it is usually way too late.  I read (and write) blogs the same way.  I have a routine, as I drink my morning tea, I skim through the RSS feeds.  Skimming the couple dozen blogs I subscribe to, although occasionally taking more time for a deeper read of an interesting topic or discussion.  I think both the behaviours, regular contact with occasional immersion contribute to developing and sustaining a blog community.

In the blogs in which I feel a sense of community, I need both the consistent contact that comes from regular posting and those bursts of activity around hot topics.  It is a little like my neighbourhood community.  I walk every day along the same streets.  It gives me a sense of familiarity with the houses and people, but not much of an emotional connection.  One day when I was walking home from school, though, a car lost its load on a steep hill.  People stopped and looked and helped until the situation was resolved.  During that period I talked to some other people in the neighbourhood that I hadn’t seen or stopped to interact with before.  After the event, I felt a greater sense of community.  I had a shared history with other members.  I could identify other members.  I had a personal connection to that street because of the event.  I think those same aspects of time hold true for blog communities as well.

One characteristic of time is quite different in blog communities from place-based ones.  In blogs, sense of time is almost always relative.  RL which is not only full of sychronous interactions, but is also quite aware of the date and time such as “it’s noon – let’s go to lunch”, “It is Waitangi Day – it is a holiday”, “it is 5pm – time to go home”, etc.  Blogs postings are either recent or old always in relation to the day you are viewing them.  Or they are newer or older in comparison to the other posts.  It doesn’t really matter if I someone commented on 31 January to a post, but more importantly, it has been 4 days since they commented and I have still not replied.  Because blog time is relative, it means that there is a flow to blog conversations.  Members of the community interact within these ebbs and flows of slow and peak activity.  However, the connection seems to be quite tenous and if someone gets out of sync (either from infrequent posting or reading) they can easily lose their sense of community and no longer be a member.  Like the punch line of Little Bunny Foo Foo – “Hair today, goon tomorrow”.  How ephemeral blog communities can be.

Recognising Community

I have been reading (and writing) quite a bit about blog communities over the past month and couldn’t help but notice the parallels to my RL (real life) communities.  It first struck me a few days back when I was dodging the tourists in the Octagon as I walked home from school.  Last summer I spent the height of tourist season as a tourist myself on the North Island, so this is the first year I really experienced it here.  I am not sure how often the cruise ships arrive, but it seems that every few days bus after bus descends on Dunedin from the port full to the brim with tourists.  They wander the streets, cameras in hand, in tightly knit groups.  Often with name tags and matching bags too.  In a 10 block walk down George Street, I will be asked for directions once or twice every day.

One of the key features of developing a sense of community is established boundaries which define not only who is in the community, but almost more importantly – who is not in the community.  So knowing where things are and not having to follow a map is a community boundary – Dunedin-ites are part of this community and tourists are not.  But it is more than just that because I learned my way around after a few weeks (ok months) of living here – but have only come to see myself as part of the community in the past year.  So what else gives me a sense of community here?

I remember the first time I went grocery shopping and ran into someone I knew.  When I got back to the flat, I remember thinking – “wow, this is really home for me now” (followed a few months later by – “I need to remember to brush my hair before going to the store because you ~always~ run into people – Dunedin is a small place).  So a network of identifiable members, must also be quite important.

For me, though, it all started to feel like my community, when I could speak the language.  I am a native English speaker, so it wasn’t about just learning a language – it was about understanding how to use the language to communicate – really speaking the language.  Some things were fairly simple to “translate” or pick up.  I take out the rubbish, not the garbage.  Organisation has an “s” and no “z” (pronounced zed).  I take holidays, not vacations.  There are  hundreds more that I learned over that first year, that I can’t even remember now.  But as anyone who has learned another language knows, it isn’t just about the words – it is about meaning.  So in my second year I started to understand how (and why) things work the way they do.  I got a job, became a permanent resident, got a driver’s license, learned to drive a car on the left (properly w/o terrifying the other occupants), learned the national anthem, and the rules of rugby and cricket (well the important ones) among hundreds more.  Through my personal experiences and relationships with other members of the community, I now have a common history, language, rituals, and experiences.

I still call Washington home, but now I call Dunedin home too.