I am so behind...

Even though I'm not teaching as much this term, I am just buried in work. I'm co-chair a conference that takes place in two weeks and will so glad when it's over. What a headache. Plus I am trying to work on some grant proposals, sent in the two IR 9.0 proposals, and just sent off a chapter proposal. Whew. On the up side, if the conference and chapter proposals are accepted, I will have a lull on those fronts until summer at least.

Speaking of summer, I will be headed to the Netherlands again for more interviews. I've been doing some via email, but I also need to go on site to visit some of the new media programs/centers. I may also give some talks, but that's up in the air right now. Whatever else happens, I will see all my Rotterdam friends again, and finally (I hope) meet Brenno de Winter in person, plus a new acquaintance, Elfi Ettinger. Elfi is on one of the panels I put together and teaches at the University of Twente.

In spite of being so busy, I spent most of the day in a workshop about writing successful grants, except for the last two hours in which I heard Clark Buckner speak about "Autonomy, Plurality, and Play in Contemporary Art." It was a good talk, and the workshop was informative, but I'm just exhausted now. More later.

Research Update

Let's see...first the bad news: didn't get the Franklin Grant. It's really competitive and I know I did the best proposal I could, so while I wish I'd gotten it, I don't feel so bad. I talked with some colleagues and the consensus seems to be that getting grants is really almost impossible until after you've published a book. I wonder if that's really true.

Of course the grant was intended to support a book project, so now the question is how to publish a book faster without having to to travel as much. I actually have good ideas about that. One is that I am already collecting a lot of great interviews via email with some of the women I've met in the Netherlands, and I'm getting so much that I think I could do a book just about their experiences, which would be cool. The other, easiest (I hope) approach is an edited volume. I'm proposing two panels for the next meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), which is Internet Research 9.0: Rethinking Community, Rethinking Place. That conference will be held in Copenhagen next fall. So I already have 6 proposals that look really strong and I know of at least a few other people who might be interested in submitting papers/chapters. So I hope I can interest a publisher in that idea in the next few months.

If I can get one of these accepted, I could get one or both finished by next August and then have a much better shot at grants. Plus, I could then come up for promotion to full professor early. Maybe in just 3 or 4 years, instead of the usual five. And of course I'd still be working on my original book idea, which I could probably complete in about 2-3 years, depending on when I can get time and funding for the longer trips to the NL.