Tiny Update on IR 9.0

Good conference so far-- seen all interesting talks, but still so so jet-lagged. Really wish I could have come a day earlier to get more rest before it all started. Also, all European colleagues seem to have lighter workloads and more travel funding than I do...

I recorded the audio of our panel; will edit and post it next week and/or possibly coordinate it with slides for a podcast.

Update...

Ok, I still have two interviews left from summer-- Brenno de Winter and Florian Cramer. Florian's was 3 hours long, and was actually recorded! So that may take several entries at least...

But I'll put that on hold, for a bit. In a week I leave for IR 9.0, the Association for Internet Researchers 9th annual meeting, which is Copenhagen this year. I got two panels accepted but they got compressed into one because they were short on rooms and we lost a panelist, though that will be a pain, but on the other hand it should be a really fun panel. Also a good one; I know the work of all the participants from articles and other conferences and I am also happy to report that they already sent me full papers, which I'll link to soon. So none of those half-assed "done on the plane the night before" slide shows here. :-)

Also, on the last weekend of September, I went to San Francisco for Arse Elektronika where I got to meet Johannes Grenzfurthner and some others from Monochrom. I also met Aaron Muszalski, who was speaking at AE, and Richard Kadrey, author and photographer, who also spoke and did a reading. I managed a short interview with Johannes and talked to Richard at length on Friday before meeting him for an interview on Saturday. --They were all great! So reports on all of that are coming up.

Unplugged

So yeah, spent all last Thursday and some of Friday wrapping that up. Yesterday I gardened--so glad to be in a place where I feel like investing some gardening energy. In Massachusetts I left a trail of gardens behind me, but not here. Coming out here, I was of course busy, but no one gardens much in Turlock and it was just disheartening to plant anything when I knew my landlord would actually get rid of it after I left, in order to return the property to the cookie cutter appearance standard in that neighborhood. So I was really happy to begin planting again, to figure out the irrigation, to start thinking about what I want it to look like later, even if we end up going elsewhere.

Today we went up to Big Trees state park to see, you guessed it, the giant trees. The girls were pretty impressed, but aren't old enough to appreciate anything 1400 years old. We also had lunch at a Microbrew and stopped at a local vineyard on the way back, the Twisted Oak Winery. This was a pretty wacky place which had rubber chickens all over (hanging from trees on the drive up, for example) and humorous roads signs as well. The wine was really quite good though, good enough that we signed up to get two bottles shipped to us every two months. --The price is discounted and we get to buy some stuff not available to the general public. I tasted one of these exclusives today, a grenache, and it was amazing, so I had to sign up.

Nice to get out of the house which still is cluttered with yet-to-be-unpacked boxes. On the other hand, what I really want to to have time (and a second car) to wander alone. Oh well. Maybe in June, when school is over.

And if you are wondering why this totally random post is in my research blog, it's because I'm about to write something in response to a discussion on the AIR list (AoIR, or Association of Internet Researchers) about unplugging or getting AFC. So this is what I was doing, and I will be referring to it later.

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.