7.12 The new plan

We spent the first half of today's meeting talking through the new plan .  You all listened patiently to the long story of trying to settle the technical issues for our project, which I will not repeat here. Rather, I will post an outline of how we will resolve all obstacles.

1.) Problem: finding a host for our draft web texts.  Maria made quite clear that the University would not host any part of our project at any point during its development.

Solution:  I plan to pay for hosting during the time period when we are developing our prospectus for Utah State Press.  When (if) the project is accepted, I inquire as to whether they are open to hosting the project during the development phase.  If they are not - I will pay for the remaining development time, an USP will host the completed project.  I will also look into requesting funds (finding a grant***) that will pay for hosting.

2) Problem: technological support in the form of software and individuals with strong skills in HTML (standards compliance and basic accessibility). CSS, Java Script, Flash, and PHP.

Solution: We are in the process of working out an arrangement with Academic Technology where Sergio would act as a co-editor (with me) for the collection. He would act as the code-editor/advisor for the web texts, working with/overseeing any student programers from Computer Science who we might invite to participate.  Among other things, he (and his collaborators) would create a basic template for the pages of the web text, and style sheet with styles which we would than use to designate the different parts of our text. Sergio would travel with us to conferences where we present on developing web text ethnographies.  We have not yet defined the role of computer science students.  They may participate in an independent study and receive credit for their work, they may be indicated either as chapter co-authors, or given credit as technical authors for code, or they may be paid (pending on funding for our project).  Software and work space (computers) will be available at Academic Technology.

3) Problem: getting a proposal to USP in by September. 

Solution: we are going to shoot for turning our prospectus along with two sample chapters in by January. (see working timeline in next post)

4)  Problem: $$$$  
Solution:  Well - really we will just keep working as we are and hope we can pull something in.  I will apply for funding from two sources.  The ACLS digital innovation fellowship (due Sept 24) previously mentioned, and a CCCC Research Initiative Grant (Due October 3).  And I will keep looking for other sources.

Focus for our book: how we open up new theory and method within existing research
As with every meeting,  we spent some  time in the ongoing discussion (lots of me talking) about digital ethnography, ethnographic research presented as web text and methods for "doing" ethnographic research = and how our work is going to fit into what is out there.

This was a really long post so I broke it into three.  For other features of the new plan (focus of the book and working timeline) see the parenthetical links.

What we did for the rest of the meeting.
My notes for the rest of the meeting became increasingly useless (I have only posted sample notes from discussion of the first presenter = Luis; pasted in below).  The problem was I got so interested in your ideas and clicking through your posts that I forgot to take notes. 

I am hoping someone else has a better play-by-play record of what we did.  Let me know in the comments!

In general - you took turns describing work-so-far on your project = a show and tell of the different ways you were imagining documenting + analyzing the life/ethos of your group.  These presentations were AWESOME and so was the discussion surrounding the presentations = ideas for opening up, supplementing, re-casting the data or analytic method in light of what digital technologies (and the many easy aps available on line) can do.  Click through the blogs for more details.

Notes on Luis
Currently activities
Completed IRB

Mapped out interview materials
Talking to friends
Writing down notes about  the kinds of people/activities on tumblr
What are their motivations
Profiling self as a user
Will use this writing as a template for what to ask other users (in interview or show&tell format)

Plans:
Participants will walk Luis through their blogs + on-screen connections (documented as combo screen cast + video)
Plans to produce show and tell of (other) physical spaces where participants blog/spend time (either produced by the particpant – or by Luis)
Might give participants their choice of medium (writing, video, photos etc)

Ideas from group discussion

Create map of who is connected to whom (in terms of re-blogs & comments)
Creat map of who is connected to whom in terms of how they describe their relationships
Describe/gather information on/stories about participants’  presence somewhere else (other affinity groups) before (while?) they went to tumblr