smirby's posterous

Dear josh... (response to @josh_greenberg)

Dear Josh

 

Oddly enough, when you asked about how I use twitter for research, my first inclination was NOT to tweet about it. I picked up my laptop and wrote this letter, which I will then put on a blog post and then tweet about.  Which kind of tells you how I use Twitter, I guess.

 

Twitter is definitely part of my research life. My uses are literature review and sharing.

 

Twitter is involved in my literature review, in two senses: First, there are those links that someone suggests that I wouldn’t otherwise have found. I have subscriptions to the RSS feed for all of the main journals and most of the blogs of other researchers but you can’t cover everything. Twitter supplies that other stuff. Second, there is the ‘what’s going on in the world’ stuff. At least for me, it is important to be up on technologies and their uses. Twitter provides that, too. I follow a mix of friends, international scholars, and pundits. I get more than enough “grist” for my mill.

 

Twitter is also part of my communication practice. I use twitter to comment on the world around me and sometimes that gets me media attention. I use twitter to point to blog posts or publicize my book (http://bit.ly/flewsmith) and I use it to point to the research of others, including my students. This type of public communication goes a long way of bridging the divide between general public and scholars that has led to the notion of an ‘ivory tower’ of knowledge.

 

Lastly, I use twitter for conversations - as you did in asking for our views on using twitter - and quite often these are around events that spark a lot of ideas. Conferences are a good example of this. So are major world events. Some people might wonder why someone would tweet at a conference but there is value in it, I think, for at least two reasons. There is the potential for dialogue and discussion with those who are co-present or those who are far away. There is also an archival element, it is like taking notes in public and it can be simply a way of keeping track of ideas that you hope to come back to sometime.

 

I hope this helps.

 

Oh yeah. I often tweet about silly things, personal things. I am not immune to the urge to share the mundane. This might not be the most edifying use of a communication medium, but if someone told you that typewriters could only be used for writing edifying prose, would anybody type anything? I hope we can all afford a bit of drivel in our lives. At the very least is shows others that we are human, too.

 

...r

e-Research: social media for social sciences

Great resource for researchers. From Pena-Lopez' blog: http://ictlogy.net/

e-Research: social media for social sciences

On January 12, 2012, I spoke at a research seminar on how to benefit from the use of social media to enhance research, both in the stage of being aware of the advancement of one’s discipline, and in the stage of diffusing one’s own research production.

The seminar had three different parts.

During the first part, I provided an introduction to social media, where I mainly explained the main ways that information can be shared (and, thus, also monitored): RSS feeds, widgets and open APIs. Put short, RSS feeds share preset bits of information (e.g. an article, a list of articles, etc.), widgets share preset bits of information plus a preset way of presenting it (a list of last tweets you can embed on a website, a like button, etc.) and open APIs allow an external user to ask a database for customized collections of data (e.g. put on a map the last tweets on a given subject).

During the second part — the core of the seminar — I went through an imaginary typical research process, from the moment one has an idea that wants to explore until the research is over and a research output can be presented. I draw two parallel timelines where I complemented the traditional way of doing research (on the right in the presentation) and how this could be enhanced with social media (on the left in the presentation). I stressed the idea that social media is a complement and never a substitute of the traditional ways of doing research. That is, tweeting about a topic or writing on an academic blog should not stop anyone from attending conferences or writing academic papers.

The last part of the seminar was a debate about the pros and cons of using social media to do research.

There are four points I would like to highlight from that debate and that were directly or indirectly asked to me during our talk.

  1. What is the basic, fundamental tool: RSS feeds. Period. It is for me very important to be aware of the fact that, with the help of RSS feeds, you don’t have to look for information, but information will get to you. And this is a significant leap in reaching higher stages of efficiency and efficacy in managing information.
  2. If you are a knowledge worker and you are not present in the information landscape, you are not. Having a personal/research group/research project website is not an option, but a must.
  3. Where to start from? It depends. Begin with a part of your research. If you are in the stage of gathering information, set up a monitoring/listening strategy: identify your actors and subscribe to their blogs, twitter accounts, slideshare accounts, etc. If you are in the stage of diffusing your research production, set up a diffusion strategy, upload your papers and slides, comment on others’ websites (pointing back to yours, etc.). Managing efficiently your bibliography (i.e. with a bibliographic manager) is also a way to begin managing your own information/knowledge.
  4. Think digital, be digital. e-Research is not about adding a digital layer, and, thus, adding an extra amount of work, but about changing your working paradigm, about levering all the work you are already doing on digital support.

Following you can find and download the slides I used. You can also download a book chapter where I explain in detail the building of a Personal Research Portal. There is a collection I maintain, The Personal Research Portal: related works which gathers everything I have written or said about this topic.

Downloads:

logo of Prezi presentation
Prezi slides:

Peña-López, I. (2011). e-Research: social media for social sciences. Research seminar at the Open University of Catalonia. January 12, 2012. Barcelona: ICTlogy.

logo of PDF file
Slides as a PDF:

Peña-López, I. (2011). e-Research: social media for social sciences. Research seminar at the Open University of Catalonia. January 12, 2012. Barcelona: ICTlogy.

logo of PDF file
Book chapter:

Peña-López, I. (2009). “The personal research portal”. In Hatzipanagos, S. & Warburton, S. (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Social Software and Developing Community Ontologies, Chapter XXVI, 400-414. Hershey: IGI Global.

Seth's Blog: The chance of a lifetime

 Seth Godin's blog, if you don't read it, is really worth following. Usually the posts are even shorter than this one, and therefore time well spent...

– A A +               G T H V     

A friend asked me the other day, “…given the sorry state of so much in the world, what’s possible to look forward to?”

The state isn’t sorry. It’s wide open.

Interest rates are super low, violence is close to an all time low, industries are being remade and there’s more leverage for the insurgent outsider than ever before in history.

The status quo is taking a beating, there’s no question about it. That’s what makes it a revolution.

I said this nine years ago and I stand by it. In the years since I wrote this essay, people have started social movements, built billion dollar companies, toppled dictators, found new jobs, learned new skills and generally made a ruckus.

Go!

Hindsight is 20/20. People are already looking back on the 1990s and wishing that they had had more courage. When you look back on the 2000s, what will you have to say for yourself? [The following is reprinted from 9 years ago]. Here’s a question that you should clip out and tape to your bathroom mirror. It might save you some angst 15 years from now. The question is, What did you do back when interest rates were at their lowest in 50 years, crime was close to zero, great employees were looking for good jobs, computers made product development and marketing easier than ever, and there was almost no competition for good news about great ideas? Many people will have to answer that question by saying, “I spent my time waiting, whining, worrying, and wishing.” Because that’s what seems to be going around these days. Fortunately, though, not everyone will have to confess to having made such a bad choice. While your company has been waiting for the economy to rebound, Reebok has launched Travel Trainers, a very cool-looking lightweight sneaker for travelers. They are selling out in Japan — from vending machines in airports! While Detroit’s car companies have been whining about gas prices and bad publicity for SUVs (SUVs are among their most profitable products), Honda has been busy building cars that look like SUVs but get twice the gas mileage. The Honda Pilot was so popular, it had a waiting list. While Africa’s economic plight gets a fair amount of worry, a little startup called ApproTEC is actually doing something about it. The new income that its products generate accounts for 0.5% of the entire GDP of Kenya. How? It manufactures a $75 device that looks a lot like a StairMaster. But it’s not for exercise. Instead, ApproTEC sells the machine to subsistence farmers, who use its stair-stepping feature to irrigate their land. People who buy it can move from subsistence farming to selling the additional produce that their land yields — and triple their annual income in the first year of using the product. While you’ve been wishing for the inspiration to start something great, thousands of entrepreneurs have used the prevailing sense of uncertainty to start truly remarkable companies. Lucrative Web businesses, successful tool catalogs, fast-growing PR firms — all have started on a shoestring, and all have been profitable ahead of schedule. The Web is dead, right? Well, try telling that to Meetup.com, a new Web site that helps organize meetings anywhere and on any topic. It has 200,000 registered users — and counting. Maybe you already have a clipping on your mirror that asks you what you did during the 1990s. What’s your biggest regret about that decade? Do you wish that you had started, joined, invested in, or built something? Are you left wishing that you’d at least had the courage to try? In hindsight, the 1990s were the good old days. Yet so many people missed out. Why? Because it’s always possible to find a reason to stay put, to skip an opportunity, or to decline an offer. And yet, in retrospect, it’s hard to remember why we said no and easy to wish that we had said yes. The thing is, we still live in a world that’s filled with opportunity. In fact, we have more than an opportunity — we have an obligation. An obligation to spend our time doing great things. To find ideas that matter and to share them. To push ourselves and the people around us to demonstrate gratitude, insight, and inspiration. To take risks and to make the world better by being amazing. Are these crazy times? You bet they are. But so were the days when we were doing duck-and-cover air-raid drills in school, or going through the scares of Three Mile Island and Love Canal. There will always be crazy times. So stop thinking about how crazy the times are, and start thinking about what the crazy times demand. There has never been a worse time for business as usual. Business as usual is sure to fail, sure to disappoint, sure to numb our dreams. That’s why there has never been a better time for the new. Your competitors are too afraid to spend money on new productivity tools. Your bankers have no idea where they can safely invest. Your potential employees are desperately looking for something exciting, something they feel passionate about, something they can genuinely engage in and engage with. You get to make a choice. You can remake that choice every day, in fact. It’s never too late to choose optimism, to choose action, to choose excellence. The best thing is that it only takes a moment — just one second — to decide.

Before you finish this paragraph, you have the power to change everything that’s to come. And you can do that by asking yourself (and your colleagues) the one question that every organization and every individual needs to ask today: Why not be great?

View full page: sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/12/the-chance-of-a-lifetime.html

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Amazing lunch speaker at MDM today! Sean O’Reilly – CEO of Arcana Studios

Quick reminder about today's 'Passionate Lunch' guest speaker at 12

Thursday Sept 22nd

MDM GUEST – Sean O’Reilly – CEO of Arcana Studios @ 12 in classroom 1

Sean O’Reilly is an energetic and passionate visionary who has demonstrated his leadership, creativity, intelligence, humanity and resourcefulness as the founder and C.E.O. of Arcana Studios. Receiving his B.Sc. in Biology from Simon Fraser University in 1997, Sean completed his second degree in Education in 1999 from the University of British Columbia and finished his M.Sc. in Leadership and Administration at the University of Oregon in 2002. Sean is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in a Doctoral of Management Information Services and Technology.  His professional and academic experiences in transmedia has seen him guest lecture at Harvard University, the University of Southern California (USC), the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Simon Fraser University (SFU).  He is currently teaching a course in transmedia under the UCLA Screenwriters program.  In 2008 he won the Top 40 Under 40 award from the city of Vancouver, and in 2011 Sean won Caldwell’s Top 40 Under 40 in Canada.  

As a lifelong fan of comic books, Sean’s dream was to become a comic book creator.  In 2004, Sean realized that dream by creating Arcana Studios, a comic book and graphic novel publisher. Sean took his studio from a one-person operation to an award winning publisher with over 150 graphic novels.  Arcana now owns one of the world’s largest libraries of graphic novels and has produced books for Simon & Shuster, Harper Collins, Random House, Stone Arch Books, American Girl, KISS, Scholastic, and Arcana.

Arcana won the Shuster Award for Outstanding Publisher in 2005, as voted by the retailers and readers.  He personally authored and published the Moonbeam Award winner for Top Children’s Graphic Novel, The Clockwork Girl and The Gwaii respectively.  The Clockwork Girl was also Foreword Magazine’s Top Graphic Novel as presented at Book Expo America.  Last year, Arcana was named one of the top Manufacturers & Exporters in 2010.

Now partnered with Hollywood powerhouse United Talent Agency, Sean just wrote and produced two Lion’s Gate Films, Circle of Pain and Beatdown and he is now producing the animated feature film based on the story he wrote and published. Sean is also developing and producing Gearhead with producer Gale Anne Hurd ("The Terminator", "The Walking Dead"), Blade of Kumori with Alexandra Milchan (Sylvestor Stallone’s “Head Shot”) on Blade of Kumori, Hans Rodinoff and Hollywood Media Bridge (“Lost Boys: The Tribe”) on Raise Kane, Scott Milam (“Mother’s Day”) on Gauze, Ben Magid (“Hack/Slash”) on Trout, Howie Mandel (“Hidden Howie”) on Philosopher Rex, Terry Dougas (“The Invention of Lying”) on The Tower, Doc Wyatt (“Napoleon Dynamite”) on 100 Girls, JC Spink (“The Hangover”) on New Line’s Continuum, Adrian Askarieh (“The Hitman”) on Amnesia and he also is producing a three slate at Codeblack/Universal. Sean also produced and directed a series of original animated shows for SpikeTV called Mark of the Warrior. Sean has also produced Steven Segal’s A Dangerous Man from Paramount and SyFy’s Paradox also based on the book he published.

final evening

Wow. What a beard!

Sent from a mobile device. Please excuse brevity and typos. 


On 2011-08-23, at 9:57 PM, Brian Hydesmith <hydesmith@gmail.com> wrote:

Murray and Brian said goodbye this evening, as Murray is driving off to Toronto in the wee hours of morning. His passengers will be Gabi and Mila who are charged with navigation and keeping dad alert and entertained for the long journey. They will be missed very much by Tannis and Eliza.

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