Tag Archives: Life

Happy Birthday Synthesis of Thought! A look back at the last two years

19 Mar

This blog is two years old today! A year ago today I wrote a blog post reflecting over this blogs first year, so I thought it would be fun to do another “52 weeks, 84 posts later” post.

I’ve been some what inactive with posting the last two months, but I actually miss blogging so I’ll be making an effort to do so after the SfAA Annual Meeting next week. That’s something that has changed for me in the last year- I really enjoy blogging and feel like I have stuff to write about.

When I started this blog I really wasn’t sure what to write about. I was living in Southern Georgia working as a textbook manager at a college bookstore during my year off in between undergrad and grad. I was about to attend the Annual Meeting of the SfAA in Vancouver, Canada and with the strong encouragement from my boyfriend I started this blog in the hopes of the SfAA giving me something to write about. When I left for Canada I hadn’t really thought about grad school and I came home with the idea of applying to the University of North Texas.

Now, I’m in the middle of my fourth semester at UNT and applying for summer internships. UNT requires students to do a practicum in lieu of thesis, so I’ll be looking to do my practicum during the rest of 2008 and graduate in 2009. It’s fun for me to look back through old blog posts to see the evolution of my focus, building of confidence in my posts, and to remember the places I’ve been and things I’ve done. When this blog started I didn’t even know I’d be in grad school. I had NO idea that I’d start the SfAA Podcasts. I’m not even sure I knew where I’d be living.

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My third semester at UNT is wrapping up…

15 Nov

My classes are winding down and the end of this semester will be much easier than the last two. I’m taking Organizational Behavior (elective) and the UNT department’s required pre-practicum course.

The pre-practicum course is meant to prepare us for our practicum. Master’s students at UNT are required to do an applied research project for a client in lieu of thesis. I like this approach because it provides far more practical experience than writing a research paper. The course has finally got to the point where we discuss our practicums, etc. Up until recently we’ve focused more on professional development (resume, networking, etc.) This has been helpful, but I have to admit I would have preferred for the course to focus more on our practicums. The course is being taught by someone who is not part of the faculty because the usual professor for the course is not teaching this semester. I’m not sure how different the course would be if we had the UNT professor – my guess is that it would focus more on the practicum.

I have to write a practicum proposal as the final assignment for the course. I wrote a project statement for it last week (think 30 second elevator talk for your project on paper).
I think the project proposal will be a bit difficult because the very idea of doing this without consulting with the client is absurd to me, but this is more for practice than for us to actually use.

I don’t have an organizational behavior exam, just our typical homework assignment, group work, and multiple choice test. Having just the one project due will be a refreshing change from the last year!

And, my project over winter break is to go back and tag old posts about UNT as such because I’ve since learned that people find those posts interesting and/or find them while doing searches about the online program.

Communities of Practice & the internet

14 Nov

Yesterday I did a post about ‘Communities of Practice’ (CoP) that I feel could be of interest to applied/practicing anthropologists, anthropologists in the tech field, and design anthropologists.

I created the list as part of an assignment for my pre-practicum course. The professor wanted us to find professional organizations that would serve as our CoP post graduation. For the sake of the assignment, professional organizations were pseudo-synonymous with CoP and vice versa. Professional organizations (the AAA and SfAA would be examples) are those that charge for membership and in return you receive benefits such as publications, and also networking opportunities.

I’m wondering how relevant these professional organizations really are in the age of the internet. There are many, many social networks that can be used to network both socially and professionally. Such networks are very accessible (if you have the internet), are free to join, take as much (or little) effort as you want to maintain, and there are no face-to-face conferences for you to be tempted to attend. Virtual social networks can also be a great way for shy or timid people to begin networking or for people to get to know people in other cities, etc.

Now, these social networks do not offer tangible membership benefits immediately, nor do they guarantee such results BUT if you maintain, nurture, and give to your network you can receive many benefits!

Will social networks replace what professional organizations have to offer? Well, the beautiful thing about social networks is that they are what you want them to be. If you are looking for professional development, connections, inspirations, relationships, job opportunities, etc. then find people to add that can offer those to you – and make sure you give back to them!

I do belong to professional organizations, but I’m not sure if I’ll renew my membership to most. I get more out of my social networks than those professional organizations ;)

Met someone in my del.icio.us network in face-to-face life!

13 Nov

I’m a big fan of del.icio.us and while I don’t use it as actively as I used to, it’s still one of my favorite sites. Well, a couple of years ago I wrote a post about “Mavens Hanging out on Del.icio.us“, when I went to del.icio.us the post myself, I found that someone had beaten me to it (by the way, I remember that because it was one of the most flattering things to me- someone else read it and bookmarked it!). I added the person to my network, Danafu, he reciprocated that, and throughout the years we’ve received many links from each other.

While I was at EPIC, someone came up to me and introduced himself as “Danafu.” Sure enough, it was Danafu from my del.icio.us network! We had never met face-to-face before, and I didn’t even know he would be at the conference. We had lunch together, and much like I’d expect given our shared interest in links, we had a very good conversation and had many similar interests. Hi Dana!!

It really was a neat coincidence!

I noticed that someone else in my del.icio.us network added “met her at EPIC” in the notes field of one of their bookmarks (a company’s website “about us” page). I didn’t meet him at EPIC, but it’s neat that he was there too!

Communities of Practice for Applied/Practicing (Design) Anthropologists (with a focus on the tech industry)

13 Nov

I’m currently taking a Pre-Practicum course at UNT. The course is meant to prepare us for doing our practicum, which is essentially a full applied anthropology research project in which we work directly with a client and it is in lieu of a master’s thesis (read practical, real world experience ;) .

This course has focused on professional development; resume, 30 second elevator speech of personal interests/experience, a research paper about your field of interest, grant writing, IRB, types of anthropological research, and communities of practice (CoP).

For the sake of the course, ‘communities of practice’ were essentially professional organizations e.g., SfAA or AAA. I felt this definition was rather limiting and somewhat ill-informed in the age of the internet (doesn’t account for social networks, etc.) but that was the definition we were told to work from. So, for the course, I compiled a list of CoP’s that I felt would be relevant to me (design anthropologist in the tech field). I thought I’d share the list with you since I spent so much time on it :) I’ve broken it into sections and put a “*” to denote organizations I belong to.

The idea of CoP is that you’ll have places to network, to stay informed about current trends, etc. and you’ll receive the benefits that said membership offers, such as newsletters, etc. However, a CoP is what you make of it and the reasons, benefits, etc. probably will vary by person to person.

Professional Organizations of Interest to Applied & Practicing Anthropologists

*American Anthropological Association (AAA)

*Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA)

*National Association for the Practice of Anthropology (NAPA)

*National Association of Student Anthropologists (NASA)

Consortium of Practicing & Applied Anthropology Programs (COPAA)

Local Practitioner Organizations (LPO)

Professional Organizations of Interest to Applied & Practicing Design Anthropologists

*Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA)

*AnthroDesign Listserv

Interaction Design Association (IxDA)

*Human Factors & Ergonomics Society (HFES)

Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA)

Design Research Society

User Experience Network (UXnet)

Updated December 9, 2007: This was a comment posted by a reader (to another related post) “As for your list, note that UXnet is not a professional organization like the others – you cannot join it as a member (only as a volunteer). UXnet is more about helping you make sense of all of the user experience CoP out there.” Thanks Keith, I appreciate your correction!

Professional Organizations of Interest to Applied & Practicing Design Anthropologists in Tech

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

ACM SIGCHI
you have to be a member of ACM

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Playing tourist in Florida

10 Nov

My boyfriend’s parents are down in Florida visiting for the weekend from Kentucky. It’s the first time they’ve come to visit us and it’s the first time they’ve been to Florida (or at least this area) in 20 years. Now, I’ve lived in Florida for 21 years, but I’ve only lived on the West Coast (Tampa) for 3 years, so this area isn’t as familiar to me as the East Coast. Today we took his parents over to Clearwater Beach and south to St. Pete Beach. We’re pretty familiar with that area because that’s the direction we usually drive in when we’re out on our random afternoon drives, but those are leisurely and we’re not out being tourists. Today we were being tourists, we were out to show them the touristy side of Florida (but not too touristy because that’s not our thing). I realized today that it’s incredibly weird for me to do the touristy thing in Florida and I’m not really all that good at it. I’ve rarely (like maybe once or twice) had to play hostess to visitors and since I’ve lived here my whole life I’ve experienced all of Florida and most of it was before the age of 10. Once I realized this, I started to wonder if I could begin to look at Florida differently. Tomorrow will be another day of playing hostess, so I’ll give it a try. It’s a lesson in (re)learning to be the wide-eyed learner in an environment that is so familiar because in doing so you’ll see many things that are taken for granted.

Birthdays and social networks

10 Nov

Ah, the post for November 9th is a couple of hours late because I spent yesterday sleeping and being miserable on the couch ;) We celebrated my birthday just a tad too much and something I ate didn’t agree with me either.

So I’m 25 now. I’m not weird about my age- if someone asks me how old I am, I tell them, and I never dread a birthday or anything of the like. I do know women around my age that are like that, and that’s fine- it’s just not my style. The only reservation I had about turning 25 was that I’m still in school. I always thought that I’d be out of school and in a career by 25 (who knows why I picked that age?!). Upon thinking about it, I realized I was holding myself to standards that I ignorantly set when I was a teenager, and I let it go. :)

This year’s birthday was particularly fun for me because I got so many birthday wishes from so many people! I’m active on Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace and I got 10 or so messages on each on Thursday! It was so fun to login and see messages from people, some of the people I know mainly from the networks (read not f2f) and others I’ve known since elementary school. It helps that Myspace and Facebook announce your friends’ birthdays.

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Busy day!

8 Nov

Today’s post is extremely short because…. it’s my birthday! Today, my boyfriend and I are celebrating my 25th birthday! Earlier we went to dinner at my favorite restaurant, and now we are on our way to our favorite little Irish pub. I’ll make up for the short post today, tomorrow! Have a wonderful night all!

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This conference habit is getting expensive!!

6 Nov

I’m not going to get into the fact that conferences are expensive, nor will spend anytime on the irrelevance of conferences, the rise of “unconferences,” or any other critique of them. I have my opinions of conferences, and for the most part it seems a bit contradictory that I’ll be attending so many… but I’m a student, I get discounts (I’ll take advantage while I can ;)

Today, Tim and I registered for the Future of Web Apps (FOWA) in Miami, Florida. Part of our discussion to go was simply because it’s so close to home for us (home is Tampa, FL) and the affordable cost of the trip (early registration is only $150 for non-students, $50 for students). But, I’m looking forward to FOWA because it’s not anthropology – it’ll help me to expand my horizons a bit. Plus, it’s neat that Tim (total geek) and me (totally awesome) can go to the same events and enjoy them (we went to BarCamp Orlando and had a lot of fun). BarCamp Miami is during FOWA, so we’ll be there too :)

Two weeks after FOWA, Tim and I will be headed to Austin, TX for SXSW. We’ll be there for the Interactive part, so again, it’s cool we can go together (we’ll get totally different things from the sessions) and I’ll be expanding my horizons. Really excited about SXSW.

Two weeks after SXSW, I’ll be in Memphis, TN for the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) Meeting. I always have a good time at the SfAA Meetings, and I’ll be doing the SfAA Podcasts again in Memphis (much news about that project – I’ll post about it soon!).

Late February – early April is going to be super busy! EPIC is in Denmark next year… I hope to be there – but who knows! I’m currently taking a break from working on our paper for the American Anthropological Assoc. conference (AAA) this year in DC – that takes place at the end of November.

I’m really not looking forward to being busy or being away from home that much – BUT, like I said, I’ll take advantage of the student discounts and University funding while it lasts :)

Do you tweet?

4 Nov

I”m fairly certain that Twitter has gained in popularity since the last time I posed this question, and I know I have started using it a lot more. So, do you guys tweet? If so, come find me!

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