Friday, October 07, 2005

Internet Generations 6.0 report

Here it is, the end of the second day of presentations and networking at the AoIR's Internet Generations 6.0 conference in Chicago. I'm tired but happily so. Just got back from the gala event at the Mid-America club on the 80th floor of the AoN centre building. Breathtaking view and great buffet spread too.

the mix of people here seems to be heavily slanted in favour of communications faculty, and so far I've seen a lot of presentations that were survey data and not a lot of contextualization. The surveys themselves were well done by the looks of it though, not that I'm a good person to judge, given that I'm much more into theory and tend to fall asleep in my stats classes. However, I did see a few interesting analyses of website linking practices in political campaigns and another session on mobile technology and GPS usage for cultural public education purposes in a public park in Montreal.

I've also talked to quite a few people about MA and PhD programs in the US and the UK and gotten some great pointers on schools to look into that I hadn't considered, including NorthWestern, UMinn and UWash. I got good feedback too on the CCT program at Georgetown from a few alumni (though oddly no one from CCT was here as a presenter) as well as possiblities at UTA. I've met some nice people over the last few days, including a few students that might be able to contribute to GameCODE. One person even has a semiotics background, which should make Kelly happy.

I had a good response to my own paper, which relieved and pleased me. I got a lot of encouragement to submit it for journals so I might try doing that over the Christmas holidays when other papers aren't competing for my attention. I had a decent number of requests for a copy of it so they could review it and cite it. An interest in Mary Douglas' work on anomalies per my take on her work seems to have struck a chord for a few academics interested in sociolinguistics, of all things.

One more day to go and then it's home to finish my material culture paper. Real life and all of that.

4 comments:

Kelly said...

Dont forget the turkey!
Congratulations on presenting a well received paper - only wish i was there to have heard it.

Anonymous said...

Sociolinguistics..."of all things"?!

Awesome meeting you last week (I totally googled for your blog) - and your paper was unsurprisingly well received. You're right about the lack of theoretical contextualizations at the conf. this year. I hope you do publish it! Take care.

Sashay said...

Yes well until I met you, Lauren, I'd never have known how well sociolinguistics can apply!! Keep in touch please?!

Anonymous said...

Well now Sashay, I won't pretend to have any actual knowledge as to the paper presented, but I lean in on Lauren's commment: unsurprisingly well received is something I admittingly have learned is a response you earn quit often - and well deserved it is indeed!

Now, having said that, thought I'd just drop you a note and say hi and cheers and good luck :) And oh yeah, I liked your Wal-Mart-bashing. To use a phrase from StarCraft: "I dig".