Vegas, Baby

I woke up this morning, made a few adjustments to my abstract, sent it in... and now it's time to get out of bed. I have lots to do... get my dryer fixed,pack, return a rental car, hopefully pick up a phone, and then go to Las Vegas.

So I'll talk to you all in a week or so!!

Draft Day: Abstract Beta 0.1

So I finally sat down and hammered out the first draft of my abstract. I really wasn't too worried about it, once I narrowed my topic, and oddly enough, reading some of the textbook helped me figure out how I plan to attack it. So here we go...

Technology vs. The Bureaucratic Machine: Will the Net-Generation Bring Change to Canada's Broadcaster?"

The presence of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is felt everywhere in Canada. From the largest cities to the smallest towns, CBC television and radio reaches millions of homes across the country. Once thought of as a bureaucratic machine, slow to embrace change, attitudes are shifting, as the workforce becomes younger and more tech-savvy. While CBC still struggles to keep up with changing times, in other areas they are leading the way with emerging technologies like streaming video and podcasts. In the coming years, as the net-generation (or millenials) take over CBC, will the pace of change increase or will the bureaucracy of a massive organization hold it back like it has in the past? What will be the impact of these wired new wonderkids? Drawing from the author's own experience working in CBC Technology, this study will combine qualitative methods like interviews with key members in the CBC community and quantitative measures like employee surveys to assess opinions across the rest of the corporation."

Just to show you how cutting edge the CBC can be, check out this little gem from a 1993 edition of The National.

Why work when you can delegate?

I've figured something out. If you're stumped and can't quite figure out the right way to say something, get someone else to do it for you. Perhaps the glory of an online degree in communication and technology is that you know the people in your classes are probably stuck on the internet as much as you are. So in an online chat with a classmate, we were lamenting out collective lack of answerable research questions. Jen Flynn and I both had rather broad ideas about our topics but couldn't sum them up succinctly (oh..say for an abstract, for example).

Then this conversation happened:

Mr. Chick says: well, cbc is notoriously slow to adapt to newer technology...
Jennifer Flynn says: And your question is "why"?
Mr. Chick says: or will that change with a more tech-savvy generation taking things over?
Jennifer Flynn says: So what is the predicted impact of the advancing millenial generation on the pace of technological adoption?
Mr. Chick says: pretty much exactly that...

Suddenly, I had a succicnt research question! So if you're struggling, talk to Jen and she'll write a good one for you.

Now, to wrap it up in a few more sentences and call it an abstract... then go to Vegas and back before Spring Institute.

The boy has issues

As I look ahead about 5 days, I'm starting to fret a little bit about a deadline looming in the near future. We're supposed to hand in an short paragraph abstract explaining our research projects (Sidenote: I'm not sure why I'm explaining this considering I think MACT people are the only ones reading this, and likely know that already!). Anyway... I'm trying to put into words the project that I'll spend the next year working on.

While I have an area I'd like to address, I don't know the specifics. While talking to a friend of mine who recently completed his masters in a similar discipline, he suggested limiting the scope to something manageable instead of attacking the topic as a whole. This, of course, makes great sense, but I seem to want to deal with the whole thing, and not a specific aspect of it. So if I'm dealing with a shift in the workforce and in lifestyles, how do I limit it to something I can measure?

My friend suggested limiting it to a specific company or a particular group. But who? Frankly, I'm sick of using my company (CBC) as a case study for every assignment. I don't have the same kind of access to other companies, but perhaps I should work something out. I've posed the question to a classmate working on a very similar topic, so I'm curious how she plans to attack it.

In the meantime, the countdown is on... I'll have to hand this in just before I go to Vegas!

I love the phone. That's where I get my email.

Some of the reading I've done asks the question of why one is attacking a particular research topic. Other people in my class have struggled with the idea of researching something they love vs. something that interests them, and I think this topic falls somewhere in the middle for me. I've realized that I'm a big nerd and that I beat the hell out of Web 2.0 more than a lot of people.

In the past week, I've...

• Written entries in my 3 different blogs (this one, brianchick.com, and sportsguys.ca)
• Uploaded 4 videos to youtube and linked to them on blogs and facebook.
• Administered blogs for 2 other projects, and designed or maintained 8 other websites.
• Edited entries in the 2 wikis I administer.
• Bought something on ebay
• Updated my facebook profile via my phone
• Collaborated cross country on 2 different writing projects
• looked at photos on Flickr, but haven't actually posted any because it was a boring week
• spent whole days on MSN, talking to people in other provinces, countries, and continents
• took a picture and emailed it via my phone (twice)

Short of Ghandi's "Be the change you want to see in the world," I'd argue that I'm an example of the change that is happening in the world, whether we want it or not. I want to understand it, however, and help others understand it by examining this change, and identifying the issues that are coming with it. There's a clash, no matter how subtle, between the old way and the new way, and I'm going to look at where the lines are drawn and what exactly that means.

Do I love this stuff? Yes. Do I find it interesting? Absolutely.

More importantly though, I think it will cause a major change in the way work gets done. Anticipating that shift now will make for easier adjustments in the future.

Alternative Titles

I spent far too long trying to figure out what to call this thing. I was working on a pun with "net-gen" or "age" and trying to tie in computers and technology, and just got frustrated with the corniness of it all and gave up.

So then I started thinking about "My Generation" by The Who. Once I gave it a listen and examined the lyrics, I was really struck by the line "don't try to dig what we all say." I was almost going to try donttrytodig.blogspot, but my inner grammar nerd doesn't like URLs that should have an apostrophe in them. Then I started looking at some of the history behind the song and was going to go with "Shout and Shimmy" which was the B-Side of "My Generation" for its original UK Release, but shoutandshimmy was already a registered blog. The B-Side for the US Release was "Out in the Street" but it didn't have the same ring.

So I went back to the lyrics, and the sensation line jumped out at me. It really sums things up nicely for me though because I honestly believe that the song parallels today's technology environment pretty acurately. We're not trying to cause a big sensation, but the older crowd doesn't quite understand how we do things, and does not know how to grasp the shift in mentality that is taking place.

"I'm just talking about my generation..."

A Big Sensation

Welcome to A Big Sensation, a blog aimed at tracking the progress of my Masters Final Project. The project will examine the shift happening in the world right now as the Net-Generation (sometimes called Millenials) enter and gain prominence in the work force, and as the older generations adapt to emerging technologies. Beyond that, the focus is still a bit vague, but that will develop in time.

In many of our class discussions, I've felt like one of a few "young ones" who see things a little bit differently than some of our older classmates. We are part of that generation who grew up with computers, were among the first generation to adopt things like chat, instant messaging, and email for social purposes, and have gotten used to adapting year after year to constantly changing technology.

Why "A Big Sensation," you might ask? In the song "My Generation" by The Who, there is a lyric "I'm not trying to cause a big sensation." As this project is really about My Generation, and I honestly believe it IS a rather big deal (or sensation even), I felt the title was appropriate.