LVS - YYZ - CBC - YYZ - YEG

So much has happened since my last post. First of all, I sent in my abstract. Then I went to Vegas for 4 nights, barely slept, and returned home on the Tuesday night red-eye, in time to grab a quick nap and work Wednesday afternoon, then normal days on Thursday and Friday. On Sunday morning at 5:30am Toronto time, I got up, showered, headed to the airport, to catch my 8:10am flight to Edmonton. So after a three time zones in five days, not enough sleep in any of them, I've become convinced that my body hates me, and is genuinely confused.

That being said, today was the first day of school. Our first in person session of 501 with Yuping "Ruby" Mao was more of a getting to know you session, and an airing of everyone's research projects. Suggestions were thrown around, and quite honestly, the topics are far more diverse than I had originally anticipated based on the online discussion. Hearing the class discuss both my project and their own gave me some ideas on how to frame my study, people to talk to, and what kinds of issues to address. Wayne also suggested a book that I plan on picking up(Out of Control by Kevin Kelly)... if only I could read without falling asleep.

The afternoon session of 506, hosted by Stan Ruecker, was equally eye-opening. Stan has a lot of research experience, and specifically U of A experience, and seems like he might be a very useful resource in the completion of the final project. The course is about social networks, but most of the time was spent discussing research projects, ethics, assignments, and later on... blogs.

Blogging is a weird thing for me. Perhaps it's that I like imagining I have an audience, even if nobody reads this. With my personal blog, people tell me from time to time that they visited it, and comment on something in it... and it usually surprises me, entrigues me, and motivates me to keep writing. It happens infrequently, but it's usually enough to keep me going. And now that this has been hyped in class, I feel obligated to deliver raw, unedited, free flowing, typo-filled, braindumps. And I look forward to reading yours too, class. Hmm?

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.