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I produced the latest issue of M/C Journal last night, which was edited by my colleagues Glen Thomas and Jaz Choi:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 10 June 2005

                         M/C - Media and Culture
             is proud to present issue two in volume eight of

                               M/C Journal
                  http://journal.media-culture.org.au/

                'print' - Edited by Glen Thomas & Jaz Choi

Print culture has dominated the world - has left its imprint - for the last five hundred years, and traces back to Chinese inventions some two millennia earlier. Today its hegemony is under threat, some say, from the new communication …

I've been meaning to post something about this for a while: in response to that silly article in The Australian recently, some 40 of us in the Creative Industries Faculty (which is what, half the permanent staff?) have written a joint response which was published in the letters section a couple of weeks ago. This was a spontaneous response by staff, not an action orchestrated by Faculty management, and so should demonstrate the massive groundswell of disgust and disagreement engendered by the original article (whose sheer cluelessness and lack of consideration for fellow students and staff continues to amaze me). Unfortunately, the authors of that article still haven't given up on their self-appointed crusade, sending out yet another diatribe (which was largely ignored by all) through an internal forum. Their persistence in the face of so many helpful corrections to their misconceptions reminds me of the old joke about the driver going up the wrong highway access ramp, then hearing a radio warning that someone is going in the wrong direction on the highway: 'What do you mean, someone? There's hundreds of them!' Anyway, here's the full letter we sent to The Australian, with all signatories:

My postgraduate coursework student Qiongli Wu pointed me to the Trendwatching site the other day - very interesting stuff. This ties right in with much creative industries theory, and especially points to the rise in user-led content production which is also at the heart of the open news and blogging phenomena I write about in my Gatewatching book. Of course in watching for new trends in this field the Trendwatching team are involved in a form of gatewatching - and what's more, they've even set up a world-wide network of what they call 'springspotters' to help them carry out this task.

Ugh - it's been a week full of fiddly stuff so far: plenty of work and no end to it. At least I've been able to post the call for papers for the next issue of M/C Journal:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 26 May 2005

                          M/C - Media and Culture
                     http://www.media-culture.org.au/
            is calling for contributors to the 'scan' issue of

                                M/C Journal
                   http://journal.media-culture.org.au/

Well, after working flat out on it nearly all of last week (and much more work in the preceding weeks), I finally submitted my application for promotion to lecturer level B at QUT on Friday. Let's hope for the best, and that I met the very specific format requirements for it as well! Many thanks especially to my referees - both those who provided statements of support for me and the four colleagues who will now act as formal referees commenting on my performance in the areas of research and scholarship, teaching, and service. So this weekend, I'm going to be catching up with other things that I didn't have time for during the week - answering the 180+ emails that are piling up in my inbox (and that's just the QUT email account alone), posting a few blog updates (including my report from the Eidos launch - see [weblink:212]), and working on the next assignment for the Graduate Certificate in Higher Education that I'm currently studying for.

I got caught in the massive hail storm that hit Brisbane last night. Things looked pretty dark on the way from work, and as I reached the Toowong area all hell broke loose and evening traffic was simply swamped with hail. From all I can tell I was probably lucky as I was on my way south from Toowong before the worst of the storm hit - the ABC studios there were damaged, and even this morning all the way up through to Milton and up to Kelvin Grove there were still melting piles of hail stones in the gutters and on the footpaths. The storm meant that I did miss the guest lecture by ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel at the University of Queensland, though. By the way, the award for best photo from the storm so far clearly goes to Michelle & Heather for their utterly Australian response to an abundance of water ice.

Every once in a while you find something in your inbox that sounds interesting overall but doesn't really say much on what it's actually all about. The invite for the launch of Eidos, a new Queensland-based network of educational institutions, researchers, social policy planners, and industry was such a message - so, on Wednesday I spent the day at the Queensland Art Gallery forecourt to work out what's happening here. (And I'm back-dating this post to Wednesday - didn't get around to posting it immediately because of the promotion application which had taken over the rest of my life...)

Phew. I've spent the best part of the weekend, and half of today, working on my application for promotion to the level of Lecturer at QUT. While pretty much everyone I talk to tells me that I shouldn't have any problem getting there, that's not necessarily very helpful - I can't afford any complacency in preparing the application documents. And at any rate, the work required to complete the application itself (4 pages of a succinct case for promotion, 20 pages of a detailed case, and 20 pages of evidence in support of the application) is still the same.

I'm not necessarily opposed to talking about myself, but spending this much space listing my achievements does get pretty exhausting. Sure, it's kinda nice taking stock of what I've achieved these past few years, but I could well do without needing to prove their impact... I think I have everything under control now, though, and I've secured the support of a great group of referees - John Hartley, Jude Smith, and Paul Makeham from QUT, and my good friend Donna Lee Brien who is now at the University of New England in Armidale. I've worked closely with all of them and I'm sure they'll help me jump through this hoop.

Some time ago I submitted a proposal that Jane Turner and I put together for the Creative Places + Spaces conference in Toronto later this year. The conference is a pretty high-profile event which amongst others includes Charles Landry, author of the key text The Creative City, as a member of its 'brains trust'. Today I received the good news that based on this proposal, which dealt with the fictional Creative Town environment which we have developed for my KKB018 Creative Industries unit (see [weblink:162]), I've been invited to attend the conference - but in a slightly different, and perhaps more significant, role than originally proposed.

Must admit I'm pretty pissed off today - there's an ugly and ill-considered attack on the Creative Industries Faculty at QUT in The Australian today, written no less by colleagues of mine who really should know better. I hesitate even to link to the article, as it's so full of half-truths and dirty laundry that it makes for very unpleasant reading.

Perhaps there's a small positive in this at least - seems to me that any unbiased reader can't help but see this as a hyperbolic gripe piece. Nonetheless, it's very frustrating that it has the potential to set back at least temporarily some of the great work that my colleagues and I have achieved these past four years, and to diminish our collective and individual professional standing by dragging the Faculty through the mud.