Blog

Boston.
From the packed plenary theatre we have now moved on to the first of the smaller sessions (which is similarly full) - one of nine or ten parallel sessions (so please don't take these blog entries as entirely representative of MiT5 proper...). This session is on creative labour in a produsage environment, and Mirko Tobias Schäfer begins by "Revisiting the Case of Interactive Audiences and the User as Producer". He notes that in 1983 TIME nominated the (personal) computer as 'machine of the year' - an interesting precursor of the recent nomination of 'you' as person of the year 2006, which has perhaps redressed the balance again from technology to users.

Boston.
Today we're starting the MiT5 conference here at MIT, and we begin with a welcome by Comparative Media Studies director Henry Jenkins. He begins with a nod to fan culture as a space of media mash-ups, and plays a short excerpt from the Colbert Report, which issued a challenge to remix its content and provided a segment ready-made for remixing. Inded, Henry suggests that Colbert as a comedian was inherently made by YouTube, and he has shown strong interest in remix culture in other environments (he also issued a challenge to his viewers to introduce falsifying edits into Wikipedia, furthering his playful engagement with participatory culture).

Boston.
After a very brief few weeks in Brisbane, I'm back on the road again, for the second leg of my sabbatical. This trip takes me to Boston, where I'm a visiting scholar at MIT for the next couple of months. I'll also present at MiT5 and Creativity & Cognition 6, and when I return to Brisbane at the end of June, I'll hopefully have most of my upcoming produsage book ready to send to my publisher.

For now, though, I'm taking it easy these first few days here, dealing with my jetlag (which doesn't seem too bad …

Leeds.
Well, as the great mind and speedy fingers that is Robert Fripp might say (or type), my suitcase is about-to-be-becoming packed; my time here at the University of Leeds is at and end, and I'm flying back to Australia tonight. I'm spending a last few hours here at the office to say my goodbyes and gather my various notes and files. Time to reflect on the past two months, too, and to tie up a few loose ends. My thanks first of all of course to Stephen Coleman and the rest of the staff at the Institute for Communications Studies for making me welcome here; I hope to stay in touch with many of them even after I've left the place.

Leeds.

I've safely returned to Leeds from my trip to the ICE 3 conference on the shores of Loch Lomond, Scotland. Given the cost of flying to Glasgow, and the unreliability (and sadly, occasional catastrophic failure) of the British rail network, I ended up driving myself to Scotland and back in a rental car, and this worked out pretty well overall. As I crossed the North Pennines into Cumbria, the snow-streaked landscape did look as bleak as the frozen steppes of Siberia, but happily things improved again as I approached Glasgow. I stopped for lunch and a spot of sightseeing in Glasgow itself, and promptly lost my way trying to re-enter the motorway towards Loch Lomond, but this minor diversion was nothing against my confusion on the way back - I guess it would have helped had I known that on Scottish roadsigns, "Carlisle" is the codename for the south (providing overt directions to England is considered to be in bad taste, perhaps?). Although this cost me an hour, there were no major other problems on the way (except for the occasional Fiat driver appearing to suffer from the delusion of being at the wheel of a Ferrari) - and kudos also to the good folks at Google Maps, whose directions served me well in getting to Scotland and back.

Ross Priory, Scotland.
The last presentation here at ICE 3 is a group act by Bruce Ingraham, Gráinne Conole, Chris Jones, and George Roberts, who have also set up a group blog in preparation for this talk, which some of us have already contributed to. Their focus is especially on scholarly communication through new media environments - and they begin by noting that unfortunately few ICErs did respond to their original blog-based challenge, which in itself provides some insight on the extent to which scholarly discourses have changed so far. Why is this so - are the topics available too dull; is there too little time available to participate in such environments; or are emerging new media not suited to scholarly discourse (which could also mean that scholarly discourse is unsuited to the modern world, however). If we are not professing our disciplines to one another using such new media environments, however, how can we enocurage our students to do so? If we do not do so, then who will - the people formerly known as students?

Ross Priory, Scotland.
The next speakers here at ICE 3 are Leah Macfadyen and Anne Hewling, presenting on their experiences with a University of British Columbia online course in global citizenship, which they developed from scratch. Aims of the course were for students to develop an understanding of the concept of global citizenship, as well as ultimately to consider the impact they might have as global citizens within local, national, and international communities. Students within this (elective) course come from a very brad range of disciplinary backgrounds (and in fact also from the universities of Hong Kong and Melbourne, who were remote partners in the project).

Ross Priory, Scotland.
It's a clear but frosty morning here in Scotland - for the first time in some 14 years, I've had to scrape ice off the windshield of my car today... We've reached the last day of ICE 3, and I'll be the first speaker, presenting on the implications, for the field of education, of the move from production to produsage (full paper here). I'll try to record the talk as well, and if all works out I'll post it up here some time soon the recording is below as well as here. For now, here is my Powerpoint... I must also apologise to Debra Ferreday and Vivien Hodgson for not blogging their talk - my laptop was in use to run the presentation.