General Teaching Work

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.

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.

Spending yesterday and today at home, working. This week and the next are strangely teaching-free weeks for me as the two Monday public holidays mean that my Creative Industries unit doesn't run again until Monday week. So, instead I'm getting some other important work done. Yesterday I made further inroads into two papers - the one co-authored with Sal Humphreys about our wiki efforts in KCB336 New Media Technologies (which will go out to the International Wiki Symposium organisers later today), and one with Danny Butt on digital rights management in the music industry, for a special issue of Media and Arts Law Review (which Sal also has a hand in).