Travel

Well, with the Future of Journalism now safely behind us (the event, that is - some reflections at Larvatus Prodeo, and also here later this week, hopefully), it's time to look ahead to other upcoming conferences and talks. I've posted some information about some of these on the Produsage.org site already, so here's a quick summary only. You can also track my progress through these upcoming events at Dopplr.com.

It's been a while since I've posted anything about my produsage book project - the last update I gave simply consisted of some quick stats about the continuing writing process when I was still on sabbatical with the Comparative Media Studies group at MIT in Boston. Back then, for those of you keeping count, I was almost a fortnight into writing the book itself (following months of research and preparation), and had written about 150,000 words; after another few days, the complete first draft of the manuscript weighed in at a slightly frightening 190,000 words - at that time, something of a worry for a book that was contracted to be around 130,000 words or 325 pages.

Working with some excellent advice from the tireless Steve Jones (who edits the Digital Formations series which the book will be part of) and the good folks at Peter Lang, I'm happy to report that I managed cut the text by what's roughly the equivalent of an MA thesis, and have squeezed the manuscript down to around 165,000 words or almost exactly 400 pages. This wasn't the easiest or happiest process (I love writing, but hate editing), but I'm extremely pleased with the final outcome, and comments from those few colleagues who have read the full manuscript as it now stands have been incredibly positive (more on this over the next few weeks). I've now updated the information about the book on this Website, and I've also uploaded the introductory chapter of the book to give you an idea what it's all about. We've settled on the title Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage now, and we're looking to use one of Ann's paintings as the cover image.

Montréal.
Well, that's it - AoIR 2007 and WikiSym 2007 are over, the drizzle has caught up with me here in Montréal after a couple of very pleasant days with temperatures in the 20s; time to get back to the Australian spring. It's been a very successful if brief tour through Canada for these two conferences, and I've particularly enjoyed catching up with what by now feel like old friends from the Association of Internet Researchers, as well as meet a few new faces - you know who you are. It's a privilege to have been elected to the executive of such a vibrant community - and I look forward to seeing everyone again for AoIR 2008 in Copenhagen (which looks to be in very good hands).

Vancouver.
I've arrived in town for the 2007 Association of Internet Researchers conference, and I've spent most of the first day here walking off my jetlag. Vancouver is an interesting town, and they're doing bridges very well here. Shame about the weather, though... At any rate, I've walked so much that my feet are very sore already - looking forward to the start of the conference!

I'm heading out to Canada tomorrow, to present three papers at two conferences, and I've uploaded those papers and presentation Powerpoints here now. As a counterpoint to my solo work on the produsage book, I've really enjoyed working in collaborative teams this year - in addition to the ARC Linkage projects for edgeX and Youdecide2007 (and the Gatewatching group blog and ABC series with Barry and Jason from Youdecide), I'm also working in cross-institutional teams on couple of Carrick Institute projects examining teaching and learning in social software environments and building a network of Australian creative writing programmes. So, it's perhaps no surprise that all three papers on this trip are co-authored works - two with my colleague Sal Humphreys from QUT, and one with Lars Kirchhoff and Thomas Nicolai from the Universität St. Gallen in Switzerland.

What's worked out particularly well this month is the timing of the conferences - I'm headed first to the Association of Internet Researchers conference in Vancouver on 17-20 Oct., and from there it's just an overnight flight to the International Symposium on Wikis in Montréal on 21-23 Oct. Given how long it takes to get anywhere from Australia, being able to do a number of conferences on the one trip is always very useful - and I'm particularly looking forward again to AoIR, since due to my role as conference chair at last year's conference in Brisbane I missed most of the presentation sessions except for the keynotes and those sessions that I presented in myself. As always, I'm planning to blog everything I'm attending, and I'll try to record and slidecast my own papers. For now, here's a preview of what's to come:

Boston.
Other than during the MiT5 conference, I realise I haven't really blogged that much from Boston yet - I think I'm still getting over the jetlag from the flight here... It's certainly not as if there wasn't plenty to talk about. This is my third time in Boston, although the last couple of times I was here only for a few days and a few hours, respectively - but at least, I already have something of a general idea where things are and how I get there. It will still take me a while to find my way around MIT, though - if QUT's campuses occasionally seem maze-like, they've got nothing on MIT's sprawling expanse, even if some of the architecture here hadn't been built deliberately in flagrant disregard for architectural orthodoxy.

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 right now, but we'll see). Having arrived late on Friday, I've started the weekend with the customary breakfast here in what a certain Kazakhi would call the U S and A, and have spent most of Saturday sightseeing and enjoying the very welcome springtime sunshine - at least for now, it looks like the weather will be nowhere near as ghastly as it was (at times) in Leeds. A few first snapshots are up on Flickr now - and I'm also enjoying the newish geotagging functions: nice way to explore the neighbourhood.

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.