PhD update and sharing March 29, 2010
Thanks for sending me your feedback on my feedback to your PhD proposal.
To be honest I had completely forgotten about it in the intervening months. As a result it came to me as something completely new (all of it, the initial proposal and what I had written, as well as your latest feedback). I found it interesting - and something I would like to show to others.
Questions and thoughts spring to mind - such as:
- Would it be okay to share the google doc you sent me with others?
- If not is there something else I could share?
- How is the research going?
- Can we carry on discussing it?
- Where are you doing your PhD?
- Who is your supervisor? (Is it a name I might have come across in online discussion groups?)
- What discipline/faculty/whatever does your research come under? (Sorry I'm not sure of the terminology - what I mean is - is it Community Informatiics? Information Systems? Computing? Development? Politics? What?)
- Did you send out your PhD proposal to many others in your network - and if so what kind of feedback did you get? (Were we all thinking in similar ways?)
- Given social media is part of your research how much are you using it as a tool for doing your research?
- Given that social media is such a rapidly changing field are you going to share your research as a "work in progress' as you go along? (I for one would appreciate knowing how your thinking is developing as you do it, rather than waiting until after it has become a published thesis.)
- Perhaps we could discuss some of the issues together in a public way, through Dadamac.net or something.
- In fact - for starters (because this relates to other things I am doing) I think I will send this email not just to you, but also as a Posterous post (I have started to use Posterous for emails that I write as "open letters" because they might be of interest to other people in my network now or later)
I'm hoping to do a session at ICTD2010. (In my mind it relates to the ideas in your PhD.) I haven't decided the title yet (I have till Friday to submit it) - but it will be about two-way flows of information and collaboration.
The submission to do the session is still taking shape in my mind (so writing this email to you is helpful to me). It will be an exploration of issues around how ICT can be used to connect "people on the ground" with researchers. I feel that ICTD research should makes better use of ICT (during its planning and feedback stages). If it did that it could be less "hit and run" and could be more relevant to people who are actually involved in development and are willing to work with researchers.
I wrote an open letter about practicalities of my session yesterday (the dynamics of it, to enable maximum participation and exchange of ideas) http://dadamac.posterous.com/blu-tack-blogging-and-ictd-2010 Now I am writing to you my thinking is moving on regarding the focus. I think I will be more specific and narrow - rather than trying to make it too much of a catch-all-session. Better to have only one or two people attending, who are serious about the issues of relevance and will follow up on them, than a room full who have not engaged with the ideas before hand and will do nothing about them afterwards.
I have also started to discuss these issues with Mike Gurstein on his blog Thoughts on Research as an Element in Telecentre Community Informatics Practice
Your research is great to see of course because it is totally grounded in your knowledge of what really happens.
Looking forward to your next update
Pamela