This second academic conference I have attended this month, and again the tagging issue comes up. My colleague Robin pointed out that the conference organizers have not listed the tags for the conference. I wonder how much they know about tagging and its role in blogging and electronic distribution of conference materials.

Regardless of the status, Robin and I are tagging everything related to this conference as: ahrdoxford2007, including the photos I will upload to Flickr.

To find the liveblogging entries themselves I will enter for this conference, they will be listed under my own blog category as:
Liveblogging AHRDOxford2007.

Technorati Tags: ahrd, ahrdoxford2007, liveblogging

Today I arrived in London’s Heathrow Airport to then make my way to Oxford for the 8th International Conference on Human Resource Development Research and Practice across Europe, sponsored by Oxford Brookes University and held at The Oxford Hotel. With the time change and all the travel, I missed the opening keynote since I collapsed in the room and caught up on a little sleep. At least I made it to the Welcome Reception where I had a nice chat with Ken Bartlett from the University of Minnesota and the editor of Advances in Development Human Resources (ADHR), one of the journals sponsored by the Academy of HRD. I also spoke briefly with Darlene Russ-Eft, a colleague and co-presenter with my research-partner Robin Yap, as well as with Gary McLean, whose work I have read but whom I had not previously met.

Another conference, another nice group of dedicated professionals.

Technorati Tags: ahrd, ahrdoxford2007, globalisation, glocalisation

This is the first mobile blog post (moblog) I have written from my new Blackberry. I am writing this awaiting take-off on a Virgin Atlantic flight to the AHRD conference in Oxford that I plan to liveblog. Amazing what technology can do.

I wonder if I can speed up this process with templates of the like. Interesting how nothing ever seems fast enough!

I have given a lot of consideration to what worked and what did not work when I liveblogged the AERC conference two weeks ago. Gathering these best practices together, the following is my working list of liveblogging best practices. I will test this list next week, when I travel to Oxford to present at the 8th International Conference on Human Resource Development Research & Practice across Europe.

Liveblogging Best Practices

1. Have an extension cord. You never know how far away the outlet is.
2. Plan on there NOT being any wireless Internet access. Regardless of what may be expected or promised you never know what may happen with it, who may be downloading every DVD ever made and clogging the network in the process, and how even the most stable technology fails when we may need it most (not to mention when the access is "free" after a daily credit card mayment).
3. Use an offline blogging program. I am using Ecto for this here. I also tried ScribeFire for Firefox, but I could not get the image uploading FTP to work to save me, and their help pages were not too helpful. I do not mind paying developers for their work, and think those who created Ecto certainly deserve what I paid them for what they delivered. As I am about to migrate from XP to Vista, it is important to check compatibility (such as with Macs) and have a freely-available trial period.
4. Have a fully-charged battery. This goes without saying, but often the unstated is forgotten or assumed!
5. Create entry shells prior to the sessions. This way, you are assured to have the correct names of the sessions and the spelling of the participants for each entry.
6. Adjust the computer time to the local time. I have blogged around the world, and prefer to capture the sessions in the real time where I am.
7. Disclose what editing is done later. I consider myself a researcher-practitioner, and as such want full-disclosure of what I liveblog in real-time, as I conduct research with my entries as they are. These are real data, and as such it would be counter to the research process to go back and edit, spell-check, and otherwise clarify what happened at a previous time as the point of liveblogging is to capture the experiences in real-time. Of course, if I am able to spell-check and otherwise edit as I go, then that is another situation.
8. Distinguish between internal and external experiences. I am a constructivist qualitative researcher, and as such do not believe the researcher can separate himself or herself from the research experience. When I am liveblogging a conference, I find myself writing about what I see, hear, and experience, as well as the meaning-making that occurs in real-time. I cannot separate an objective happening from my perception of it, in that I do not believe there can be any objective meaning or experience apart from one who experiences it. In practical terms, I can record what I hear and what strikes me, but then I often begin to process the experience and add to the meaning-making event. This means that liveblogging makes me more than an active participant–the public-blogging and my ability to discuss my own thoughts and feelings of the event makes me in effect a co-presenter. [I think I will have to revisit this to try to develop it more]
9. Have a camera and its sync-cord. While picture taking while liveblogging may be icing on the cake, it does add a nice touch.
10. Have an international adapter/plug. Liveblogging in Canada, for example, uses the same plugs as in the US. The AHRD conference I am liveblogging in England means I have another device I have to carry with me if I want to plug in.
11. Consider a hyper-link policy. If I am liveblogging and there is wifi, then it is easy to add links to the presentations or papers or the people who present themselves, However, with the editing policy I listed above (see #7), determine how to find the links and add them, with full-disclosure, at some point in time. This allows the readers to try to see as much of what you experienced while it happens.

As this list is a work in process, I hope to add to it as new issues arise or as feedback and research dictates. [See revised entry on 7/25/07]

Technorati Tags: liveblogging, live-blogging, live-blogging, liveblogging best practices

Read the rest of this entry »

My colleague Robin Yap sent me this video intended to prevent kitchen oil fires. I am not sure who created it or where it is form, but I think it is quite good and worth a look.

Download the file

I have been using Ecto as a blogging tool for liveblogging, and finally figured out how to get ScribeFire for Firefox to work. This is another platform for me to play around with while preparing for my next liveblogging research project next week at the AHRD conference in Oxford.

Powered by ScribeFire.

I have cast my net wide, and have spoken with a number of colleagues about the options for investigating this liveblogging research from last week’s AERC2007. I have had people mention auto ethnography, grounded theory, methods involved in the New Learning Initiative and in computer-mediated communication (CMC), Add a little bit about power and poisitonality within a conference, and there are some  juicy and appealing options.

While I am still processing what happened at the conference, there is another one (the last conference I am planning to attend this year) next week where I will be presenting. More about that one later.

Technorati Tags: aerc, aerc2007, autoethnography, computer-mediated communication, grounded theory, New Learning Initiative, adult education research conference

I came across SPEP, the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, while looking for something completely different. This seems so akin to my area of personal interest and research, though I have never heard of it before. Critical theory, post-structuralism, existentialism, phenomenology. Refreshing, huh?

I wonder how many other associations and organizations are also out there that fit my interests but somehow have not appeared on my radar?

Technorati Tags: critical theory, existentialism, post-structuralism, Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, SPEP, phenomenology

I have been speaking with a lot of colleagues recently about possible methodological considerations for the liveblogging research project I am doing right now. As I plan to speak about some of the things I learned, I thought I should also create my own policy for blogging about private correspondence. I have never seen any personal policies about blogging publicly about private matters, though it would not surprise me if they exist. I shall start drafting one here:

 Blogging Policy on Privacy

1. I will not relate anybody’s personal, private, or self-identified information when they communicate it with me in confidence.
2. Public presentations and discussions can be blogged under an understanding of Freedom of Speech.

Let’s see, what else is there?

I wonder what happened to Tim O’Reilly’s Draft Blogger’s Code of Conduct?

Technorati Tags: Draft Blogger’s Code of Conduct, Blogging Policy on Privacy, Tim O’Reilly