I just received news that I have been appointed to the Editorial Board of Advances in Developing Human Resources (ADHR), a peer-reviewed journal sponsored by the Academy of Human Resource Development and Sage Publications.

As a research-to-practice, or evidence-based practice, journal, it is scholarly and research-driven, with an aim toward researching areas and meeting the needs of practitioners.

As a peer-reviewed journal, ADHR:

focuses on the issues that help you work more effectively in human resource development. The journal spans the realms of performance, learning, and integrity within an organizational context. Balancing theory and practice, each issue of the journal is devoted to a different topic central to the development of human resources. Advances has covered subjects as wide-ranging and vital as performance improvement, action learning, on-the-job training, informal learning, how HRD relates to the new global economy, leadership, and the philosophical foundations of HRD practice.

I look forward to my three year appointment serving my professional colleagues and my field.

Our long-awaited presentation we are doing at this year’s Northern Voice has finally appeared on their website. As an all-volunteer conference, I really appreciate all the work and efforts the organizers are giving to make this year’s personal blogging and social media conference a success.

My session will be on Friday, February 22, 2008, from 14:00 - 14:30 (2:00-2:30pm) in a new track–Internet Bootcamp. Entitled Liveblogging 101, it is meant to introduce newbies to liveblogging.

As a technologist and qualitative researcher, I am really interested in how liveblogging is an act of involvement and participation. It is not a narrative of the events–that is stenography. It is an interactive co-creation of the event itself from the perspective of an active participant. This in fact summarizes what my blog title, Silence and Voice, is all about. With liveblogging, the silence is ended as participants take up and use their own voices to record the event as they experience it.

Liveblogging:  Unfiltered. Raw. Authentic. If you want it nice and neat, buy a book.

Technorati Tags: nv08,Northern Voice,liveblogging

I heard a great statement today, though I do not recall exactly who said it (I think it was an autoethnographic mailing list I follow), but I have been thinking about this all day:

We don’t analyze qualitative research, we interpret it. Only quantitative data can be analyzed.

That is one of the reasons I am so much fonder of qualitative work–interpretations can be very rich and can be done from a variety of perspectives. After all, how many interpretations have there been of the Bible or Shakespeare or even the Tarot? So much depends on experiences and assumptions, among other factors, that interpretation itself can even be interpreted.

Try doing that with quantitative research!

Technorati Tags: autoethnography, qualitative research

Another editorial I wrote with two of my colleagues, Joanne Singleton at Pace University and Rona Levin at Pace University and Visiting Nurse Service of New York, was just published in the current issue of Research and Theory for Nursing Practice, Volume 21, Number 4. Entitled Disciplinary Perspectives on Evidence-Based Practice: The More the Merrier, we considered the question:  What does evidence-based practice mean and how is it defined and used by various disciplines?

Do I smell a research thread around evidence-based practice, especially in the area of scholar-practitioners? Let’s see, where is my copy of Donald Schon’s Reflective Practitioner?

The first article I have published as the lead author just came out in the Winter 2007 issue of Human Resource Development Quarterly, Volume 18, Issue 4. HRDQ is the research journal of the Academy of Human Resource Development. The editorial is entitled Is HRD Research Making a Difference in Practice?, and I wrote it with my writing colleague, Robin Yap.

As scholar-practitioners, we are very interested in the bridge between research and practice, and how that affects organizations and how people function within them. We discussed the value of scholar-practitioners, those people who seek to bring the findings of research into practical use, so that decisions and processes within organizations have more than simply best practices to follow–they are supported by sound research that is in turn built upon applicable theory.

Our conclusion is that it is critical for the field of HRD that research positively impacts practice. After all, if it does not, then it belongs in the fascinating and grand but practically useless world of Plato’s Forms.

Technorati Tags: AHRD, HRD, scholar-practitioner

I am considering attending Northern Voice 2008 in February. This is a Canadian blogging and social media conference that is very personal and personable. I met wonderful people there and had the opportunity to learn from many people who are very active in blogging, educational technology, and technology / social media consulting. I am considering proposing two ideas for discussion for the conference, both issues that I would like to discuss with others and learn more about (not to mention eventually research):

1. Liveblogging - lots of people blog about events and conference while they are happening in real time, but there is little research about it. What do we know and what can we learn about this? Are there standards we can follow? Is there a way to make this more efficient or effective or useful for people? Are there limits in and around this?
2. Tagging - we can tag blog posts, images, and even personal information. Are there any standards out there that can universally help people find this information? Should there be? How are people handling this now, and what else can we learn about this to make it more useful for others in our increasingly “social media” society? This issue was recently raised during a session in SCoPE, and I hope we can continue it F2F with others who could not join us online.

I hope others are interested in these two topics as well! I will propose them and hope for the best.

Technorati Tags: livelogging, Northern Voice, northernvoice2008, NV2008, tagging, tags

So, here goes another conference proposal.

I am working on a research paper on post-modernism and HRD (Human Resource Development) for this conference in Lille, France, in May, 2008. The last paper I presented in the world of HRD was an overview of the literature which I presented in Halifax, Nova Scotia, last year. The theme of the conference this year is Developing Leaders and Managers, where an exploration into HRD and how it has been influenced by post-modern concerns and views cannot be underestimated. I just hope that the reviewers will agree with me!

I usually do not mention papers I am working on until (and if!) they get accepted, but December 14 is closer than it seems, and I can use all the encouragement I can get!

In a new research study unveiled at the British Association Festival of Science, it seems that people who have oodles of Facebook “friends” have in fact the same number of close friends as those who do not use social networking sites. I have a suspicion that a lot more research needs to be done in this area, with studies probably already underway, to investigate this phenomenon.

One of the more interesting items this study revealed is the active “defriending” process in social networking sites rather than the gradual losing touch that happens in face-to-face (F2F) relationships.

I wonder what other things may be learned by following this research further? Perhaps that more casual friendships may effect F2F relationships? Perhaps geographic proximity may play less of a role in social relationships, thereby benefiting the travel industry? I wonder if this will positively or negatively affect cultural, religious, or socioeconomic sensitivity? What role will education play in this? How about online crime, personality deception, racketeering, and predatory behaviors?

Oh, what brave new world . . .   

One of the interesting blogs I have recently started reading is Talking Philosophy: The Philosopher's Magazine Blog. Aimed more at scholars and practitioners alike who are interested in applied philosophy (with articles that are readable by and for a wider audience of laypeople), some of the editors have been presenting at a camp associated with The Center for Inquiry, and I posted a question and have been participating in a discussion there about liveblogging the experience.

As liveblogging conferences (particularly academic ones) have recently captured my interests, I asked if they have considered doing so. In the process, I found myself reflecting on the differences between getting a transcript / recording of a presentation (like the news or a dvd) vs. studying the internal learning and change process while attending the sessions themselves (liveblogging) vs. the writing or posting that can be done after enough processing of the information (traditional journalism and academic writing).

I find myself finally beginning to articulate why I am interested in liveblogging as a learning experience in itself, and in this capacity just posted a response on their blog about this that I want to recount here (in part so I can then readily index them later for this ongoing research and reflection):

I am not so interested in recordings or the transcripts, since I personally have trouble reading / paying attention to them without being involved in the tone and setting of the experience.

My interests are more about how learning occurs and how information and experiences are processed during the attending of the sessions themselves . . . I am interested in seeing how ideas develop from a comment here and a feeling over there with some content from this one and a paper I may read from that one–all of which happens simultaneously at times. When we write things later about how we have come to understand something, it takes all of the initial work and shows us the results. My interest in this is in the initial work and process itself.

My theory is that the more we learn about the process, the more we can take that into account while we are presenting our work to help our attendees and learners see what we are trying to communicate.

So, as I am developing my work in liveblogging, it seems it is oriented toward understanding the personal and reflective learning process to better be able to communicate. Ahh, this is an exciting development . . .

Technorati Tags: Talking Philosophy, The Philosopher's Magazine, liveblogging, The Center for Inquiry