I had heard quite a few things about Marcia Bates through my class with Prof. Hartel, mostly that she was this femme-extraordinaire with the ability and passion to identify just how interdisciplinary the field of information is, and advocating endlessly for a more cohesive direction in the fundamental understandings of information scientists, by, well, information scientists. After all, if we can’t agree which directly is the right one, and no one has presented a persuasive enough argument for any particular approach, we’d lose focus and momentum. In a way, I believe that my ability to pursue my interdisciplinary pursuit is in part due to grounds established by Bates, Sonnenwald, and many others whom I have yet to meet, whether I am aware of it or not. A healthy respect for tradition is not a forfeiting of innovation, but finding a network of mentors and supporters who also has a healthy respect for what you are trying to forge. Marcia Bates, if you ever get to meet her, will strike you immediate as one of those mentors.
Posts Tagged ‘ASIS&T’
ASIS&T 2009: David W. McDonald
In My Work on November 19, 2009 at 11:48 amThe second speaker at the SIG USE Symposium was Dr. David W. McDonald (note to self: read some of his papers), who comes from a background in HCI. His presentation, entitled “Issue of Scale: Mass Participation Computing”, gave us a glimpse of some of the cool projects that he worked on. He was a very lively speaker with a sense of humour. I was inspired by the ways in which live projects were implemented in existing “systems” (both online and offline) in order to gage participant’s reaction and feedback, and the fact that he is on faculty at Washington’s iSchool. His appointment reflects the truly interdisciplinary nature of what iSchools should be today.
He presents his projects in terms the theme of his talk, which is, how scale is transforming the paradigm of computing. What should be observed, studied and scrutinized in networks that represent an entire society? What types of questions are legitimate in such inquiries? How should the question be stated? And how should the results be evaluated and interpreted? We don’t know, but they sure make interesting inquiries and social experiments, as can be seen below. Click here for a brief summary of the 4 projects.
ASIS&T 2009: Diane Sonnenwald
In My Work on November 16, 2009 at 12:49 pmThis post was originally titled “ASIS&T 2009: Day 1″, but I think I just crashed that saturday night, after a full day at the symposium, and the rest of my time in Vancouver was a blur of trying to attend a few interesting sessions, take some time out to see the city and visit a local friend, and wake up every morning to enjoy the relaxing breakfast at the O’Canada House B&B. However, the next time I visit, I think I might try out the Listel Hotel, who decorates their rooms in collaboration with the anthropology department at UBC.
One of the things that I was really looking forward to at the conference, was meeting some of the big names in information science, albeit from afar. Instead of boring you with a play by play, I’m going to give you instead what I have come away from the conference with, in terms of further understanding and appreciation. The next few posts are the highlights of the individuals I met, beginning with Sonnenwald, who was a marvelous speaker. Also, now I can put a face to her articles when I come across them!
