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Posts Tagged ‘CI’

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November: Progress Update

In Misc., Reflections on November 1, 2009 at 9:16 am

I can’t believe October is over.

After the family visit last month, and the two out of the three weddings that I managed to attend, as well as fulfilling some design and performance obligations at the Heliconian Club (Mary Gardiner’s tribute concert was a success, and Deanna Hendriks was a wonderful soprano to work with), I am looking forward to a slight change of pace in November, with more focus back to my academic pursuits.

Kicking off the month will be the ASIS&T Conference in Vancouver, and the Community Informations Research Network (CIRN) conference in Prato which I will follow vicariously through twitter and the published proceedings. I really keep meaning to learn more about the CI field, the practitioners, and the ideas being generated there. Instead, I seem to be collecting links and readings for some unknown time in the future to really dig in to see what’s there. I am no activist, but I’m interested in the lessons learned in the ‘peripheral’communities about ICTs, and what that can teach us about the needs of marginalized communities (however you define that) that are close to home. Based on the low yet consistent level of sleep deprivation over the last few weeks, I imagine I will be sleeping/napping throughout my flight to Vancouver.

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August: Progress Update

In My Work, Reflections on August 1, 2009 at 12:59 pm

Last Saturday, a visitor from abroad arrived bringing about 5kg of homemade goodness from Morocco. The food is strangely familiar to a lot of Chinese delicacies, with a decidedly Mediterranean touch with the abundance of cinnamon, honey and almonds in the cooking. I still salivate at the thought of eating the pancakes with cheese and honey, an oddly addictive combination. There was so much love packed into those things, I don’t know how to express my gratitude except by exercising my creative planning skills to show the girl around and make her month-long stay a memorable one.

Between trips to the AGO, hosting last minute guests, I have never experienced so many people staying in a one-bedroom before, nor have had such demand for my music teaching abilities by someone who doesn’t speak English no less. Very different from my usual routine of coming home and sitting on the balcony for some tea and bread with a book in hand, but it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to play host to some very appreciative and lovely people. So what’s up on the academic front?

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July: Progress Update

In Misc., music-esque, My Work on July 3, 2009 at 9:38 pm

Just a couple of days ago, on Canada Day in fact, I had a eureka moment while reading Michael Gurstein’s piece on “What is Informatics and why does it matter?” In understanding community informatics as a process and not a product, I immediate realized that it has a tremendous level of relevance for the Musin’concept. It is indeed a community that I have identified — albeit a relatively new one — and since I would like to develop the system in collaboration with the community, the concept fits into CI research quite well. What will be different about it is perhaps the domain in which that it is being applied. I haven’t actually done a search yet of related research to the information needs of people looking for music-related information, but the impression I am getting from the professors I have spoken to is that there isn’t too much out there. Add to that a dose of Latour on design and Sloterdijk and you’ve got my brain going at 100 miles an hour. As for the rest of the month, it looks rather exciting.

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