Launch

When I began my outreach into the new media community in Greater Washington, DC in May, 2007 many of you encouraged me to blog. I have resisted. In academia you publish at the end of the research process, not along the way. Personally the notion of ‘my blog’ reminded me of my nagging fear that no one really cares about what I have to say.

But I learned from many of you who participated in my study that blogging is a generative exercise where people can learn and grow together through writing. I also learned about how I can use a blog in my research – and this learning is about to change the way I work and learn. For example....

· Blogs are a good, informal way to learn about the themes I may find in my analysis because I can invite others to respond and contribute to my thinking before I put my ideas out into the world in a more authoritative style - like I must do in my final dissertation report.

· Indeed with a blog I can ‘push the learning’ – or- ‘bootstrap’ my analysis because blogging can improve my knowledge and writing. The more I blog/write, the more the quality of my thinking and writing will improve, and as my quality improves, more people may engage, thus ‘pushing the learning’ for us all. As people share their insights, it is likely they will influence my thinking and analysis – and I will learn.

· I can write in takes – do a little analysis, share it, see what comes up. The story of my research can accrete over time and I don’t have come up with everything at once.

· Indeed this way of writing and presenting is more responsive to the way people view and use information today. Information is ephemeral – the world will move on long before I can publish my findings. If I share it a little at a time, others might actually find it useful – now!

· I can use the blog to connect and remain connected with those who expressed interest in my study. Those who asked me to blog, in effect invited me to join in the new media community, not just remain on the outside and study it.

· But blogs are more than a connection; for blogs can also help people learn about their community and mobilize others around issues they care about. For some, blogs are a way of relating to others and making an impact in the world. I hope this will also be so for me.

In February, 2008 after spending many months participating in the new media community in DC, I returned home with buckets of data. I had notes and pictures from the dozens of meet-ups and un-events I attended, transcripts from dozens of interviews with people who were said to have a broad view of the media in DC, as well as transcripts from my in-depth interviews with 15 people in traditional and new media about their work and learning experiences.

I spent the last year developing case studies of each of the 15 individual participants. I used the interview transcripts and all my other data to construct a narrative or a series of stories each individual could tell of their work and learning experience. These are very extensive documents that provide a lens onto the broad knowledge, deep skill, and innovative practices these very talented individuals draw upon to create traditional and new media in DC. These cases also tell a very compelling story about the broader context of media in DC – the tools, the values, the community, the economics, etc – that make their unique ways of work and learning possible.

Now I am faced with the daunting task of pulling from all these cases to tell a plausible story of work and learning in new media in DC. What makes this task particularly challenging is my aim to preserve the incredible richness of each of the individual narratives while also telling the very compelling story I discovered about work and learning in new media in DC.

So my resistance to blogging has given way to the developmental demands of the final stage of my research. I invite you to engage with me in making sense of it all. It is my hope that you will not only find what I post here interesting, but that you also find something of practical valuable.

Before I end this first post, let me clarify my focus in this blog.

This blog is not about new media theory, practices, and trends. There are plenty of blogs and resources focused on interesting developments and perspectives on the media.

This blog is about the way new media is changing, or not changing the way people work and learn. In this blog, I plan to continue to explore the affect new media tools, practices, norms, values, and relationships is having on how people perceive and experience their work and how they learn in and from the work they do.

That said, what affect has new media had on your work and learning?