and I am still doing things.
Inherently interdisciplinary Doctoral Student in Communications Studies. (formerly in French Studies)
Love Digital Media, Performance, identity, diaspora, ethnicity and representations.
Production and creativity make me happy because I like to make things.
Justin’s Cookies
He says the perfect chocolate chip cookies have three chips, so I made a batch of cookies with exactly 3 chips per cookie. Here’s to hoping he feels the love, because I am not up to doing anything else right now. I kind of wore myself out with this. I am so uncool right now.
…treat me like a princess. He treats me like a queen!
And this week he has gone above and beyond and I am so very thankful to be married to such a wonderful, caring, loving person. I have never felt so cared for in my life… ever. I think I’ll make him cookies while he is at work today as a belated birthday present.
Biafran volunteers, men and women, drilling and taking basic infantry training.
Photo: Priya Ramrakha/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Jul 01, 1967
This Is Generation Flux: Meet The Pioneers Of The New (And Chaotic)
Frontier Of Business The future of business is pure chaos. Here’s how you can survive—and perhaps even thrive.
Members of Generation Flux can be any age and in any industry: From left, Raina Kumra, Bob Greenberg, Danah Boyd, DJ Patil, Pete Cashmore, Beth Comstock, and Baratunde Thurston.
For @jadedid
Don’t be afraid. The worst that can happen is someone says no.
It is Zora Neale Hurston’s birthday today. She is forever and inspiration. I am sharing a small Zora project I did last semester for a class to honor the day. Her voice, her words, and her.
<3
Afro Blue & Rumba Amalia. Vintage “Black” Burlesque w/ Amali (by MindsiMedia)
[prison industrial complex + colonization = this]
Puerto Rico will send as many as 480 male inmates to an Oklahoma prison under an agreement announced Tuesday with a U.S. corrections company.
A company press release says at least 240 inmates will be sent to the…
This has been happening in Hawaii since forever too.
So we watched this movie on netflix the other day. It had 4 stars from all 4 users who watched it on a different site… and 3.5 stars on netflix. While some of the shots were beautiful… and really, I love crappy horror/gore, this didn’t do it for me.
However, From the film I did learn that the statute of limitations in Japan for murder used to be 15 years. Which led to a web search, which led to finding this outrageous story.
Ken Ishikawa, 54, in Otaru, a city an hour’s drive west of Sapporo. His older sister, Chikako, who had left Otaru to teach music at an elementary school in Tokyo, vanished in 1978. Sitting in his living room in Otaru, surrounded by framed photos of his sister wearing the clothes and hairstyle of the 1970’s, Mr. Ishikawa said the family believed she had been kidnapped, perhaps even taken to North Korea.
It was only 26 years later, in 2004, that the family learned the truth. A school security guard, with a grudge against the teachers, choked his sister to death one afternoon and buried her nude body in a hole under his living room. He continued to work at the school and live in the same house for years, until city road expansion plans forced him to move in 2004.
Fearing that construction workers would find the body, the guard, Shinya Wada, now almost 70, confessed, and went free. Television reports have shown him walking his dog around his new home in Chiba, next to Tokyo, blurring his face to protect his privacy.
Source: New York Times
Yea… I mean, it doesn’t exist that way anymore… but still… I’m not sure how to react to this kind of stuff.
Blood and urine samples were collected over six hours. Blood pressure, heart rate, fructose and a variety of other metabolic biomarkers were measured. Compared with sucrose, HFCS leads to greater fructose systemic exposure and significantly different acute metabolic effects, according to the study’s findings.
So, life happens, even when one is a doctoral student. And life can be overwhelming, something it has gone out of its way to do. Little things make it worthwhile though. Friday was a worthwhile night for me. The Echo Park Film Center is on their tour this summer with the Film Mobile and on Friday, they stopped in Chapel Hill. I was so happy to be able to share them with my entire family. The little ones were very excited about being able to go inside the bus and sit in the big chairs by the driver seat. All of us contributed to the experimental permanent marker-on-film film that is being created throughout the tour. The little ones were also mesmerized by the film viewer toys and flip books. That is where they spend most of the 2 hours of our time.
The joy for me, apart from the sharing with the fam was seeing the films that were being screened on the side of the Film Mobile. The one that was playing before we left “The Sound We see: A Los Angeles City Symphony”. This was one of the films the students at the EPFC spoke about at DML. This was the film they were so proud of. I totally got it as soon as I saw it on the screen. I’ve watched all of the films they have available on DVD. They are delightful and fun. There are amazing glimpses in to how the kids see their world. This film was the first film where you are really able to see their growth in terms of how they see the world and themselves in it. And the growth is in leaps and bounds. One of the comments that stuck with me was one of the female students (I don’t remember her name), talking about how this film showed her that, even if they just live in Echo Park, it is just like all the fancy neighborhoods in LA, and she didn’t know that before they made this film. I saw it and totally got it and started tearing up a little (I’m a sap, I know). It was so beautiful though. Breathtaking really. It was great hearing other people discuss how beautiful the shots were without even knowing the background. They had know idea how amazing what they were seeing truly was.
Last semester, one of the amazing students in my cohort, Marie Garlock, asked a question during a seminar on Voice where 100% of the discussion was on people coming to voice and voices being marginalized etc. The conversation was basically about dominance. To paraphrase what she said, if voice is all about moving air and the breath out of the body, what are we taking back in? So much of academia is about the out. Getting your voice out. Looking at your research. Being an expert etc. Most of the time we aren’t supposed to care about what we breathe back in. But we should. I sent her an email after that class period and thanked her, kicking myself for never questioning what I am breathing back in as I move through nailing down what I will be doing for my dissertation. “The Sound We See” is the type of thing I want to breathe back in. These are the type of voices that need to be heard and shared and incorporated to how we construct the world we live in and the people we live with. Plus, for my own interest in digital media, performance and identity and their intersections, the EPFC project is just a beautiful example of traditional media, meets new media, meets performance and identity. I am so happy they are out with their Film Mobile sharing what they do across the country. I hope that those people who stopped in Chapel Hill to take pictures but didn’t speak looked up the bus on the web when they got home. I also hope that those people who stopped to talk for a minute and grabbed the info sheets on the bus took the time to read them, and then looked up the film center too.
I am, yet again, infinitely thankful to Mozilla. If they hadn’t placed my table next to the EPFC during the DML Science Fair, I might have never known that they existed. Thank you again to Paolo and Lisa for a wonderful Friday night.
We were sponsored by Mozilla Labs (of course as this is part of the concept series) and the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at UNC Chapel Hill.
All in all, the event was very successful. The three things I heard the most from attendees were:
Unfortunately, as is often the case with free events, some of the people who registered didn’t show up. We had space for 32, at our high had a registration number of 28 ended up with ~20 registrations once cancellations came in, and 15 people showed up, 1 of whom was a walk-in that I had extended an invitation to. So, small group. I’m not sure how to combat this phenomenon. I had the same experience with THATCamp RTP. In the end it was a really good size though. I put people into three groups of 5. Each group had a smart room with projectors, Internet access, etc (something that wouldn’t have been possible had we had more). Needless to day, all things have their blessings.
As an organizer I was forced to be in on the outside looking in. I spent a little bit of time with each group usually listening, occasionally speaking. Two of the three groups were so in to their design that there really wasn’t room for late/outside contributions. Our mentor, Joyce Rudinsky, had the same experience as she moved from team to team. This was a good thing. They all produced some pretty amazing stuff, that they have posted (and are continuing to post) to the wiki.
In terms of things that were successful, my top 3 things that went well were:
Three things that could have been a bit better:
All in all though, the event was a great success. If anyone is interested in seeing what we did, please check out the wiki!
I am looking forward to seeing what the other Design Jams come up with.
I totally survived. In fact, I kind of sort of had an amazing time. By far though, the most amazing for me thing was the Echo Park Film Center:
http://www.echoparkfilmcenter.org
I first saw them at the Mozilla Science Fair, on Thursday night, the night I arrived, and was exhausted (the super shuttle took 2 hours!!!). I also presented at the Science Fair on Future class (more on that later), and was put next to this table with tons of DVDs, prop films, buttons, and two super charismatic guys (I wish I had taken a picture. I’m sure someone did, and I’ll find them and add them later).
Anyway, Out the Window consists of many film and media centers that are doing outreach to marginalized youth. It gives them a space to create, express themselves, explore etc. They brought a group of kids that had participated in the various programs to speak during their panel, well, really during the question and answer session. They were AMAZING!!! All of them said that they were empowered, and all of them, without prompting, explained their experience as a chance ot think critically. I LOVED it. So I had to ask a question, that is related to my research interests of course. I asked them if participating in these groups, and learning how to and actually creating these alternate narratives and representations of themselves and their neighborhoods and communities had changed how they view their communities, neighborhoods and how their role in them. One kid stood up. He was latino, tall, lanky with long hair and a red ski cap on. His name was Walter. Let me tell you, Walter blew us ALL away.
He talked about how all the representations he’s ever seen were made by people who had the money to control all the messaging that gets out on a massive scale, and all that messaging made people like him and from his neighborhood seem bad, less than and not worthy. But the project had allow him to see what he can do, and explore the rest of LA and see what it was like, and he was just like everyone. His participation made him feel empowered, and let him think critically about the situation and it allows him to show it for what it was.. and you could just feel the love and empowerment and it was seriously, tears. I talked to other people and they had the exact same experience. Just phenomenal and mind blowing.
The best part of all of this is of course that there is a big blue bus called the film mobile that has been gutted and turned in to a mobile cinema and production studio and it will be coming to North Carolina over the summer. I am SOOOOO there.
Even cooler, I got a couple of the DVDs of things the kids have made and I’m planning on sharing them with some of my classes and of course, guarding them as the sacred items they are for years to come.
Then there was the DML Showcase, which was amazing! I will have to write more about that later (probably with video), but it was soooo inspiring.
On to what I did
SCIENCE FAIR: Future Class
So, there was a Mozilla Science fair at DML2011. I exhibited as Future Class. I had my drumbeat site up and explained that my role in the class was to see how digital media could be used in ethnographic projects. The best comment was “isn’t that just a blog?” my response was of course, yes, and I explained that the purpose was to show a quick and easy way to create a discursive space where you field site can visibly say yay or nay to your observations. Even if it is just a blog, most people aren’t allowing for that type of exchange yet and blogs are easy and simple.
I also had a very small activity. I explained that future class was about thinking in the digital age and exploring what that means and what the challenges are in the university setting. It was a project based tutorial for the most part, but we also had to determine what needed to be different than the traditional classroom experience. I had tons of post its and pens and let people cover the table with words, sentences and paragraphs of what they needed to be changed. Almost everything centered around assessment and community/engagement. There were also quite a few on media.
A Taste of Mozilla Drumbeat: Storming the Classroom Grading and Community
The next thing I did was have a workshop session at the drumbeat workshopping session. The purpose of this was to create a foundational idea of what we want grades to do so people could then move on to brainstorming tools and methods to get them to where they needed to be. I had the smallest group but we had a wonderful time. I brought a ton of markers and a roll of paper and we created a “cloud” of thoughts (there were 4 of us), first on what was bad about how grading currently works, then what was good about how grading currently worked and finally on what are wishless was for how grading should work in the future. Everything ended up being that grading needs to be a community driven type of thing that allows for continuous feedback rather than relying on test that are incapable or measuring what people actually learn. Oh, and collectives. Classroom spaces need to be more community driven. I think the paper we had ended up being at least 14 feet. We taped it up on the wall. Even though we were few, we did something big, literally.
PANEL: New Collectives HASTAC Scholars as a Case Study
The last thing I did was a panel with Cathy Davidson, Fiona Barnett and Dixie Ching, on the HASTAC Scholars. I showed a short film (final edited forth coming) and share a website: http://jadedid.com/dml2011
The other three women on the panel? Simply amazing. I continue to be humbled to be sitting with these people.
I also shared my big revelation from DML2011.
ACADEMICS are just HACKERS and REMIXERS and FORKERS of KNOWLEDGE! By that I mean, what is a dissertation or a thesis other than taking the existing body of knowledges, mixing them, remixing them, forking them, modifying them, changing them, breaking them and coming up with something new and then publishing them? We just do it on paper (and that is starting to change slowly but surely).
I don’t know why it took me so long to come to that realization. When I think about academic work like that though, it makes me super happy.
So, all in all… wonderful amazing trip. There are so many people out there doing amazing work, and being around them is simply inspring. I’ve got to do more. I just have to.
I am preparing for a panel at DML2011: Designing Learning Futures that is a part of the new collectives track. The panel is titled “Modeling a New Collective: HASTAC Scholars as Case Study”. I will be sitting on it with four amazing women, Dixie Ching, Fiona Barnet, Cathy Davidson. The idea for the panel is, it will not be a traditional panel where we present papers. Instead, we all are going to represent different parts of what HASTAC is and does. I am lucky in that I’ve gotten the best part, in my opinion. I will be on the panel representing the scholars.
I have spent the past few weeks, speaking with, skypeing, emailing and getting video from various HASTAC scholars where they shared their thoughts on new collectives, being a part of HASTAC and how they see digital media and learning being beneficial in higher ed. I’ve also spent some time talking to people outside of HASTAC to get their thoughts on New Collectives. As a result of this, I have come to a preliminary hypothesis regarding what it takes to make new collectives successful:
goals, community, freedom, openness & action tends to = success
Almost everyone I’ve spoken to is tired of just talking about great ideas. They want a space where they can vet their ideas, get feedback, get other people interested in the same thing and take those ideas to the next step. They want a space with clear and realistic goals or purposes. They want a place where, despite the set goals, they have the freedom to try other things within the group (playing). And finally, they want to know (not just meet) who is in the collective and what they are doing so they can find ways to work together. So far, all the successful collectives people have mentioned had these things in common. These are also the things that people tend to start discussing without prompting.
Over the next few days I will be curating all the information/media I’ve gathered and preparing something to show at DML2011 so people can “meet” the scholars. Once the panel finally happens, it will be open to all the HASTAC scholars via chat and twitter. The hope and goal of this little panel collective, as I understand it, is to have an unpanel, where people in the actual and virtual audience are encouraged to join the discussion and help guide where the panel goes. So far, based on what people have contributed, I think it is going to go somewhere wonderful.
But I would like to acknowledge that the Spring semester is in full swing and I am very happy with my schedule:
I was on the fence about adding a fourth class, but I am so happy I did.
One of the requirements of my ethnography class was to keep a field journal. It didn’t need to be shared, but it needed to be done. I have tons of google docs of random notes organized by date. I also wanted to have some kind of public web documentation. As I started noticing themes popping up, I thought: self, why not make your field journal into a website. So I turned my Wordrpress install into a multisite install and made a Drumbeat blog.
As things and themes started popping up, I started adding draft pages to the blog with notes of what my observations were as well as the occasional quote and link. I also started looking for a theme that would not create a normal blog hierarchy and would also be able to incorporate video and imagery in a way that made sense. I went through two themes, and the second one was a keeper (the designer is linked in the footer of the field journal).
Post Drumbeat, I finished interviewing and started turning my notes in to something coherent and organizing thoughts around my notes, observations and themes I saw bubbling up in in Future Class. I was thinking of it as sort of a practice not just in creating a field journal, but in creating some semblance of a non-linear story around Future Class that would be useful not just for me, if I had to write an analytical paper around our activity, but also for anyone who was curious about future class, who we are, what we were doing, and our issues and successes.
I don’t like the distancing that happens a lot of times in traditional ethnographic work. Performance Ethnography tries to minimize that distance. I think using the digital minimizes it even more.
The members of Future Class saw the site before anyone else. They were able to give me feedback, let me know if they were uncomfortable with anything, give me their gut reactions etc. They had the freedom to do that publicly in the form of comments (I even encouraged them to use the comment space for that if they had any). I love that. It is so amazing that the digital allows that type of dialogue to exist very early on in a project. It also means that my field journal is a living document, subject to changes, addendum, additions etc.
While this field journal obviously does not capture all of my field notes, or even all of my video footage, it is representative of the things that were important from my point of view at this time. If feedback dictates, the members of my field site other than myself also found it to be an honest and accurate representation. I hope that it allows outside visitors to get an accurate glimpse of Future Class.
It is also so interesting to hear what people are saying. I went to drumbeat with one question: “How do you imagine the involvement of tradition forms of Higher Education in the future of Freedom, Learning and the Web?” I actually had responses from everyone I spoke with other than “but how are we going to credential” which is not something that has happened yet in academic settings. Most people there were in agreement that the approach to learning and spaces of learning needs to be more holistic. However, people were still unwilling to completely let go of some of the ideals of industrialized education. They are just re-imagining them and making them more flexible. I would have to do more reflecting and exploring to determine if I think that is a good thing or a bad thing.
Things that were great:
Things that could have been better:
So, on to the points that I am trained to observe that were reproduced (as is normal and also abnormal) at the event. There was a very clear lack of diversity. In terms of people of color there were a few of us. I believe there was one other black American female and one European African female (she was amazing. Her name was Nadia, and her project makes my heart sing. It is called the Prototype Project, and yes, you should check it out). There was also at least one black American male from, from Chicago, a Saffa… and… I might have missed some people. There were some asian males, from all over, meaning US and UK asian ;0), but not as many as one often sees at big tech events. I also came in to contact with one asian female from the states. So that was interesting.
Now on to the abnormal/positive observation: THERE WERE SO MANY FRIGGIN’ AMAZING WOMEN at the event. I didn’t realize, though I’m sure I’ve seen it before, that Mitchell Baker, the Chair of Mozilla Foundation, is a woman. And she was just one of too many to name who were in attendance. She and Cathy, the prof from the Duke class I was there with, gave the keynotes. That was super empowering. Also, even though they didn’t speak about it openly, the people who were interested in using digital media and the open source culture for advocacy were there, and we found each other. That was a wonderful thing.
So, I will go in to more detail about what I observed/did/the point was for me in the digital performance ethnography thing I am in the process of working on. I will post and update and link from this blog once it is ready (hopefully by the end of this crazy month).
I am hoping I get invited back to next year’s event and that next year is in Amsterdam… but Amsterdam is just a personal preference.
Today was THATCamp RTP, months in the making, supported by HASTAC, ISIS, and FHI at Duke, and UNC Comm Studies. It was very good.
Everyone who registered didn’t turn up, but those who did turn up were really in to it. Everywhere I went there were some very exciting conversations. Lots of stuff around digital histories, archiving, community engagement, museums, and the future of the academy with the changing digital environment (something I will also be exploring at Mozzila Drumbeat next month in Spain).
Highlights for me:
I was told that our THATCamp had a much different feel than THATCamp prime, in that it was more academic. But that makes sense. We are in the research triangle after all. Either way, it was a very good time. There was talk of another school hosting one next year.
And now it is time to move on to prep for Drumbeat.
So, I participated a week ago in the Peer-to-Peer Pedagogy (p3) workshop and (un)conference at Duke on September 10th. I’ve been holding off on writing something up. I needed to let my thoughts marinate and then meditate. The most important conclusion I came to was that this peer-to-peer stuff seems to be keeping the invisible people invisible.
Here is a transcript from the backchannel (the chat that was going on during the presentations). I am “Jade”:
http://hastacscholars.wikispaces.com/P3+Back+Channel+Transcript
Two things were said that made me a little uneasy. The first was the idea of letting people go in to a peer-to-peer situation without guidance. Some people are better equipped than others to do certain things. Different levels of education, access, socialization and culture will impact how well people will be able to handle collaborative learning/teaching/grading. I don’t like the idea of the professor abdicating their role as facilitator and educator when the need arises. So, I wrote the following:
Jade: Sometimes the babies don’t learn to walk if you don’t stand them up first, right?Sep 10
I was thinking of the experience of my own two children learning to walk. They saw other people their size walking. They were interested and frustrated by their immobility. They would scream and cry. So, I stood them up. We turned it in to a game. I got so excited when they would stand for prolonged periods. This moved to holding my hand and taking steps on their weak legs. As they got stronger, I would sit with their father on the opposite side, maybe a two feet away. We’d say “come here” with a big smile on our faces and our arms out stretched. The baby would take steps. And slowly, as their confidence grew, we would sit further apart, until, one day, the baby decided he was ready, and he’d stand up by himself, and walk across the room without needing a hand. I don’t think students are babies, but, I think we learn new things by observation, and experience. Often, those experiences need to be facilitated.
So, the other thing that was said was in the backchannel. Here is the exchange:
Grace Hagood: I think (coming from the standpoint of teaching composition) that students are better able to understand not only issues of audience, but also their own agency as authors when they’re involved in producing digital work that they know is going to be available online.Sep 10
Grace Hagood: They’re very tuned into how they present themselves in a public digital context, often.Sep 10
Amanda Phillips: @grace I will probably make the forum more open next time. But does it feel public to them if no one from the outside is responding?Sep 10
Grace Hagood: @amanda I think it feels public as long as the class has access, but no doubt that’s compounded if outside readers are allowed.Sep 10
Amanda Phillips: I mean if you make a forum public, will students treat it as such if no one from the outside is posting? The Internet is a big place and can feel emptySep 10
Nilspete: Public space for students to work on toy assignment will not draw a real community. That is why you need real problems situated in real communitiesSep 10
Jade: @Nils, I think it is good for practice though so students feel comfortable going out to real communities.Sep 10
Nilspete: @jade. Learners do need to understand and develop these skills. But I’d argue, dare to be bold.Sep 10
The conversation continued a bit, and then I posted the following:
Jade: @nils, I agree it is important to be bold but it goes back to the question of making sure communities that have a history of not being included are integrated.Sep 10
There was no response to that from anyone. I have this new thing. Well, it isn’t new. It is something I determined for me and my research interest and methodological leaning will be important. It is called a”privilege check”. The space I am coming from, the status I have etc gives me so many more privileges than people I interact with every day in daily life, the classroom, research etc. I don’t want to take it for granted. To me, my research will not be meaningful if I don’t check my privilege and try to ensure that everyone I am interacting with has an equal voice. If they don’t, I need to try to help level the playing field as much as I am able to. I feel like, especially in a University setting, people should feel they are safe to explore knowledge and expression of knowledge (or learning I guess). For some people, that might be just the basics; learning that their ideas and thoughts are as valuable as any other idea or thought.
Not everyone feels safe enough to be bold. Not everyone IS safe enough to be bold. To ignore that is unrealistic. It is something that must be discussed when looking towards a peer-to-peer system in a University context.
President's Forum with Young African Leaders (source: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/pix/af/pfyal/index.htm)
The President’s Forum with Young African Leaders took place yesterday and I was able to catch it streaming live from the website. It was very inspiring. In addition to watching the actual forum, I’ve also been keeping my eye on the twitterfeed #youngafrica. This feed has been active over the past few days leading up, during and following the President’s forum.
For a continent that is often invisible when it comes to discussions on tech/digital media/internet etc. there were a lot of reactions and discussions happening from all over the continent and expats of various countries living or studying abroad discussing not just what was being said, but also what was being left out. There was also a lot of pride in the young leaders. If you watch the video, I am sure you will understand why.
What the #youngafrica twitterfeed made very clear is that countries in Africa are connecting to the world wide web and using/engaging in social media conversations. Also, even if we often ignore what is happening there stateside, they are acutely aware of what is happening stateside. If we want to have a successful future we will need to meaningfully engage the various countries and populations that were previously left out, both at home and abroad, in a two way conversation about the future. I am still convinced that there is no way these conversations can exist without the use of digital media. This forum was a big first step. Now we have to keep the conversation going and with policy and processes, research and action.
The one thing that I took from all these conversations and the forum was this: #youngafrica is moving from the past and looking towards the future. Are you?