Doctor Daisy

Cross-posted at Katrina: An Unnatural Disaster:

Last week I was interviewed by the communications staff here at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. They contacted me, saying they had heard about my research into the post-Katrina blogosphere, and the result of our conversation is this press release, which was sent out to 50 local and regional reporters. I guess you could say that my new media efforts are about to make waves through the old media channels.

On a more serious note, the blog post that accompanied this news story has reminded me of my ever-conflicted feelings of trauma and loss. It features a picture of me that they describe as follows: “Pignetti is shown here in a February 2006 photo as she sits on the front steps of her childhood home in New Orleans, which was devastated during Hurricane Katrina.”

Anyone viewing the picture can clearly see that it was taken on a sunny day, with my house gleaming white. The only visible indication of Hurricane Katrina’s wrath is the spray paint on the front door. Because of this, I felt I should immediately share a link to pictures of the house’s interior, which truly shows the damage 10-feet of water can do.

The urgency with which I left that comment proves that I still wrestle with feelings of being misunderstood. After all, I was living in Tampa in August of 2005 and didn’t have to physically endure anything other than frustration at not having any precise information about which levees breached and what that even meant. Yet, three years later, I am still traumatized by what happened to my house, on my street, and to my city. I experience survivor’s guilt on a daily basis, with my feelings of doubt only increasing with the passage of time, making me wonder, how am I justified in feeling as sad as I do?

For instance, when I meet people face-to-face for the first time, I still proudly proclaim that I’m from New Orleans, but often only respond with, “We lost everything” to their question of “How’d you make out after Katrina hit?” Why is that all I say? I certainly am annoyed if no one bothers to ask, so why, when given the chance, do I truncate my story to a three-word response?

I think it is because I figure that if I respond, “I couldn’t find my parents for almost a week,” they will think that my mother and father were like the people they saw stranded either at the Superdome or Convention Center. I am convinced that when they find out my parents are better off than most “victims” due to their relocation to a second home we already owned in Picayune, Mississippi, any sympathy they had for us will diminish.

Writer and scholar Louise DeSalvo states the following in her book Writing as a Way of Healing, and I believe it explains my situation as a transplanted New Orleanian exactly:

Often…trauma remains undisclosed because, though people would like to discuss it, they can’t or won’t because they fear punishment, embarrassment, or disapproval or because they can’t find an appropriate audience. So, many people actively stop themselves from telling their stories; they inhibit the need to tell their traumatic narratives.

But, to quote Loki’s most recent post, “that is one of the reasons why I blog.”

By directing my writing to an invisible, nonjudgmental audience, I have used this blog to cultivate a more emotional persona and, as a result, have embarked on a journey of healing. When I find an image of a now-destroyed familiar place or a news story that disturbs me to the point of again unleashing the sorrow of that week of national and man-made disaster, I know I can blog about it. Not only will I feel better as a result, others will recognize that I am not OK that New Orleans is nowhere close to being recovered, and that the world should not deny us its sympathy.

2 Responses »

I’m proud to share the link to the essay I recently wrote in response to Dan Gillmor’s “Principles of New Media.” It has been published as part of the publius project, which is a Berkman Center blog-site featuring “essays and conversations about constitutional moments on the Net.”

Having Gillmor as my advisor last summer when I was at Harvard for the OII Summer Doctoral Programme was inspiring, and it was great to get his feedback on my dissertation project. As I’ve been writing the past 8 months or so, I have often been skeptical about what new media genres can really do in terms of social change, but at the heart of my work will always be an appreciation for the writing and recovering that is happening in New Orleans quite independently of established channels.

New Orleanians like myself are a passionate people very much attached to our humid bohemian city, and the more my scholarly work and their blogs can remind the world that “we are not OK,” the more I hope people will take notice.

I hope you enjoy the essay and do leave comments!

7 Responses »

Been watching the webcasts of the plenary sessions at the Berkman@10 conference all day. Good stuff–some familiar from my 2 weeks there last summer for the Oxford Internet Institute–but I’m most excited about the speed with which I’m moving between windows and tabs. Haven’t juggled chatting, twittering, flickring, listening, checking email, searching, and posting to Blackboard for my online students since last July!

Daithí is there and already has some informative summaries up on his blog.

OK back to it. Also love the twitter feed here, since it seems we broke hashtags.org

No Responses »

So glad @zefrank shared the link to this video of Clay Shirky speaking on Web 2.0 and time management.

Both this video and Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody will help me refocus the first chapter of my dissertation* b/c he makes the very obvious but necessary to hear point that “it’s better to do something than do nothing.” He sets up the binary between television media and participatory media to argue “media that’s targeted at you but doesn’t include you may not be worth sitting still for.” The NOLA bloggers I’m looking at started their blogging and wiking and photo and video-sharing as a result of Katrina and purposefully because they knew the mainstream media would get it wrong. So there you have it.

Go watch, experiment with social software, produce and share!

[*I’m totally a backwards writer. Discovering as you write means the intro has to change a dozen times]

3 Responses »

Still wishing I could make it up to Harvard for Berkman@10, but it’s nice to know that they’ve launched their own YouTube channel where I can catch up on their most recent conversations as well as a great historical overview!

No Responses »

Since 4Cs I have had nothing but days filled with writing, stressing, going to the gym, and editing existing pages. My blogging has suffered, but I think, dear readers, you understand why.

It’s starting to hit me now that I’ve landed a great job and will be moving in a little over 2 months, but there is so much to accomplish before then. I’m also trying to spend a lot of time in the sun while I can. On Friday we went to the beach at Fort DeSoto Park and today we biked 14 miles at Flatwoods Park. I know we’ll be getting to Wisconsin during the summer, but it’s kinda like I’m trying to stock up on the sunshine to prepare for the long winter I will have to endure next year.

In other news, I cannot wait for a new computer and a new blog platform. Since I’ve been following lots of social media professionals on Twitter I’m seeing really cool layouts and all I’ve got is some packaged template [on a very old version of Word Press] that I can’t figure out how to manipulate.

Off to bed for now. Will likely blog more tomorrow since I’ll be getting much needed feedback on my diss chapters and may need to figure out my ideas and/or timeline til defense.

No Responses »

Since I’ve been on Twitter I’ve noticed people announce when their 1000th “tweet” is coming up. There’s a certain pressure to make it a good one, yet staying within the 140 character limit is always a challenge.

Tonight I hit my 1000th and have to admit it was chosen carefully, although only a few minutes before.

Since Andy’s been writing for his MFA program, I’ve picked up his regimen of freewriting, timed writing, and reading not for research sake but for craft’s sake. When I was in NOLA last November we went to the book sale at the Latter Library and I picked up Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings. As I’m in the throes of the dissertation, I thought this quote was well-suited for describing my personal narrative chapter:

The frame through which I viewed the world changed too, with time. Greater than scene, I came to see, is situation. Greater than situation is implication. Greater than all of these is a single, entire human being, who will never be confined in any frame.

If listening to fellow Katrina survivors and New Orleans college and university teachers last week at 4Cs taught me anything, it’s that more and more people need to hear our stories because of the fact that they are so varied. I know my writing out of passion and emotion is something I may have to defend to a scholarly audience, but it’s something I find quite necessary to my academic work, at least for now. I can’t let what I think people will critique hold me back from constructing the narrative thus far. So thank you, Eudora, for reminding me of basic human nature because, as you say later, I know “The strands are all there: to the memory nothing is ever really lost.”

No Responses »

For those new readers of my blog who may be visiting this site after attending our Saturday Katrina panel at 4Cs–”Composed in the Wake of Disaster: (Re)Writing the Realities of New Orleans”–I’d like to post some text and links for your benefit. As I was the last panelist of four and we were Internet-less in our conference room [something I’ve started to rant about over at Dennis’s blog], I felt a bit scattered. I typically create Powerpoints, but wasn’t in the mood for that this time around. So even though I had typed up a few pages and had a plethora of examples to share, I ended up doing what I prefer, extemporizing.

Here is a more fleshed out version of what I shared on my handout:

Like Bryon Hawk [who spoke on Hurricane Katrina as a cultural media event, using the framework Jean Baudrillard sets forth in The Gulf War Did Not Take Place], I agree that there were repeated and manipulated images of Katrina that circulated at rapid speed, particularly during that week of the storm when little to no information could be verified and the media focus had to remain on those still stranded in the city, Superdome, Convention Center.

But as a New Orleans native, I had other issues with the depiction of my beloved hometown. I was skeptical when Brian Williams declared on NBC’s Today Show (August 30, 2005. 7:05 a.m. ET): “There has been a huge development overnight … the historic French Quarter, dry last night and it is now filling with water. This is water from nearby Lake Pontchartrain; the levees failed overnight.”

Not only did I not know how to begin to process this information—which levee? how much water? where would the water go?—when I watched the news later that night and saw streets in and near the Quarter bone dry, I knew that these news stories were evolving into journalistic “meta-narratives,” and I knew that from this moment on, these would no longer suffice.

Thus, my focus today is on those locals–primarily those cyberliterate and with access to technology–who had evacuated and were watching from hotel rooms or the homes of extended family members. When they could not find any information relevant to their neighborhoods, never mind their eventual return to their homes and beloved city, many went online.

[Here I referred to the chart from a Pew Internet and American Life report on getting news during the storms of 2005, and wanted to highlight how it’s likely that, once again, locals were not part of the sample population. ]

While it’s great that more and more Americans nationwide are turning to and trusting alternative news sources like blogs and discussion boards, my argument is that in the years since the storm, the only place one can truly get a real depiction or chronicle of a Katrina survivor/resident of NOLA is in the New Orleans blogosphere.

With that said, and without Internet access, I read from several blogs, highlighting the dates of the posts to prove that the Katrina narrative is still developing, with every insurance claim, abandoned house or business, death, and reiteration of why New Orleans matters!

Full list of examples I shared or wanted to share, organized by rhetorical mode:
1. EXPLAIN: Katrina stories—locals who stayed and who watched from afar

2. DESCRIBE: the look of one street in January 2008 and a video commentary 16 months after the storm:

Grocery from Editor B on Vimeo.

3. ENTERTAIN: in order to meet new insurance guidelines and avoid flooding next time around, one has to raise one’s house:

4. PERSUADE: a powerful speech and then the speaker’s reflection 1 year later, still outraged at the lack of change when it comes to crime

5. INFORM: One’s shock at the lack of discussion surrounding a scary statistic.
Finally, how to describe New Orleans? It’s a place of its own and one to which we are intensely attached

If anyone has comments or questions, please leave a comment. Watch this space for a link in the coming weeks because a more theoretical look at the “writing wrong” examples like these demonstrate is now in print in the Spring 2008 issue of Reflections.

3 Responses »

I’m so happy Leisa posted the link to this in her Twitter stream. I think I had heard of this project through the Open Society Institute, but never got a chance to read more or watch the student-produced videos until now.

The Katrina Media Fellows’ mission is stated as follows:

Through stories and images, the fellows aim to deepen public understanding of the government’s long-term response to Katrina; failures of public policy; use or misuse of public funds; the role of private contractors; the effectiveness of clean-up and rebuilding efforts; the psychological impact on residents, now more than two years after the storm; and lessons that should inform the handling of future disasters.

One of the most powerful videos, considering the subject of my dissertation research, is the one entitled “Not As Seen on TV.” Not only does it let locals speak for themselves, it shows the pain that permeates the city still today. (However, I actually wish less edits were made because I think some interviewees were on the verge of sharing more and, while that may be uncomfortable to watch, how else can their grief be honestly represented and understood?) Still, heavy emphasis is also made on the music, culture, and humor of New Orleanians, with one interview subject stating it quite plainly, “New Orleans is not just a place, it’s our soul.”

I’m in the midst of revising my own narrative which deals with my denial during the week of August 29, 2005, and watching this only reminds me of how my parents could have also been part of those people left behind had the storm not hit the magic number 5. I truly think that’s the only thing that convinced them to evacuate at the last minute. While they were lucky and never had to live in a FEMA trailer, I know we are all still trying to deal with the loss, the gutting & buy-out of our home, and the feeling of “not knowing when this was going to end.”

Even though I blog about this quite often, it’s not something I voice out loud much, probably because I’m still suffering from the pain and anger of things being forever changed by the levee breaches. Because I’m not living in NOLA now, and because when I visit I see friends who seem genuinely happy with the way their lives are going, it’s easy for me to purposefully forget how traumatic it must be to cope with the many changes that have occurred the past three years.

All I can do though is write my story, share the blogs of those living there now, and try to remain as involved in the city’s recovery as possible.

In fact, next week when I am there for the Conference on College Composition and Communication I’ll have a chance to meet again with fellow New Orleans bloggers and have my first ever “tweetup” with eve11 who I’ve connected with through Twitter. Her blog is wonderfully written and I’m looking forward to both talking to her about a term she introduced me to called “naked blogging,” and donating my OLPC XO laptop to her proposed children’s social media project!

Watch this space for updates on this next week. Til then, go watch the videos at the Soros site.

No Responses »

I really wish I had the time to get up to Harvard for “The Future of the Internet” conference May 15-16, 2008, but now that I’m 80 days away from my anticipated defense date, I have to focus on things like producing pages, making edits, and figuring out where I’ll be living in July!

The planned breakout sessions described here sound amazing, so I can’t wait to read the liveblogging, wiki edits, and Twitter streams that come out of them!

No Responses »

I haven’t blogged or even felt guilty about not blogging in weeks. As you can tell from my previous posts, I’ve become intrigued with Twitter; however, I haven’t really been updating that timeline either. When I’m anxious like this, I don’t spend much time online. Also, my parents came in town and I’m still juggling the job search and writing the dissertation. Needless to say, this state of flux is driving me crazy.

Not being in New Orleans for Mardi Gras again this year, not wanting to be in Tampa anymore EVER, not knowing where I will be living after July, not feeling like a good teacher lately b/c of how focused I am on the dissertation–it all stresses me out and that leads to tears. I think I’ve cried more in the 2007-2008 academic year than ever before! My husband and parents have been great and supportive, and I know things will be resolved pretty soon, but I tend to get upset more on the weekends because that’s when I realize how homesick I am for The Big Easy.

As a result, I’m starting to read more about place attachment because I feel the need to find something academic to defend my love for New Orleans. Considering my dissertation is focused on NOLA bloggers, it’s a topic that I’m passionate about, but more and more I’m having to defend my ideas to people who just don’t get why such online endeavors are important, people who would probably tell me to “get over Katrina” if they could. Maybe I’m being too sensitive, but it’s a vibe I’ve been getting for some time now, which is another reason why I’m driven to finish my dissertation. I am confident that my look at trauma studies and citizen journalism will contribute to the growing field of Katrina scholarship, and that’s no crying matter.

10 Responses »

I was not at all expecting to receive my XO laptop before Christmas since I ordered it a little later than most, so imagine my surprise when a loud knock came at the door this evening. As soon as I saw the box, I screamed, “It’s my XO!” and I put everything down. Sadly, I really don’t think I will start playing with it until after the holidays and MLA. We’re traveling soon and I’ve got too much writing and thinking to do before my interviews.

I hope also that the T-Mobile hotspot subscription comes in by then so I can get Starbucks drinkers to hop on board the OLPC initiative.

2 Responses »

Like D Weinberger, I had not noticed that dopplr went live last week. I’ve been enjoying the service since July and, because I hope to see a lot of travel in my future, I plan to use it to continue to keep up with my contacts in the new year.

And, again like DW, I have to say that this “spotlight on dopplr” is not one to miss!

No Responses »

[I started composing this post before Thanksgiving, but never got around to finishing it until now–my apologies]

As you all know, this has been the most hectic semester for me. While I probably did not have the time to attend a conference, I knew I had to attend the Louisiana Association for College Composition conference for several reasons:

1. It was being held in New Orleans, my hometown
2. Its theme was re•NEW•al, the overarching subject of my dissertation
3. It was hosted by Xavier University of Louisiana, where I was an Instructor for three years before starting my PhD
4. I had attended two of these conferences before when I was teaching at Xavier, and I’ve always appreciated its close community and small number of panels. When you’re faced with the immense program books of national conferences, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Here I only had to choose between two sessions each hour!

Needless to say, every trip I’ve made to NOLA since Katrina has been an emotional one and this would be no different, especially because I got to see my friend, Sarah, who recently had a stroke. I also had the chance to see my undergrad university’s ballet program, something I don’t think I have ever done as an audience member! I know watching the show was hard for Sarah to do, especially since some of the choreography was originally chosen for her to perform, but she was a trooper. Just last week she returned to a ballet and a character dance class, which is more than I think I’d ever do only 12 weeks after a stroke. She’s got amazing will power, and I’m so proud of her for never giving up!

Another off-putting feeling I had was checking into a hotel for this visit. Typically, we stay with my parents or friends, but because of the conference, I thought it easier to stay in the conference hotel than rent a car or rely on friends to drive me around. [Just the week before, though, the St. Charles streetcar began running again, so I could have had an alternative mode of transport]. Anyway, I felt weird being a tourist in my hometown, but got over it pretty quickly when I was reminded of all the fun things to do nearby. Walking St. Charles is something I’ve done every Mardi Gras so I just pretended there was a parade to get to and I was fine

But how about the conference?! Friday morning I attended a great session on Literature and Writing, and while it was noted that the second composition course requirement is moving away from using literature, I was reminded how much I enjoyed teaching the genres and creating unique paper assignments that asked for reader responses and new historical/social commentary. Perhaps my interest was piqued by the emphasis on regional literature and how students can supplement, in this case their reading and scholarly research of A Lesson Before Dying, with newspaper archival work and oral histories. The presenter, Elizabeth M. Beard’s, goal was to share how she helped make literature meaningful for her students, and I appreciated her strategies since this projects really pushes students to become critics and creators of cultural narratives. A text she referenced that I want to check out is a 2006 NCTE edited collection, Bergmann and Baker’s Composition and/or Literature: The End(s) of Education.

The Keynote Speaker at LACC was Dr. Jacqueline Jones Royster who shared 5 wonderful goals for all teachers, particularly those who Katrina has left traumatized, to consider:

context matters–specific circumstances have a way of changing our world view so what can we learn from these circumstances, what teachable moments are out there? How can be on guard to patterns of action?
vision–who are we as teachers and what it is we’re trying to enable our students to do?
courage–a motivating force; be upfront with students about the limitations of language b/c when they leave the cocoon of the classroom, they may be shocked at the lack of response
compassion to act responsibly–Q: why should we care about others? Who is included in “our circle”? A: Draw larger circles of caring–connect to others around the planet
conscious of our global realities–have the fortitude and commitment to be consistently “fired up.” Link lives and stories to those of others in humanity.

Her hope for those of us in the field of writing studies is for more opportunities to stand back and think about what we do and what we must do–>professional integrity. Most applicable to my work with trauma theory and the connection between the body and mind [writing to heal] is that we should pay attention to the whole body experience when writing, not just the “writing about.”

On Saturday I had the pleasure of chairing the panel on Civic Rhetoric and presenting along with Lei Lani Michel and Clancy Ratliff. Because I was chair and didn’t have a lot of time to take notes, but I did record my fellow panelists’ talks with my new i-pod attachment. I haven’t had a chance to listen to the recording, so for now I will share the memorable names and phrases from each.

Clancy’s presentation proposed “Opportunities and Ideas for Teaching Civic Literacy in Louisiana” and used Donald Lazere’s definition of civic literacy, which includes having a store of knowledge of history, civics, political movements and theorists. Obviously many of our students lack this specific background but if we localize the experience to issues specific to Louisiana–Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, FEMA trailer standards [or lack thereof], the Jena 6 case, etc., perhaps our students will thrive at vocalizing their opinions and grounding them in research/history.

Lei Lani’s presentation focused on “findability” and a course exercise she conducted with her students in order to emphasize writing for both people and search engines. Reminding us all that technology is unfixed and we all have the chance to be part of its change, a part of the information[’s] culture, it became clear that those of us who aim to teach technological literacy that we should also model “finding” for our students. One unique way she suggested we could do this is to ask students to do a rhetorical analysis of a search engine beyond Google and Yahoo, e.g. Kartoo.com, IceRocket.com, Like.com, and MsDewey.com. I’ve never heard of any of these and am fascinated by their emphasis on visual design [although I’m kind of scared of Ms. Dewey!], so I’m eager to explore these further and try this exercise out next semester!

More blogging to come over the next 2 weeks!

No Responses »

When I was at Harvard this summer, I was introduced to a slew of social networking tools. I joined Facebook a couple weeks before the session started and have come to use it on a daily basis to keep up with my SDP and other academic contacts. Now that applications have been added, I can also have my blog, my Flickr page, my del.icio.us account, and my Dopplr account all feed into my profile.

If you’re not familiar with Dopplr, it is an invitation-only travel schedule site, so you can organize your trips as well as “share your future travel plans with a group of trusted fellow travellers that you have chosen. It also reminds you of friends and colleagues who live in the cities you’re planning to visit.” I know some folks have privacy issues and do not necessarily want to publish all the places they are going, but so far I like it, especially since I have friends all over the place!

You can read more about it on the Dopplr blog, but my absolute favorite thing about it is this:

When I type in New Orleans, it tells me, “We know about just one place in the world that matches what you’ve typed: New Orleans, LA, United States.” However, when I type in Tampa, it hesitates: “We think you mean Tampa, FL, United States. However, there are 2 places that could match what you’ve typed.”

More reinforcement that NOLA is my one and only!

P.S. If you want an invite, leave me a comment or email me.

One Response »

I’ve been going back and forth about participating in this program–not because I don’t believe in the OLPC initiative, but because I felt that I’d only be purchasing it for novelty sake. Do I really need another computer?

Still, its size and “cute” factor are part of its charm, and it was brilliant for the creators to offer this chance to the public in the US and Canada to own one as well as donating one now that the machine is being mass-produced. It helps, too, that I did fall in love with it when I visited the OLPC offices this summer.

I also held back making my donation/purchase til now because I felt I’d still travel with my Powerbook anyway because I intuitively know all the folders and documents I reference when working on my dissertation. However, when I found out about the year of free T-mobile hotspot access, I realized I could save all my writing as Google documents and work from the wifi XO computer. But I didn’t reach for my wallet until today when I read this part of the Terms and Conditions:

Neither OLPC Foundation nor One Laptop per Child, Inc. has service facilities, a help desk or maintenance personnel in the United States or Canada. Although we believe you will love your XO laptop, you should understand that it is not a commercially available product and, if you want help using it, you will have to seek it from friends, family, and bloggers. One goal of the G1G1 initiative is to create an informal network of XO laptop users in the developed world, who will provide feedback about the utility of the XO laptop as an educational tool for children, participate in the worldwide effort to create open-source educational applications for the XO laptop, and serve as a resource for those in the developing world who seek to optimize the value of the XO laptop as an educational tool. A fee based tech support service will be available to all who desire it. We urge participants in the G1G1 initiative to think of themselves as members of an international educational movement rather than as “customers.”

I find that language fantastic and if there is anything I want to do in life, it’s to be part of a movement that advocates using technology in education and increasing access world-wide. If someone sees me with the laptop, they will surely ask about it and I can tell them all about Nicholas Negroponte’s mission. Even when I briefly mentioned this project in my Expository Writing class a couple of weeks ago, several students emailed me after to find out more about it and some have gone on to research open access user software for their final projects.

So I am off to place my order!

No Responses »

I’m happy to announce that my meta-blogging meta-narrative has been published in Computers and Composition Online. The entire Special Issue about Online Research, Writing, and Citation Practices can be found here and my webtext is available here.

I am not well-versed in Dreamweaver, but I do know that this is a much “easier-on-the eyes” version of the piece, which was first submitted in FrontPage. I know I have a lot to learn about navigation structures and I actually thought the whole left bar column would be fixed, but I guess that means the reader really has to finish each section before they can move onto the next!

Jeez, am I a linear kind of gal or what?

2 Responses »

NOTE: I’m pretty sure that blogging will be at a minimum this semester too, so if you’re looking for links to what I’m reading, check del.icio.us.

And repeated praises to the 2007 SDP experience–without my fellow Internet and Society contacts to bounce ideas off of via gtalk or Facebook, I think I’d be forever locked in my library carrel! It’s funny, but I think I appreciate that time more and more every day. While I never want to set foot in White Hall dorms again, I’m eager for whatever follow-up conference travel we organize, either at Harvard or Oxford!

No Responses »

An outsider’s take on Rising Tide 2:

In most cities, bloggers practice a peculiar virtual cannibalism, tearing each other apart for sport. But at Rising Tide, among people young and old, black and white, I saw my first glimpse of what can be termed blogger solidarity. It stemmed, as one told me, from “the necessity of coming together after Katrina.”

The bloggers represent the best of something beginning to bubble that you won’t see on the nightly news, as the two-year anniversary of Katrina arrives today. Amid the horror, amid the neighborhoods that the federal government seems content to see die, there are actual people sticking it out. And they do it with gusto.

No Responses »

but the jet lag is killing me!

Rising Tide 2 is a conference, a party and an opportunity to learn where New Orleans stands two years after the failure of the federally-built levees following Hurricane Katrina. The weekend schedule of events is organized and presented by New Orleans bloggers in an effort to bring real-life activism to their online visibility.

This post on the RT blog is everything my dissertation aims to explore.

No Responses »

Thank you, Ismael for blogging so quickly and articulately!

My time at Harvard was fantastic and while at times it felt over my head on the policy and IP fronts, I learned so much about what it means to be an internet scholar, how to cross interdisciplinary boundaries, and when to “go meta.”

I know I am behind on writing up my thoughts on my own presentation from last week, but suffice it to say that I was reminded at how unique a story I have to tell and that the more I celebrate New Orleans and the people there rebuilding the city with their online actions and words, the better. I had not thought such a global and distinguished group of fellow PhD students would be as interested in my qualitative work, but I was wrong. They even recommended some quantitative tools in case I do want to go in that direction.

Most importantly, I was introduced [by Marcus Foth] to the term “action research” and I think it may be the way I want to frame my dissertation. I don’t know if this tactic will require me spending more time in NOLA, interviewing, etc., but I feel that any attempt to write about post-Katrina New Orleans and the self-organizing efforts are happening vis-a-vis the Internet requires me to think about how my work can both contribute to knowledge and successful change.

Dan Gillmor and Steve Schifferes were my “assigned” tutors, and their feedback was invaluable as was the entire 2-week experience.

I promise more posts and photos to come!

One Response »

Yesterday we had the honor of visiting the MIT Media Lab. I’m not really a Second Life person [I think many of you know I live by the slogan “I don’t play games”], so I was thrilled when we were given the option to checkout their Lifelong Kindergarten lab and then head over to the One Laptop Per Child office.

While we are a group of 30+ PhD students from all over the world, check out the difficulty we had opening up the machine! And for a more detailed description of the project, check out this CBS video.

5 Responses »

In session with Henry Jenkins right now and here’s the first video up for discussion:

One Response »

I still have a lot to say about my presentation at Harvard a few days ago however my back pain is limiting my ability to sit and type comfortably.

My notes on the sessions are in WORD right now, but I can sum up the copyright session thus far:

Pressing a button to send something to someone else, something that isn’t your content, requires thought about copyright!

No Responses »

Our summer program wiki has gone live!

Also, some of my fellow program participants have been blogging the sessions quite articulately: Daithi and Ismael, both of which appear on the SDP2007 newsfeed.

Finally, check out what the Potter fans among us have to look forward to in Harvard [aka Hogwarts] Square tomorrow night!

No Responses »