Five years later

This blog is five years old today, which is somewhat difficult to believe. Where did the time go?

It is interesting (to me) to look back over the history of this site and see how its content and direction have evolved in that time. Although this last year has been somewhat exceptional. For most of the time since last September I have been blogging on a closed private site, as I have been writing material for my Masters. I have cross-posted some of that content here so that this site does not lie fallow for the whole twelve months duration of the course.

At present I am working on my dissertation, which now has its own blog as well. As most of my time has been spent so far on researching and drafting literature reviews and the like there is not as much content on that blog as I would like. Now as I move into the later stages of my dissertation project and more material is finalised you should see more content populating the pages there.

As part of my research I am collating a list of Irish graphic design blogs which will reside on a dedicated page within that site. I am currently processing and analysing the list but a subset of the total are already in place there. Any comments and feedback on the content of that site are welcome, everything gets added into my research. If you are aware of any Irish graphic design blogs please let me know so that I can include them as well.

Ubiquitous Capture

Another key learning from this process has been a rediscovery of the centrality of ‘Ubiquitous Capture’ as a behaviour. This is a central practice of the GTD methodology, and one I am mostly in the habit of observing. But given the amount of work to be done on this dissertation and the time scale involved I have gained a new appreciation for its utility. Whether it was on my daily commutes, lunch breaks, or sitting in the car with a sleeping baby in the back seat, all opportune thoughts, ideas, and insights went into my iPod Notes app, or were jotted into one of many small black notebooks as they occurred to me.

Even as the majority of these notes were heavily revised or simply abandoned, the importance of recording all such relevant thoughts as they occur made the task of actual composition more efficient. Being able to start with some raw materials ready for crafting and refining means that I always have something to work on for those days when my mind was unable to tackle an intimidating blank page.

Thinking that your brain works on any project only during its allocated time is a self-defeating fallacy, one that this practice routes around. Helpful as this practice was in marshalling all of my
thoughts for this dissertation, it really is a central life skill with broad application to all projects.

The Necessity Of The Analogue

One of the more interesting personal learnings from this project is a rediscovery of what I call “the necessity of the analogue”. After spending time constructing a moderately elaborate, robust infrastructure of online services to support my research and writing, I found myself writing many of my key insights and findings in black ink in small notebooks.

One detrimental aspect of researching blogging is that there is a practically infinite buffet of blog related news always available no more than one distracted mouse-click away. I found that writing on the laptop affords far too many distractions. Typing is not a problem, but my real thinking, analysing and writing had to happen off-line. A blank page is a blank page affording only opportunities not endless distractions.

Twitter as a research asset

Given that the key books that I am referencing all happen to have been published around 2006, it seemed useful to follow up on the authors activities in 2009. I reasoned that, in a fast moving young field like blogging and social media, any expert’s thinking should have evolved significantly incorporating the last three year’s developments.

Sure enough all of the key authors had active current blogs. Keeping up with those within my work-flow and time commitments proved problematic. Of much more utility was that all also had active Twitter accounts. This meant that every day, as part of the casual act of reading my Twitter-feed, I was continually being made aware of further useful material pertinent to this research. Most of the author's tweets pointed to both their own blog posts and to relevant thoughts and analysis they had sourced online. While the majority of my research has to be ‘pull’-based, with me going looking for material, this added a ‘push’ dimension with content being directed towards me. The obvious downside of this being that, once following enough experts in your field of interest, you may become overwhelmed with the fire-hose of content pointed at you. This can be mitigated by developing good personal content filters and ruthlessly unfollowing anyone whose tweets are not adding value to your research.

I have found this practice very beneficial in the information gathering phases of my research. It is a most effective way of keeping abreast scanning evaluating of a high volume of potential material. I would recommend this to any researcher, particularly any whose topic touches off technology or Internet-related subjects.

My Thought For The Day 22/04

“Trying to work out the correct formatting construction for citing tweets in my dissertation. A First World problem or what?”
9:24 PM Apr 22nd from my Twitterfeed.

Establishing a dissertation blog

Social Media and technology journalist, author and blogger Shel Israel is writing a book on the intersection of Twitter and business called Twitterville, due for publication Q3 2009. He is blogging the writing process, putting up his raw notes and interviews. He is crowd-sourcing comments, feedback and suggestions to further his research. (but holding back his final manuscript for publication obviously) This approach would be a productive model for an aspect my own research. It certainly puts the traits of openness and transparency into practice: "be the change you wish to see" and all of that. In my case I am going to create a dedicated Dissertation Work-In-Progress blog as my public research and crowd-source hub. I plan to retain this existing invite-only Learning Log blog to capture draft material for my reflective log.

Update: My dissertation blog is now online at AidenKenny.squarespace.com

My Thought For The Day 15/04

“Writing Literature Review long-hand. My theory was that after 40-odd pages my writing would improve with practice. Sigh. So much for that...”
11:54 PM Apr 15th from my Twitterfeed.

My Thought For The Day 01/04

“Hmmm, perhaps my Twitter-referencing April Fools gag was just too clever-clever by half...”
10:52 PM Apr 1st from twitterrific

Quote Of The Day 27/03

“We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies.”
—Walt Disney

My Thought For The Day 26/03

“3K+ words written, now I need to get the train into college library, but it is really lashing rain. Therefore: Motivation Level = Low.”
2:25 PM Mar 26th from Power Twitter

Cutting through the fog

I am trying to tie down my Research Question in detail and that is still proving to be somewhat of a challenge. I imagine that it is the absolute cliché of the MA student that one finds more and more interesting avenues of investigation the more more reading and researching one conducts. My doing some initial research this last week has shown that.

I now have a very clear sense of why a defined and locked-down trinity of Question, Aims and Objectives can serve as a necessary merciless filter for keeping laser focus on the end-goals.

My Thought For The Day 22/03

“Doing some initial online research into corporate blogging. Oh yessiree that’s one fine can of worms you have opened up there Mr Kenny...”
9:31 PM Mar 22nd from Power Twitter

My Thought For The Day 19/03

“Attempting to construct an irrefutable wall of logic: each component self-evident, elegantly reinforced & interdependant. (Not quite there.)”
11:23 PM Mar 19th from twitterrific

My Thought For The Day 13/03

“Social Media defined: the most efficient method yet devised to allow companies to show the world that they hire people who cannot spell.”
08:22 AM March 13, 2009, from my Twitter feed.

Quote Of The Day 05/03

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving the non-essential things undone.”
—Lin Yutang