forgot to mention that I went and met the people running the Kings Cross Partnership wesbite. Interesting to discuss with them the way the website has developed around the local regeneration scheme; here is a site set up to meet the community and visitor needs around a specific government funded project to renew and revitalise an area that has previously suffered from under-investment. I particularly recommend you check out and use the series of local walks on the site, put together in consulation with local communities.
adam

PHOTOBLOGGING ON THE WALL: This is link to a BBC article about a pub in North London that allows patrons to send photos from their phones to a large screen in the pub. We recently had a workshop with Sapient designers (a "design session") where Adam and I presented ideas from our ethnographies of blogs and photoblogs and the group then worked together to think about potential product and design implications of these findings. One of the connections we made was between the desire to write a blog and the desire to leave marks on the city (e.g. graffiti) : both can be a public medium for what would otherwise be private sentiments, and there are obviously strong compulsions to display oneself in these ways. In this context, we talked about a system that would allow passerbys to post SMS messages or photos literally to a public space: a wall, a board, the side of a building (for instance, what if pedestrians could post messages via line-of-sight connection to that pulsating wall on the walkway between the Royal Festival Hall and Waterloo station in London). We'll have to visit this pub. I'm curious about what kinds of photos people display, and how these relate to the kinds of photos people display on their blogs and the images they paint on the sides of trains.
-kris

FORGOT TO MENTION: (Adam's talk at Brunel reminded me) In cahoots with Elizabeth Anderson, our Sapient liaison to the INCITE team, I...that is, she and I both presented to design students at the Royal College of Art about the role of ethnography in design. Collaborating with designers is something that both Elizabeth and I have done for a few years now, and is always an interesting and usefully anxious activity. We discussed a little of the history of sociology/anthropology's role in industry, our own work therein, and the vicissitudes, as we've found them, of collaborating across those disciplines. I take the students' critical scrutiny to have been a measure of their engagement (for example, the question: "doesn't research constrain design?"). Some were particularly keen to talk about the ethics of working in the commercial world, and so were we. I was mightily pleased by the fact that they really stuck it to us on this. Thanks to Alison Clarke (see 'People') for the invite and the nice lunch in the secret room.
-kris

FRIDAY AFTERNOON, BI-MONTHLY JAMMY DODGER AND DISCUSSION GROUP: I presented my paper-in-progress today to a small but perfectly formed group of INCITErs, Adam, Steve, and Gerard. The paper comes out of my ethnographic work with photobloggers; it presents the practices of photoblogging as a kind of response to certain habits of photographic theory. It was a great discussion, and helped me (among other things) think more clearly about how an ethnography actually is itself a kind of theory (a set of ideas, formulations, for how something like photography works). And as ever, Jammy Dodgers (Dodgy Jammers?) fueled the afternoon.
-kris

SURFING THE CITY: yesterday gave a paper at Brunel University. It was a good opportunity to introduce my wider project on how to construct an anthropological approach to literature. As well as talking about my older research with fiction readers, I introduced my ethnography of blogging. An interesting discussion followed on the ways in which individuals develop a blogging sensibility both for the Internet and the city; how they learn to approach both artefacts through anecdote, observation and impressions. I want to start to think more about the slippage that exists in people's representations of the 'city' and the 'Net'; how these things are grasped and known.
adam

On friday INCITE met at Surrey to hold an open day with representatives of a number of interested institutions [including Arts Council of England, Oxford Internet Institute, the Helen Hamlyn Research Centre at the Royal College of Art and Sapient]. The general theme of the session was collaboration across disciplines. It was fascinating to exchange approaches with designers, artists, market researchers and fellow social scientists. There was a lot of reflection on the dynamics of successful and unsuccessful collaboration, research methodologies and artefacts [ie academic texts, art installations, designed products]. While I unfortunately couldn't stay for the dinner, there seemed alot of potential in these dialogues and I think everyone left enthused.
adam

Marketing and advertising issues have grabbed the attention in the weblogging world just lately. With the advent of marketing companies like this one, trying to encourage bloggers to fill out opinion poll surveys and to use weblogs as a resource in their marketing projects. I guess this means weblogs have really hit the big time! We already have the infommerical on television, I wonder if we will soon have the weblog that is really an advert?
adam