a trip to copenhagen

last week was the association of internet researchers (or aoir) annual conference in copenhagen, denmark. sarah took vacation time and joined me. before the conference, we stayed in hørsholm, where sarah's old-time seattle friend, michelle, and her family live. one day, we hopped on a train to see frederiksborg castle.



copenhagen is a beautiful city and sarah and i hoofed it all over, from vesterbro through the city to christianshavn, up to the kastellet and down beautiful bredgade. we spent plenty of time admiring the black diamond and had a few long delicious dinners. one of the trip's highlights was the day michelle and her daughter mabel introduced us to christiania, the magical part of town.




over the years, aoir has been the closest thing to my academic home conference. since 2000, i've attended six aoir conferences, including the first one in lawrence, kansas, the ones in minneapolis, maastricht, toronto, and chicago, and last year's conference in vancouver. this year's conference - aoir's 9th! - was expertly organized by lisbeth klastrup (conference chair) and brian loader (program chair) and took place at IT university of copenhagen's dramatic campus.



i was part of a first-day panel titled "beyond place: using concepts and methods of practice theory to study mediated experience." edgar gomez cruz (presentation title: "from virtual communities to co-presence practices: some theoretical notes from the field") got us started, followed by annette markham ("methods for studying lived experience with technology: revisiting the past to find new paths"), and then elisenda ardevol and adolfo estalella ("constructing localities: blog events and situated practices"). my presentation was last and titled "practice theory and pedagogy: teaching internet studies."

i began by talking about dichotomies and traced the history of internet studies through three historical either/ors: a) people who use the internet vs those who don't (or what we used to call the wired generation); b) people who have access to the internet and those who don't (or the digital divide); and c) people who participate in and contribute to web 2.0 and those who don't (or what some now call digital natives). i mentioned others - books vs web; libraries vs wikipedia; the internet will produce a utopia vs a dystopia - and said that it was a sign of academic maturity that we as a field have gone beyond such limiting dualisms.

next, i offered my teaching philosophy for teaching internet studies - log off before you blog off. i tried to illustrate my methods by showing three examples: lulu mcallister's flickr set How to Make a Delicious Omelet Using Wild Foods; miles simcox's blog post USF Organic Garden Project; and my teaching reflections on the davies forum at stonelake farm. with each example, i highlighted how i require my students to log off of their computers, do something with their hands, document that something with notes and photos, and then log on and blog about it.

at some point i think i said: "it is very important to say publicly, and say publicly at conferences filled with internet researchers, that we spend, and our students spend, way too much time online and connected. we need to log off and disconnect more often."

with time running out, i concluded by arguing that a) my teaching style and students' work goes beyond dichotomies (something that was challenged by the very smart anne beaulieu and others during the Q and A session), that b) our students' inability to disconnect for significant periods of time should be a major concern of ours, and that c) green media, or the intersections between sustainable living and participatory do-it-ourselves media, merits further attention.

here's how things looked from my side.


conference highlights! watching recent USF graduate sara bassett give an excellent paper on gender and world of warcraft. catching up with friends and super smarties christian sandvig and michele white. having lunch with ken hillis and hearing about his farm in canada. having lunch with edgar gomez cruz, hearing about his dissertation about barcelona-based flickr photographers, telling him about my new course on food and media, and sharing our love for staring at oceans.

at some point, teresa senft joined edgar and me and we began talking about how things feel a bit too tame and comfortable around here. teresa asked who could best shake things up as a keynote speaker for next year's aoir conference. i answered, without hesitation, david de ugarte.

aoir in vancouver, day two

today's sessions and conversations at aoir8 were particularly engaging.

i served as a respondent to a five-paper panel called "critical perspectives on web 2.0: surveillance, discipline, labor." the room was crowded and the five presenters - anders albrechtslund, michael zimmer (also the panel's organizer), soren mork petersen, kylie jarrett, and bilge yesil - were excellent. too often, panels are haphazard collections of random papers; this panel's papers spoke to and built upon each other.


i kept my comments brief ("four points in two minutes!"):

* i noted that it was a real pleasure to be part of a panel on web 2.0 that addresses things like capitalism and consumerism and labor - topics usually ignored by american internet researchers;

* i mentioned that the papers puncture the hype of web 2.0 and do so with careful attention to history, to labor and capitalism, and with critical approaches;

* i noted that some of the papers do not puncture the hope of web 2.0. there's plenty that we like about web 2.0 and we need to remind ourselves about that. as soren said in his paper, "we need to focus on capitalism, but we also need to focus on joy and creativity."

* and i assigned the panelists homework! i said that they should write an article or hijack a special issue of a journal to talk about how we teach critical approaches to web 2.0. the ideas discussed in each of the papers were fascinating and extremely applicable to the everyday online activities of all of us - especially our students. how about a special issue on teaching web 2.0 or an anthology titled web 2.0 and its discontents?

a lot more happened on day two - and here's some pics to prove it.

aoir in vancouver

i'm in vancouver for aoir8, the annual conference of the association of internet researchers. here's a few pics of day one.


to keep up with what goes down, explore the aoir and aoir8 tags.