Actor Network Theory

I've been meaning to explore Actor Network Theory for some time as it may offer some great theoretical perspectives for my research. As it can be a fairly tricky topic to grasp I managed to find this excellent video on youtube explaining the basics.

Summer Wars

The weather is so beautiful at the moment, I've been out on my bike today but about to tackle some more transcribing of my interviews. Last night we watched this amazing Japanese anime called Summer Wars, it's about a social networking site and it has this beautiful concept animation about it. This film shows how we are relying more and more on these social networking sites and how we integrate them into our lives.

Geek Girl Tea Party

Today I went to Madlab for a Geek Girl Tea Party, I've been trying to get into Madlab for a couple of weeks now but they never answer any of my emails, when I found out about this event I thought I would invite myself along. When I got there we could put our name down to show a presentation of some of the stuff each of us gets up to or areas of interest, so I decided to present my research as I thought it would be good practice. I thought it went OK as I seemed to be a lot more confident than usual, but I'm not sure if I was presenting to the right audience as I just assumed that everybody would know what I was talking about and I did get a few blank faces.
As it was a tea party I decided to bring to some home made cookies for everyone to share, as it was for girl geeks I made them with my pac-man and ghost cookie cutters, which everyone seemed to love and even got a special mention on twitter, I managed to take a pic of some earlier:

I met some really nice people there including this one girl who came over and introduced herself after my presentation, she explained that she was an graphic designer who also works in web design and I asked if she wouldn't mind doing an interview for my research, she gave me her business card and it had one of her designs on and it was really beautiful, I'm going to contact her in a few weeks to do an interview because I really love her style and she is a great example of a creative individual using technology, to have a look at some her work follow this link to her blog: Angie Chan.

Knitted Kittens Craft Club

Just thought I'd share the new amazing poster advertising the Knitted Kittens, which is the knitting group which I founded and co-run in order to participant in some of the communities of which I am writing about. The artwork is by the very talented Sophie Daniels, who I keep nagging to get her work up online, when she does I'll make sure I provide a link, as this image is screen printed we hope to make tote bags to carry your crafty projects around in too:

Twitter

Just to let you know that I now have a Twitter account, well I've technically got a new one but this one is nice and fresh, which is just for craft, business and research so please 'follow' me: www.twitter.com/kateholmes1

SPARC conference

Last week I attended and presented my research at the Salford Post-grad Annual Research Conference (SPARC). Although I was noticeably nervous while presenting I think it went really well, lots of people came over to tell me how they enjoyed my presentation and like my research topic, which really meant a lot to me. I met lots of nice people and despite them being from different disciplines I would genuinely like to keep in touch with them. One of the people I met was called Michael Hardman, I was lucky enough to be introduced to him just after my presentation as his research is about guerilla gardening, which is a topic I wanted to look at as part of my research. His presentation was very entertaining, inspiring and dare I say my favourite of the conference, as he obviously holds a lot of passion for his subject. I have since read his paper called 'Understanding Guerilla Gardening: an exploration of illegal cultivation in the UK', which is also great and hope to reference the paper within my research.
Lots of great things happened over the two days but as I didn't take any photos I won't write too much about it, although I will end this post with a picture of the awesome free mug that were in the conference goodie bags. I hope I get the opportunity to participate again next year.

Interpretative Research Seminar

Today I went to Salford University for a free seminar entitled 'How and why do we use interpretative research methods', it was being held by the people from UKAIS and because I had such a nice time with them in Oxford I was looking forward to going, especially as my research will be/is taking an interpretativist stance. I wasn't disappointed, the speaker was Professor Geoff Walsham from the University of Cambridge and he was absolutely brilliant, he was very entertaining and informative. He provided some excellent insights into interpretative research and was really inspiring in many ways, but it also reminded me that I still had a long way to go. I wish I had taken a photo to put on here but thought I might have looked a bit strange, I'll hopefully be able to update this post at a later date with some more of the resources when UKAIS provide them. I hope that one day I'll get the opportunity to have a proper chat with Professor Walsham about interpretative methods.