Taking things social and All In now in MOBI ebook format

Now, this probably shouldn't have come as a surprise to me, considering... well... you know, but as soon as this writing got social, it completely tipped my relationship with it upside down. I spent so long with it on my own that it seemed to develop a sort of grudging growling co-presence, but now other people are commenting on it and playing with it, it's lighter. If I ever write anything ever again I think going social from the start will be the way forward. 


Also, HUGE thanks to @TimD who has converted All In into MOBI format for ebook readers (I've got a Kindle, but I think it works across a range of devices). IANAnAuthor, but now I can have my writing snuggled down next to all those people I greatly admire on my Kindle. Blown away. Working out how to host it so you can download it, if you want to. 

All in: An inquiry into being a technically social consultant, by Erica Packington

So, it looks as though the links aren't working in Scribd format. I can get them to work in downloaded PDF, and if I download from Scribd in Word. But not from this embedded format. Annoying, and weird. Am trying to work out what's going on. Meanwhile, if you are planning on taking a look, do try get a copy with the links working. I think they add quite a lot to the piece.

All in: An inquiry into being a technically social consultant, by Erica Packington

So. It's done.

After false starts, and worse, false endings, my dissertation "All in: An inquiry into being a technically social consultant" is done. I sent it to my institution an hour ago, will print it out, bind it, post it tomorrow. For now, I am playing with various means of making it public.


I know I want it to be something other than a document that sits on a shelf. I also know it's been written in a very specific style and for a particular purpose. I'm not sure how well it'll translate for those who don't share that intent but I figure, get it up and out and see what happens. In the end, it's a piece of work I hope to come back to and develop (when I can stop the twitching). Throwing it out there in this form might be the start of that. 


When I tweeted that I'd finished, and was working out the best way to make the document public, @timd offered to convert it into an ebook format. I'll post a link here when that's done. Meanwhile, I'm discovering Scribd from the POV of someone who has written something, not just someone who is reading someone else's work, so when that's sorted, I'll pop it up here. 

Twitter Research questions in a different format

This week, I asked 15 questions over Twitter in service of All In? A Twitter Research Project. I asked between 2 - 4 questions a day, between Monday 4th - Friday 8th April. 

Yes yes, all very interesting, just gimme the form

Or, if you fancy a bit more detail about the approach, keep reading...


I noticed that the number of people who agreed to take part and the number of people who actually took part was significantly different. I expected that this would be the case - the messy environment of Twitter, the fact that the research was conducted "in public" contributed to people missing questions and or choosing not to answer them publicly.

In my research, I'm interested in two (main) things:

1. the experience of conducting research in the public, messy environment of Twitter (and the answers people gave in this environment) - including what it felt like for me to ask the questions and turn my account over to the process

2. people's answers to the questions themselves (and how a more private response process might affect the responses I got)

I've set up a Google Form for provide a different format to collect people's responses to the open Twitter research (you'll find it below). In it, I've put all the research questions in one place. 


I'd like to invite whose of you who would still like to take part in the research (but for whatever reasons didn't do so during the w/c 4th April) to fill out the form below. I'd be really interested in your responses. 


Or, if you did take part in the open Twitter phase of the research, but would like to respond more fully, or in private, I'd love to have your additional contributions. 

I have edited the questions in the form only in that I've taken out the hashtag (#AllInResearch) that helped to organise the questions and responses on Twitter, and to expand words I had to contract for space purposes. I have added two extra questions - the first (to identify respondents) and the second to last (about the different ways of taking part in the research).

Find the form here. 

I'd be really grateful and interested to hear your thoughts about how you think about how "are" on Twitter.

I'll post to my @Erica_Jane_MP twitter account when there are some results/impressions to share from the research. Thanks for your help!

Wait... you want me to do what now?

Hi.

Welcome to All In? A Twitter Research Project. My name is Erica Packington (@Erica_Jane_MP) and I'm doing a Masters degree in Organisational Consulting. For my dissertation, I'm looking at how/if people think about how they appear to others and themselves when they are using social technologies. I've chosen to focus on Twitter for this bit of the research.

You might be here because I invited you to take part because I know you personally; or because I don't, but I follow you; or because you were randomly selected from the group of people I interact with on Twitter - those people I follow and those who follow me. You might have stumbled across the #AllInResearch hashtag or some tweets mentioning it and come to find out more. You might be lost and just looking for cute videos of kitties (if so, here you go, and thanks for stopping by).

The All In? Twitter Research project is designed so that I can see how it develops over time and through the many different ways people use Twitter. So, if you found me on your own, please feel free to jump in. If you're coming to the party late, you should be able to find the questions I've already asked and let me know what you think.

So, what do I want from you?

I'm going to be asking about 12 questions over the course of 5 days starting Monday 4th April, with the final questions being asked on Friday 8th April. I'll probably ask between 2-4 questions a day. All the questions will be posted as "broadcast" posts - that is, not a RT or an @reply. They will be 1 tweet long, tagged with #AllInResearch and will come from my @Erica_Jane_MP id. I may tweet about the project itself to get people to take part, but once I start the research, I'll only post each research question once.

Once I have people's responses, I am going to look at the data, see if I can find some common themes, mash it up with some hardcore sociology and put it in my dissertation alongside my own reflections on how and why I use Twitter from a personal and organisational perspective. If you've taken part, or are even just interested in the work, you are very welcome to see the data I've collected and the work I've produced (but not till I'm finished).

The Rules (well, they are more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules):

• I'm going to ask all my research questions publicly. If you feel comfortable doing so, please reply in the same way using an @reply.  If you want to contact me via DM to answer any of the questions then please feel free to do so (but I might ask you follow-up questions about why). 
• If you can, try to use 1 tweet to answer the questions. If you can't, use as many as you feel you need to to answer to your satisfaction. Again, I might ask you follow-up questions about using several tweets for one response.
• I know some of you tweet from multiple accounts. If you'd be willing to answer the research questions from your two most active accounts (for e.g. your personal & organisational accounts) and do so *in the way you normally interact in both* then that would be amazing. If that's not possible, I'd like you to think about how you might act/think/be different between one and the other and perhaps talk to me about it separately.
• By taking part in this research project, you give me permission to reprint your tweets (and to comment on them) in my dissertation - and possibly articles and case study work following on from that. Basically, anything that's @replied or broadcast posted, I am going to assume is in the public domain. If I want to use content of a DM from you, I will seek your specific permission, and anonymise if you would like me to. EDIT: As per the conversation in comments below, if you tweet from a protected account, I will treat your replies to me (even if they are @replies or RTs) as if they were DMs. That is, I will ask your specific permission to publish, and anonymise if you would like me to.

Think that's about it for now. Hope you can take part :)