The real beginning
The first day of the conference was yesterday, Wednesday. It was alright. My presentation went generally well, but was the last half hour presentation in a two and a half hour block. I had about 30 people present, including some very high power folks -- Ray Lee and Nigel Fielding (big names in the history of qualitative research and the founders of the CAQDAS Networking Project for which Chris works), Thomas Muhr (the founder and developer of Atlas.ti), Sharlene Hesse-Biber (the founder and developer of HyperRESEARCH), various QSR folks (NVivo 7), etc. I actually felt very comfortable presenting, and there were loads of questions at the end, although most of them were asking why we weren't using or exploring video software for our analysis, since I was so clearly stating that CAQDAS programs were insufficient. Worse, the chair of my session, is an Atlas.ti devotee, so was kind of pushing me in that direction. However, her chairing skills were very good and she kept everyone on time and to schedule.
Over lunch, I sat down with QSR and provided them with the list of issues I've collected about NV7 to date. They took very good notes and seemed to agree with everything i said, which was nice since I don't think I'm asking for so very much when I point out inconsistencies and other stupidities. I left stability out of the conversation entirely. Now the trick is whether or not they'll implement those suggestions. /sigh/ Particularly because they're heavy into NVivo 8 development.
I have to say - one of the very cool things of being here is that the delegate:developer ratio is probably 12 or 15:1, which means that nearly anybody can sit down with any or all developers and have some pretty lengthy and detailed discussions with them. Nicolas (more about him below) has actually managed to do that with a whole slew of developers, which is so cool because it's kind of rubbing elbows and sharing ideas with people who could actually DO something about them instead of sending your feedback to a company via an email to an anonymous address.
After lunch, I should have not gone to a session and taken a nap instead, but I didn't. The session I went to wasn't fantastic, but was supposed to be talking about working collaboratively. That was interrupted by a fire alarm and us standing around outside for 20 minutes, awaiting the fire brigade. At least the weather was nice!!
Then came a plenary talking about comparative keyword analysis, which was very interesting, but I was really hitting a low for the day, and having trouble keeping my eyes open. Hence, it wasn't particularly helpful when the speaker started using the words "sleep" and "dream" as his examples about halfway through his talk!!
In the afternoon, I decided to attend Duncan's workshop on generating audio data. It was pitched way too basically for me, but I wanted to be there for support, both moral and technical. My own workshop on generating video data is this afternoon.
After the workshop, a guy who had recently arrived (the Thursday morning plenary speaker), Alan, attached himself to my leg for the rest of the evening. It's so funny. When you don't know anyone at a conference, you stick yourself to the first person you come across, and you just don't leave them alone. So that was my problem before dinner. I ended up taking Alan to the pub before dinner where we ran into Ian. (Ian had done similar to me on Tuesday but turned out to be a really nice guy and with whom I will now choose to sit or talk.) So I introduced Alan and Ian, and we all chatted until we went up to dinner, at which point, I dragged Nicolas (who has put a lot of effort into Transana) into our group as well. After dinner, the four of us headed toward the pub again, but Nicolas and Alan broke off and decided to go back to their rooms. Ian and I drifted down to the pub and were halfway into our pints when Duncan arrived with a larger group. Ian and I went to sit with them and had a few good laughs and reasonable discussion about qualitative analysis, conferences, and the like until 11:30, when we all decided to go to bed.
It's so funny to me that I've taken a role here as someone who introduces people to other people. "Alan! Meet Ian. Ian, this is Alan!" And then, later on when there were two chairs, one next to Duncan and one next to Silvana, "Where would you like to sit, Ian? Do you know Silvana? Silvana, this is Ian..." heh. Chris says I'm as bad as she is now.
More pictures, including some of the people mentioned above, are now posted to my England 2007 set, which can be found here.
Ha ha ha. The current plenary I'm sitting in suddenly has turned from a discussion about audio to one about video and I'm being quoted and drawn into this conversation, so I need to turn my attention there...
Over lunch, I sat down with QSR and provided them with the list of issues I've collected about NV7 to date. They took very good notes and seemed to agree with everything i said, which was nice since I don't think I'm asking for so very much when I point out inconsistencies and other stupidities. I left stability out of the conversation entirely. Now the trick is whether or not they'll implement those suggestions. /sigh/ Particularly because they're heavy into NVivo 8 development.
I have to say - one of the very cool things of being here is that the delegate:developer ratio is probably 12 or 15:1, which means that nearly anybody can sit down with any or all developers and have some pretty lengthy and detailed discussions with them. Nicolas (more about him below) has actually managed to do that with a whole slew of developers, which is so cool because it's kind of rubbing elbows and sharing ideas with people who could actually DO something about them instead of sending your feedback to a company via an email to an anonymous address.
After lunch, I should have not gone to a session and taken a nap instead, but I didn't. The session I went to wasn't fantastic, but was supposed to be talking about working collaboratively. That was interrupted by a fire alarm and us standing around outside for 20 minutes, awaiting the fire brigade. At least the weather was nice!!
Then came a plenary talking about comparative keyword analysis, which was very interesting, but I was really hitting a low for the day, and having trouble keeping my eyes open. Hence, it wasn't particularly helpful when the speaker started using the words "sleep" and "dream" as his examples about halfway through his talk!!
In the afternoon, I decided to attend Duncan's workshop on generating audio data. It was pitched way too basically for me, but I wanted to be there for support, both moral and technical. My own workshop on generating video data is this afternoon.
After the workshop, a guy who had recently arrived (the Thursday morning plenary speaker), Alan, attached himself to my leg for the rest of the evening. It's so funny. When you don't know anyone at a conference, you stick yourself to the first person you come across, and you just don't leave them alone. So that was my problem before dinner. I ended up taking Alan to the pub before dinner where we ran into Ian. (Ian had done similar to me on Tuesday but turned out to be a really nice guy and with whom I will now choose to sit or talk.) So I introduced Alan and Ian, and we all chatted until we went up to dinner, at which point, I dragged Nicolas (who has put a lot of effort into Transana) into our group as well. After dinner, the four of us headed toward the pub again, but Nicolas and Alan broke off and decided to go back to their rooms. Ian and I drifted down to the pub and were halfway into our pints when Duncan arrived with a larger group. Ian and I went to sit with them and had a few good laughs and reasonable discussion about qualitative analysis, conferences, and the like until 11:30, when we all decided to go to bed.
It's so funny to me that I've taken a role here as someone who introduces people to other people. "Alan! Meet Ian. Ian, this is Alan!" And then, later on when there were two chairs, one next to Duncan and one next to Silvana, "Where would you like to sit, Ian? Do you know Silvana? Silvana, this is Ian..." heh. Chris says I'm as bad as she is now.
More pictures, including some of the people mentioned above, are now posted to my England 2007 set, which can be found here.
Ha ha ha. The current plenary I'm sitting in suddenly has turned from a discussion about audio to one about video and I'm being quoted and drawn into this conversation, so I need to turn my attention there...