Thesis submitted

Well, this will be my last and final post to this blog. I submitted my thesis about three weeks ago! Yay and yay and howz that!

What a poor blogger I've been during these many writing months. Just couldn't let any distractions get in my path I'm afraid. Plus - I have a pretty busy life and any non thesis moments were dedicated to my partner and little boy Casper who is now 2 1/2. My friends and family suffered and I'm only just starting to make contact again with many of them...

We are now expecting our second bub. Due any day now... may start up a new blog with new name to follow the next exciting chapter of our lives.

Farewell, goodnight and see you later...

Working on chapter 4

I'm in the thick of it at the moment and sometimes can't see the forest for the trees or is the trees for the forest?

I have good writing days and bad ones. I'm working on Chapter 4 at the moment.

I have a rather fragmented lot of material I've written. Most of Chapter 1, most of Chapter 6, half of Chapter 3, bits and pieces of other chapters. I'm starting to see the whole picture. It comes into view really clearly sometimes and then recedes into confusion. I just wish I could write faster.

another chapter

Been a while - life too busy. Had my head down writing another chapter. I've been tackling an early chapter that lays out the arguments. I'm not happy with it. I gave myself a deadline of a month to do first draft but it's very rough around the edges. Sent it off to my supervisor today.

TASA conference 07

Finishing off that chapter took longer than expected but I finally wound it up, a bit hastily towards the end, simply so I can move on to a new one. The last few days I've been polishing a paper for the TASA conference being held in Auckland, New Zealand from Dec 4-7th. I'm feeling increasingly anxious about the election this Saturday. Particularly with the different poll results this morning. For the first year I'll be booth coordinator at one of the voting stations in the inner west. Crossing fingers that Howard is voted out!

a chapter

It's been a slog but I think I'm getting close to the end of a chapter of my thesis. I'm not sure it was the best move to start somewhere in the middle but at least it's given me a clearer idea of what I need to cover earlier on in the thesis.

Moving closer to thesis

I wonder how close you can get to 'thesis' before writing it. I'm now so close that the only thing separating me and thesis is this blog post. Since coming back from parenting leave, I presented my research at a Postgraduate Seminar day at CCR, submitted a journal article to M/C and an abstract to the annual cultural studies conference at the end of the year. At a recent meeting with my supervisors I went over a fleshed out thesis structure/outline and I guess they pretty much validated my approach enough that I really have no excuse but to write. I've either got sufficient back story developed, or I've run out of time. Either way it's time to get down to it. So today, Monday, I'm going to start one thesis chapter. It's not at the beginning and it's not at the end. It's somewhere in the middle...

Mobile Media 2007

I've just finished attending the Mobile Media Conference 2007 held at the University of Sydney from July 2-4. The conference was truly international. I think it may have had more delegates from abroad than from Australia. This did not detract from the conference though. In fact, it felt rather special to be attending a conference as an Australian research student with such an impressive line up of academics and researchers from around the world. Many of the "heavy weights" in this emerging field of study were there, including Rich Ling, Genevieve Bell, Judy Wajcman, Leopoldina Fortunati, Gerard Goggin and Misa Matsuda. They added a depth and grounding to the conference that was very beneficial and well received by the other delegates, it seemed.

I didn't give a paper at this conference although wish that I had! At the time that papers were being invited I was about to go on parenting leave so didn't feel that it would be manageable. Nevertheless, I got a lot out of the conference just by attending, probably more than if I had presented. The first day of the conference was a bit slow in my view, although the opening key note talks were fantastic. I think the subsequent panels may have found it difficult to match the level at which the conference was opened by Leopoldina and Judy. The following two days though were very good and there was a lot of excellent and inspiring material presented. It was good that there was some attention given to mobile media as a technology in process/in definition and not something that is fixed. Assumptions made about shared understandings of central concepts is a problem that I've encountered in a few conferences that I've attended. I'm glad that Genevieve Bell and some other speakers provided an anti-dote to this tendency. I met a couple of students doing research on work and technology. I hope to see there work published or presented in the near future.

This conference probably came at a good time for me. I've completed the draft of the paper for the post graduate seminar and feel inspired to keep writing up my analysis. I'm hoping to now focus on another aspect of my findings and write these up as a journal article for the upcoming issue of M/C on the theme 'error'.