#LDSConf Experience

I liked the ideas presented in class, and so here's what I had open this morning during the first session of conference, across 2 computer screens: conference, Twitter, the Google Doc notes, my own notes, and Facebook.

Here's my screenshot from the start of the second session. Open in a new tab for a better look! Blogspot's shrunk it so it's hard to read the small bits, but the Anons are "Anonymous Otter" and "Anonymous Sheep."

It was fun but I had a slight headache by the end of the session! During the second session I moved to a TV with my laptop, to split things up a bit more. It helped me focus. The amount of information was a little overwhelming! Some Tweets I saw apologized to their followers for the conference spam. I didn't. Here are non-quote couple of tweets I liked:

Attention people tweeting during the prayer: NO TWEETING DURING THE PRAYER! #LDSconf
— The Cultural Hall (@TheCulturalHall) October 5, 2013

I watched #ldsconf long before it trended on twitter. #mormonhipster
— Kent (@Kentniming) October 5, 2013

(Don't you agree? I guess most of us are Mormon hipsters.)

Here are the links to the crowdsourced conference notes Google Docs: Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon. Most contributors were anon and were assigned wild names like "Anonymous Capybara" and "Anonymous Ferret." I was able to contribute a little bit, which was exciting!

The group notes missed a couple of golden quotes which stood out to me, so they aren't perfect. It was neat to watch the online interaction though: the moderator (one of the only named contributors) put links to hymns, scriptures, and speaker bios; at one point, two people were trading lines of Elder Holland's talk and captured a lot of that section nearly word for word. Also, an random conversation took place in italics in the doc about the lack of home teaching in the LDS Tools app (see page 2 of the morning session). Ah, the quirky advantages of group notes!

The #ldsconf hashtag was a little overwhelming; you'd refresh, start scrolling, and five seconds later there would be something at the stop saying there were 20 more tweets! Here again, I participated in the conversation (after making my Twitter public), answering someone's query about what they'd missed and tweeting something else a person Favorited. (I'm a Twitter newbie, so that's a big deal.)

And did I mention that it was fun to start seeing memes pop up? By the end of the first session, at least one blog had already start posting (click the second link for an Avengers meme!).

Collaboration in Research

I liked Dr. Burton's lecture about researching using people instead of just documents. I also liked his example about posting on google+ or facebook about a topic you're exciting about and then waiting to see the responses. Someone else mentioned that the way we post about research we're doing is important. They said when we show enthusiasm for what we're researching, others will become excited too and probably offer to help us more. Once I figure out exactly what I want to research in more depth, I will post on facebook and see what happens.

I've always done the google or wikipedia search to initially learn about a topic, then I've moved on to more scholarly sources to get more in depth. I've never tried researching through social media. I think researching using people comes back to the idea of collaboration, and that collectively people know more about a topic than an expert in the field. It's interesting that's once we've written something, we want feedback and others' opinions and help. But we do not seek the same help or feedback while we're researching and formulating our ideas. I wonder why that is. Perhaps it's just cultural. We view thinking of ideas and making connections between concepts for our own work as a solitary pursuit. But it makes sense that we would receive the same benefit from others reviewing our ideas and unfinished work than we would from others reviewing our finished written pieces. Collaboration is an opportunity for us to refine, reinvent, and reconsider our conclusions. This can lead to great progress and produce higher quality work.

Digital Culture in the LDS Church

So in class on Wednesday we mentioned watching the hashtag #ldsconf for our LDS General Conference. I don't have a twitter account, but I did tune in to see what it was like. I found myself following the LDS Gen Conf Tweets account, and did glance through the same hashtag on Google+. They caught quotes that I didn't right away, and it is nice to see the tag trending worldwide again. It's a missionary opportunity in the digital world. And making the most of those missionary moments and getting ourselves out there seemed to be one of the main themes during the Saturday sessions, huh?

As we dive deeper into the semester and get more invested into what our posts will be about (our second and third phases of blogging wee), I think we should try to have similar conviction and confidence in our research here like we would in talking about the gospel. When Dr Burton mentioned getting our draft work out there, letting people see our progress, I thought of how we as members do the same kind of process with our lives. We (hopefully) get invested into the doctrine because it's something we are passionate about. But we make mistakes. People aren't perfect. No one should expect anyone to be perfect. And that's okay.

My posts aren't perfect. My research might not be. I'll make mistakes, but what makes me get better is learning from these stumbling blocks. I'll jump over them and press on. As I work out what I'm going to do for the second phase, I hope that even if it's difficult and imperfect, the research will make a difference to someone - even if that difference is only for myself. I'll take home something much bigger than just a homework assignment. Hopefully you guys will too.

My LDS General Conference Plans: Thoughts on Multitasking

I'll be writing more focused academic posts shortly, but I wanted to take a moment to think about both the plans I had for watching General Conference, what they turned in to, and what we talked about in our last class period.

My Original Plan
I was excited because I was finally feeling like there was going to be a conference weekend where I wasn't stressed out about all the things I needed to do and I could really just focus and listen. Because as we all know, although conference only takes up about 4 hours a day, it really somehow takes up the entire day. Don't ask me how.

The Altered Plan
As the week led up to this conference weekend, I started to realize that I was going to be a lot more busy that I thought, as usual. I have some projects for work that I need to finish, and I have plenty of homework that I didn't realize existed (for all of my classes). I was annoyed. Because I was going to feel the Spirit, danggit! (Great attitude, I know.)

The Class That Gave Me a Difference Perspective on the Plan
Then in class we talked about all of the different things people do with technology during conference weekend. Some people tweet fairly constantly; some people take online collaborative notes. While at first it may seem as though all of this is distracting, I don't think it has to be. It's easy to get lost in eight hours of talks . . . or fall asleep (Sunday afternoon session, I'm looking at you). I've found that sometimes I actually get more out of talks by multi-tasking: I don't think I've ever looked at my conference notes after conference. They're more just something for my hands to do so that my mind can focus on the words.

So today I'll be listening to conference while baking rolls and designing some things for work with the help of my good friend, Adobe InDesign. And you know what? I think I'll actually get more out of it than if I sat on the comfortable couch with my fuzzy blanket and eyes on the TV screen.

The Spiraling Whirlpool of Constant Revision and Balance

Here is my blog post responding to Dr. Burton's posts about the three phases of academic blogging and spiraling. I find the concept of social proof interesting. It makes sense that in order to be admitted into a more serious blogging sphere about a particular topic, you have to test the waters and put yourself out there to see if your ideas really hold water (yeah, I'll continue with the Moby Dick metaphors throughout this post). It seems like spiraling combined with social proof creates the perfect storm of continued progress in academic blogging. Reviewing his or her work and submitting content for peer review is what any good researcher does. But when does spiraling end? Is it infinite? How do you know when you're really done with something you write or post?

Some writers argue that you're never done. There can always be improvement. I wonder if using blogging as a platform to publish your ideas can suck you up in a spiraling whirlpool that drags you down into oblivion because you chased the white whale of perfection. Digital culture and online forums change the way we write. If you can get constant, somewhat instantaneous feedback from people all over the world about your ideas, you could potentially be revising your work forever. I suppose that's where your own analysis and your own spiraling around comes in. Although others can spiral around your work like sharks waiting to feed or like dolphins that splash you with waves of praise, you ultimately decide your writing's fate and when it ends.

I know when I'm writing something important, I like to take breaks and spiral back around to review it again to get a fresh perspective on it. I think this is very helpful. I also appreciate the feedback of others. Writing works well as a collaborative process. Although I am a bit intimidated by the idea of collecting social proof, I think it will be a great help in eventually moving me to phase three of my academic blogging as Dr. Burton says. I just hope to find balance between the feedback of others and my own spiraling, so I can produce great work. It's going to be hard to be so vulnerable in posting work in differing stages of completeness, but writing is a learning process. We are all learning to have confidence in ourselves while being open to criticism. Do any of you have fears about balancing spiraling and social proof? When do you know when you are satisfied or finished with a piece of writing? Is perfection in writing possible? Should it even be pursued?

My Spiral of Research Paper Garbage

Oh Kristen, I feel ya. I'm in my last semester as an English undergrad, so I too have been reflecting on my entire experience. And I've realized something. I mentally counted the papers I've written that I personally loved or am still truly proud of. Want to see the number?

. . . . . . . . . .

ONE. That's right. What made this paper any different, I wonder? I can tell you some things it was not:

1. The topic
2. The format
3. The length

I can only assume it was these things:

1. Personal investment
2. Time

Like Kristen said, we English majors start to figure out the system after a while. If we really want to, we can write a "research" paper with a lot less effort than should really be involved. And in the end, we leave college and abandon the papers, because we didn't get the process.

That's what Dr. Burton talks about in his posts on the phases of academic blogging and in chapter 2 of this ebook. The process can be as important as the final result. We inject ourselves into our blog posts, and we share everything about our research along the way: good or bad. In the end, it's the investment of time that really matters--time to spiral your ideas around until you get to another, better iteration; time to get invested; time for feedback. 

And that's what my one and only real paper had. I spent countless hours researching before I touched the actual words of the paper. I got multiple rounds of feedback from multiple people. So it isn't impossible to get some of these social connections without blogging, but I can see how blogging and social media encourage the implementation of these ideas. Why not give students the tools they need to succeed? (If I'm going to sound a little corny there.)

So I guess the next step moving forward is for me to spiral my ideas around and take advantage of the tools I've been given to create something better.

Spiraling into Academic Blogging

After reading this post on academic blogging and this post on the spiral metaphor, I realized these concepts explained by Dr Burton go hand in hand. I'm just going to liken this to a spiral staircase because I'm visual like that.

The first part of our spiral staircase began in phase one. Each individual step was made up of our individual posts not necessarily consistently focused on one idea or theme. As we continue our climb up these steps to the second level right above the landing, we enter phase two of academic blogging. But we wouldn't have gotten to phase two without those steps in phase one. And we can climb back down the spiral stairs to look at points we made in phase one to carry with us in phase two. We develop our ideas. We use crowdsourcing (an idea we learned about in the first third of class, the first few steps of our spiral) and social proof (an idea we've just learned about) to get feedback and create a feedback loop.

(oops not stairs but you get the idea)

After we get public opinion (whether from our "homies, peers, enthusiasts, or experts") our spiral continues to grow into things phase three and beyond. I think what lies ahead can be daunting. You do get further and further away from the ground level as you climb up those spiral steps. But you can always step back down to refer to earlier notes, posts, links, and ideas to get your footing again.