Pedestrian Tools and Character-driven Science: How Bones Helped Me Rethink My Research
I wrote a memo for myself in which I develop analogies between television shows that involve collaborative science work and my own research on geographically distributed science teams. My goal is to use popularized science to get us to think differently about our own research. I use examples from the forensics drama Bones and data from my current study of post doctoral researchers and their labs to examine how we make sense of scientific collaboration and the tools used to accomplish science. I argue that we should focus more on the pedestrian tools scientists use to accomplish their work and to carefully study the scientists themselves and not just their tasks.
Ruby on Rails on Snow Leopard
I finally tackled the (hopefully) last bit of my Snow Leopard upgrade today: getting Ruby (and Rails) ready to go. I'm working on an information visualization project and am using Ruby to write the app. Mike Gunderloy at A Fresh Cup has a great step by step guide (I started at step 19 since I was happy to upgrade in place):
Migrating to Snow Leopard for Rails Development
As always happens when upgrading or installing, it seems, I did run into a few problems.
Errors and Workarounds
Problem: Git doesn't want to install.
Error:
ld: warning: in /opt/local/lib/libiconv.dylib, file is not of required architecture
Workaround:
MacPorts is to blame. To uninstall MacPorts, use
sudo rm -rf \
/opt/local \
/etc/manpaths.d/macports \
/etc/paths.d/macports \
/Applications/DarwinPorts \
/Applications/MacPorts \
/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.* \
/Library/Receipts/DarwinPorts*.pkg \
/Library/Receipts/MacPorts*.pkg \
/Library/StartupItems/DarwinPortsStartup \
/Library/Tcl/darwinports1.0 \
/Library/Tcl/macports1.0
(Thanks, Simon Engledew)
Problem: MySQL gem doesn't install.
Error:
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension mysql
Workaround:
Make sure you installed the latest version of MySQL, the MySQL Preference Pane, and that you started the MySQL server before trying to install the gem. iCoreTech has directions for installing MySQL and MySQL gem on Snow Leopard.
Other Options
HiveLogic has another method for installing Git on Snow Leopoard. I was having trouble with the package installers, and doing it "by hand" via HiveLogic's instructions worked well.
My project uses RMagick. RMagick's DMG installer wouldn't work for me either. I was able to install RMagick from source using a script from OnRails.org.
Twitter network for danah boyd JSB Symposium talk
Today's John Seely Brown Symposium had an active Twitter hashtag of #danahjsb. I imported the hashtag network* into NodeXL and had it draw up a graph for me (click the image for a giant BMP version):
#danahjsb network
Image size depends on the user's number of followers. Edge color depends on the kind of edge - yellow indicates a following relationship, blue a reply/mention relationship. Compare our graph to Marc Smith's graph of the #win09 hashtag users:
#win09 network
You'll notice a couple of things. First, Marc is better with NodeXL than I am, and his graph is just easier to read. Then, dig a little deeper and notice that the network of users who used the #danahjsb hashtag is more densely connected. The #win09 network is brokered by the guy in the middle, and the #danahjsb network has no obvious brokers. More to come on my thoughts about the symposium talk and panel, stay tuned.
* only users whose tweets are public are included in these network diagrams
More Info:
What the hashtag?! - view the tweets
Coming Soon - watch the symposium talk and panel
Building Bridges: A Study of Coordination in Projects
On August 13, I successfully defended my dissertation. Today, I submitted my final, approved version to University of Michigan's institutional repository. That version won't be available until after I receive my degree in December, but you're welcome to read a nearly identical version of my complete dissertation.
Dissertation Abstract
In our efforts to understand how collaborative work can be accomplished, we often turn to discussions of “coordination” for help. However, the concept of coordination is inadequate for explaining the many interdependent processes at work within successful collaborations. In this dissertation, I examined a collaborative construction project – the Woods Avenue Bridge (WAB) Project – with many coordination demands. I used data from this project to develop the concept of adaptive capacity – the set of capabilities a team develops that enable them to adjust to internal and external stresses.
Through analyzing meeting minutes, interview transcripts, and documents the project team developed, I was able to identify behaviors and approaches the team took that may have enabled them to better respond to changes in their environment. I use a specific example of a time when the team successfully redesigned the structure they were building in the field to illustrate the kind of coordination work adaptive capacity enables.
From data about the WAB Project, I identified components of adaptive capacity including perspective taking, multimembership, affect, and social capital. Understanding these components and the adaptive capacity they can develop helps us understand what about a team enables them to accomplish coordination work. Without adaptive capacity, we lack an integrated explanation of the ways in which different components interact and how those components address coordination.
This dissertation contributes to our understanding of how collaborative teams accomplish coordination by refining the concept of adaptive capacity and integrating earlier literatures on coordination, collaboration, and adaptation. The concept of adaptive capacity helps us understand the resources collaborative teams develop that make it possible for them to find flexible and creative solutions to their coordination problems.
Current Research: Joining Virtual Organizations
People keep asking me what I'm working on now that I've defended my dissertation and moved to Arizona State. The answer is, "research!" More specifically, I'm working on a research project to understand and improve the experience of joining a virtual organization. My colleagues, Erik Johnston and Stephanie Teasley, and I are studying post doctoral researchers who joined (or are joining) virtual science research organizations. I've made a diagram of our research process to make this more clear (click the image for a larger version):
The red parts represent the inductive, qualitative portion of our study. I am primarily responsible for those stages of the project. I am currently collecting data, and that's why that piece looks different. Erik is primarily responsible for the deductive portions, those in blue. This diagram was inspired by process diagrams of grounded theory and deduction from
Gasson, S. (2003) Rigor in Grounded Theory Research: An Interpretive Perspective on Generating Theory from Qualitative Research. In Whitman, M.E. and Woszczynski, A.B., eds. The handbook of information systems research. Hershey, PA: Idea Group.
Gill, J. and Johnson, P. (1997) Research Methods for Managers, 2nd Ed., London: Paul Chapman Publishing.
Libby the Visiting Scholar
I have joined the faculty of the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University for the academic calendar year. My office door and email signature now say, "Visiting Scholar." I'm visiting ASU to work with Dr. Erik Johnston on a grant we received from the National Science Foundation last year: Joining Virtual Organizations. I'm conducting interviews and observations with post doctoral researchers and their colleagues in 8 distributed science research projects. Stay tuned for preliminary findings about what post docs experience when joining distributed teams and how distributed teams integrate new members.
Seth is wrong
Seth Godin has a post today about how Malcolm Gladwell is wrong about Chris Anderson's book. At least, I think that's what the post is about. As usual, Seth is speaking as a deep insider and assumes I've read everything "Malcolm" and "Chris" have written. I haven't.
Anyway, Seth is responding to and offering some criticisms of Anderson's new book - Free. In his response, Seth writes, "A good book review on Amazon is more reliable and easier to find than a paid-for professional review that used to run in your local newspaper, isn't it?" My goodness, NO!
One of the many reasons I do still read newspapers, albeit usually their digital versions, is to get reliable, easy to find reviews of restaurants and books. I don't want reviews of movies because I don't want to know too much going into the theater. Sites like Amazon and Yelp have many, many book and restaurant reviews. My problem with these reviews is the same thing Seth is pointing out - anyone can write them. Let's face it, most people should not write book reviews. Book reviews on Amazon, much like restaurant reviews on Yelp, are often poorly written, hard to follow, irrelevant, boring, the list goes on. Reading through readers' reviews does not save me any time when decided to buy a book, and it may not even help me make that decision.
For a rather fair example, see the reviews of Heat, a really fun book by Bill Buford. Right on the page you can compare the usefulness of a review by Anthony Bordain and those made by readers. I say the example is fair because the readers' reviews aren't the worst examples I could find. One of the reviews begins, "I don't go to restaurants. I don't watch FOOD Channel. I don't even order take-out. I'm just a pizza and burger guy with an occasional side trip to Taco Bell for my veggies. So why was I reading this book?" Please, why am I reading this review? I read reviews in established publishing sources because I know who the writers are and have some reason to trust them. 270 readers on Amazon thought the review that started with that line, about a cooking book, was helpful. That shows me that both the reviews and the people who rate them are not to be trusted when I'm deciding how to spend my book money.
Amazon's statistics about what people buying books I liked, like Heat, also bought are more helpful. Those stats are about user behavior though, not user contributions. Not all reviews are equal. To have more reviews is not necessarily better - it just makes finding the useful ones harder. I have in the pipeline a site that will address that problem for restaurants by aggregating reliable, professional reviews - Food Pilgrim - but for now, I'll just avoid the reader reviews on Amazon and stick to trusting the reviewers at Salon, the NY Times, and my local library.
Get Upgraded SVN Working on a Mac OS X Server
Jeremy Whitlock has a great blog post about how to set up your OS X-based Subversion server. His post includes instructions for Apache configs, but not for svn+ssh. When you type
svn+ssh://user@host/repos
you'll likely get an error such as
svn: Expected FS format '2'; found format '4'
which means that you're repository was created in a newer version of SVN than the version you run when you call svn+ssh. Using Jeremy's instructions results in two versions of Subversion being available on your server - one in /usr/local and one in /opt/subversion. In order to use the one in /opt/subversion (the newest one) through an SSH tunnel, you need to make some SSH configuration changes on your server.
Getting svn+ssh to work requires:
1. Set (or uncomment) PermitUserEnvironment Yes in /etc/sshd_config (on server)
2. Add PATH=/opt/subversion/bin:$PATH to ~/.ssh/environment (on server; may have to create the environment file)
3. restart SSH (on server) with sudo /sbin/service ssh stop and sudo /sbin/service ssh start
Ta da!
Thanks for the jumpstart, Jeremy!