Network > Implications for workers

I ran into a discussion on Twitter yesterday about lean education. At one point, Fredrik Matheson tells his interlocutors that my book Network provides a way to talk about its dilemmas.

True—and although I rarely discuss education per se, the concept of net work is an exception because it's so critical to understanding some of the shifting changes in work and the consequent challenges to education.

In the book, I use the term network to mean a heterogeneous assemblage of materials that make up a sustained, relatively coherent set of activities (p.16). These materials include technologies, texts, people, communications, and so on. "All are material, all are linked in complex and shifting ways, and all are brought to bear on the business of extending and developing the network, that is, bringing more elements into the assemblage and relating them in different ways" (p.16).

Such sociotechnical networks grow and change through net work: "the ways in which the assemblage is enacted, maintained, extended, and transformed; the ways in which knowledge work is strategically and tactically performed in a heavily networked organization" (p.16). In knowledge work organizations (such as the telecommunications company I studied in that book), it's relatively easy to extend these networks in formal and informal ways. That's because, although these organizations also do physical work, most of their work involves circulating, analyzing, and synthesizing information. And information is increasingly inexpensive to circulate (a fact that is beginning to disrupt manufacturing industries and the laws based on their material limitations). So we get a workforce that is increasingly mobile,  increasingly incentivized to work remotely, with increasing opportunities to work in looser arrangements. We get a workforce that is increasingly distributed, increasingly able (and incentivized) to work independently. One which increasingly works in virtual environments and collaborates in virtual teams. One which involves organizations shedding non-core jobs, farming them out to contractors instead. One in which work is more loosely organized.

In knowledge work, strength comes from combining sets of expertise in unique ways. That means crossing borders—borders between fields/disciplines/trades, borders between organizations, borders between countries and agendas. Net workers must be able to learn at least a little bit about each others' work. Furthermore, cross-organizational work often means less leverage over aspects of the work—you can command, but not control, people in different organizations. Temporary, project-based, cross-networked organizations multiply, and they work differently, often tactically rather than strategically.

So what?

The upshot is that successful knowledge work organizations require different things from their employees. As I argue in the last chapter of Network, those with specific characteristics will tend to thrive in these environments:

• Rhetoric. When work reaches across unstable borders, when workers don't have strong leverage over each other, they must "understand how to make arguments, how to persuade, how to build trust and stable alliances, how to negotiate and bargain and horse-trade across boundaries" (p.201). In particular, trust-building can be a hard nut to crack, but it's essential to smoothly functioning collaborative communities. 
• Time management. Net work often involves work fragmentation too. At Telecorp, the telecommunications company I studied, people could interrupt each others' work at any time—and that tendency has only strengthened in the studies I've conducted since then. Put a phone in everyone's pocket and you get the potential to form ad hoc teams at the drop of a hat. So "Workers must be able to adopt or adapt ways to deal with work fragmentation, including genres and rules that allow them to create their own stable transformations ... for prioritizing, organizing, and achieving work" (p.201). The more work becomes networked, the more individuals tend to take on the burden of managing their own time—and the more they need essential time management skills.
• Project management. Similarly, net work involves project management. In fact, "projectification" is an essential characteristic of cross-functional and cross-organizational work. And cross-functional or cross-organizational teams, which tend to be oriented around projects, tend to require rotating leadership in which people from different specializations take the lead during different phases. That means that the essentials of project management become vital.
• Adaptability. Finally, and implied by the other points, people have to be adaptable. As work becomes more projectified, cross-disciplinary, and cross-organizational, it requires more adaptability from its workers—workers who must be adaptable enough to learn about each others' work, organize around different projects, and adapt new technologies and practices and genres. 

What does this mean for education? 

I hesitate to recommend full-bore changes such as scrapping college completely, moving hastily to MOOCs, or throwing up new programs quickly. These approaches all have problems, foremost of which is the fact that none of them get at the cross-disciplinary, cross-organizational skills I describe above. MOOCs in particular seem optimized for conveying codified knowledge, but not for building the skills above—which is to say that they currently lack the give-and-take interaction that tends to characterize innovative organizations. Certainly they haven't (yet) been generally articulated in a way that encourages cross-disciplinary work, project-oriented virtual teams, or the rhetorical engagement and strategies that can make knowledge work effective. 

At the same time, university education does tend to be balkanized, with some disciplines barely interacting with others. Classes are often treated as silos. And even classes in rhetoric often focus their projects on civic engagement (read: op-ed columns) to the exclusion of essential cross-organizational skills. 

That's partly why I am so excited about our Human Dimensions of Organizations program at UT, in which working professionals learn and apply the liberal arts to wicked problems in their own organizations. As a cross-disciplinary program, HDO promises to connect the insights of different disciplines, with a heavy emphasis on understanding how people think and operate—and how decision-makers can be convinced of solid, ethical arguments for change. As a program for working professionals, HDO is ultimately application-focused; by drawing on their own deep experience with organizations, these students keep us honest and, I expect, will challenge our preconceptions as much as we will challenge theirs. And as a program ending with a capstone course, HDO will provide a concrete takeaway—a demonstration project that allows students to synthesize their work throughout the curriculum to solve an actual problem and yield actual gains.

HDO isn't a template for the future of education writ large. But it's one measured response to the deep changes we've seen in work over the last forty-odd years, changes to which education must be responsive. 

Reading :: Korea as a Knowledge Economy

Korea As a Knowledge Economy: Evolutionary Process and Lessons Learned By Joonghae Suh and Derek H. C. Chen

This book, published by the Korea Development Institute and the World Bank Institute, overviews Korea's economic growth from the 1960s through 2007 (when the book was published). Full of facts and figures, the book describes how the Republic of Korea has developed (Chapter 2), the challenges to its development strategies (Chapter 3), its economic framework (Chapter 4), its information and communication technologies (Chapter 5), how it's meeting skill and human resource requirements (Chapter 6), and how it's encouraging and leveraging science and technology (Chapter 7).

The book is based on the World Bank's knowledge economy (KE) framework, with four pillars:

• "an economic incentive and institutional regime"
• "an educated and skilled labor force"
• "an effective innovation system"
• "a modern and adequate information infrastructure" (p.4)

And it's filled with bar charts and line graphs that show metrics leaping upward as time goes on. The ROK has enjoyed remarkable growth, particularly in the penetration of information technologies and telecommunications. It has also begun to address some of its structural limitations. For instance, until recently, universities did not focus on application (p.123) and applied research was left to government research institutions and the private sector (p.127); more recently, that situation has changed.

In all, the book is long on figures, and it paints a picture of remarkable progress and optimism. I'm not sure how to evaluate that picture, but it does seem to accord with other literature I've read about the ROK. 

Reading :: Crisis and Change

Crisis and Change: South Korea in a Post-1997 New Era
By Jasper Kim

A few days ago, I reviewed Steinberg's The Republic of Korea, which detailed ROK history up to 1989. But some significant things have happened since 1989—especially the year 1997, a watershed year that saw a dramatic financial crisis and, consequently, deep changes across critical sectors of the ROK (p.11). In this 2005 book, Jasper Kim discusses the changes wrought in economic policy (Chapter 3), law (Chapter 4), politics (Chapter 5), foreign policy (Chapter 6), social change (Chapter 7),  infrastructure (Chapter 8), and education (Chapter 9). The changes are deep, by Kim's account, and generally very positive.

In Kim's account, "the pre-1997 [1961-1997] Old Order Korean economy was largely based on government-led economic development," and the close ties "fostered crony capitalism" (p.17). He documents the rise of the chaebols (p.18), including the dynamic in which the government provided the chaebols with financial aid and took on the financial risk, insulating the chaebols from the ramifications of their business decisions (pp.18-19). Politically, the Old Order was largely drawn from the Gyeoungsang province; the executive branch dominated the others; and politics were dominated by men, with little space for "female participation in society, especially in the political scene" (p.20). The Old Order, Kim says, was based on factionalism (p.22).

The 1997 financial crisis upended the Old Order. For one thing, crony capitalism took much of the blame for the crisis, and reforms in the "financial and corporate sectors, capital markets, and securities regulation" resulted in an economy that was "more closely integrated into the global economy" (p.31). For another, ideology changed: the executive branch was no longer considered untouchable (p.32) and the Internet destroyed government-journalism collusion (p.33). In foreign policy, the ROK "has acquired a more equal footing with respect to Korea-U.S. relations" due to its "sunshine policy" toward North Korea (a split with the US) (p.34), but abetted by other factors, such as the US' 2004 decision to pull 1/3 of its troops from ROK, as well as new military hardware tech (p.35).

Beyond these, the social sector has changed considerably, creating a split in perceptions between pre-war and post-war generations: The post-war generations have grown up in a world in which the ROK is an industrial power, a member of the UN, a high-tech heavyweight, and a producer of Pacific region pop culture (p.37).

Overall, this is an optimistic and hopeful book about the ROK. If you're interested in the country, take a look.

Reading :: The Republic of Korea

The Republic of Korea: Economic Transformation and Social Change
By David I. Steinberg

Writing in 1989, David Steinberg describes the history and economic transformation of the Korean peninsula, focusing on the Republic of Korea (also known as South Korea). Bear in mind that the book is written before the pivotal year of 1997, when an economic crisis set in motion far-reaching changes in how the Republic governs itself and manages its economy.

It's no easy task to summarize the history of a culture that spans 4000BC to the present day, but Steinberg does a credible job. After some introductory work, he covers early history (Chapter 3), traditional Korea from 1392-1904 (Chapter 4), the Japanese colonial period of 1904-1945 (Chapter 5), and the six Korean republics from 1945-1989 (Chapter 6). The remainder of the book describes Korean history and culture (Chapter 7), its politics and administration (Chapter 8), the role of the military (Chapter 9), its economic development from 1953-1986 (Chapter 10), its external relations (Chapter 11), and its future (Chapter 12).

Steinberg obviously has great affection for Korea—which I appreciated—but he doesn't minimize its difficulties. Nevertheless, the book ends on a positive note, one that foresaw some of the extraordinarily positive developments that the ROK has achieved since 1989.

Let's pick out some highlights. Korean culture seems to have taken "the clan as the basic element of social organization" since the late Neolithic (p.20). Although the Korean peoples appear to have descended from Siberians (p.19), Korea was strongly influenced and often dominated by China from 194 BC onward (p.21). The Han Dynasty conquered Korea in 108 BC, establishing the Lolang (or Nangnang) period, which "lasted several hundred years" (p.21). And "During this period, there developed a set of tribally organized states or groupings that eventually fused into what has become Korea. These were Puyo in the north and Mahan, Chinhan, and Pyonhan in the south" (p.21). Korea developed three city-states: Koguryo (founded 37 BC), Paekche (founded 18 BC), and Silla (founded 57 BC). Once "Koguryo ousted the Chinese in 313" (p.21), these city-states developed into the "three kingdoms," eventually uniting under Silla (p.22).

Korea, located near China and Siberia on one side and Japan on the other, acted as "a transmission belt, receiving and exporting culture and technology in the region" (p.22). Japan received much of its early culture, including Buddhism and art, through Paechke (p.22).

Steinberg says:

All three kingdoms showed a strong tendency toward patrilinial and hierarchical power. All were centralized, aristocratic states, with a very strong tradition, perhaps best known in Silla but apparently common in the area, of rank based on hereditary principles. In Silla, this was called "bone rank," and it influenced all forms of social and political behavior. The Silla aristocracy was organized into gradations of seventeen ranks, with only the top rankings allowed to have effective power. (p.25)

Indeed, as Steinberg later explains in the chapter on politics and administration, "Hierarchy is integral to the Confucian tradition and exceptionally pervasive. ... This sense of hierarchy is reflected in the Korean language itself, which like Japanese (but unlike Chinese) requires a complex system of grammatic and lexographic honorifics that expressly designate the relative status of each person referred to or involved in a conversation" (p.93). But hierarchy goes beyond the Confucian tradition:

The pre-Confucian social order was, in fact, more hierarchical than the Confucian ideal. Early Korean states were organized along rigid class differentiations based on "bone rank," or a hereditary system that eventually evolved into the yangban system. In this class of both civilian and military gentry, the civilians dominated. The yangban—the backbone of the political, governmental, moral, and social order—originally claimed status on the basis of aristocratic lineage, and then on their scholastic, and thus bureaucratic, standing. (p.93)

In fact, only the yangban could take the examinations that would allow them entry into the bureaucracy, resulting in a self-perpetuating upper class.

Steinberg saw this strong bureaucratic tradition as influencing Korea up to his day. In fact, he says, "The existence of an autonomous private sector in Korea, whether it be in education or in business, is arguable; nongovernmental or quasi-governmental might be a more accurate description of this sector. Public-private collaboration, with government in the lead, is the most usual form of action" (p.96). Furthermore, "power is generally considered finite," making power a zero-sum game: "to share power is to diminish one's power and one's position; to delegate it is to lose it" (p.98).

Understanding that tendency helps us to understand the chaebol, the clan-based conglomerates (e.g.,  Samsung, LG, Hyundai, SK) that developed during the Park regime of 1961-1979. "Because the chaebol were in debt to government-sponsored or approved institutions for more than four times the value of their equity assets (much higher than the debt of average Korean concerns and far higher than that of most compatible firms in other countries), state direction and intervention, culturally reinforced by traditional Korean and Confucian concepts of state power, were pronounced" (p.135).

Steinberg discusses a great deal more, including the sometimes rocky internal relations of the ROK and the similarly strained relations with the US and Japan. But let's leave the book here. It's a solid, sympathetic book that crams an improbable amount of information into its 218 pages. If you're interested in the history and culture of the ROK—up to 1989—this is a good place to start.

Topsight > How Chris is using Topsight

Last week I asked how people were using my new book Topsight. Recently I heard from Chris McCracken at Kent State. He was gracious enough to allow me to post some excerpts.

First, Chris is using parts of Topsight for his undergraduate business and professional writing class:

I have them work in groups to conduct sort of mini-studies of workplaces where they're required to design a study that involves interviewing a person who works there at least twice, observing him or her at work at least once, and collecting some artifacts.  They have to put all that together in an analysis of how information circulates in that organization and what their participant's role is in that process of circulation.  Sadly, Topsight came out just a little late in the semester for me to assign it to them, but I've been highlighting certain especially useful heuristics from the book to help them along. 

I began by having each group draft a research design matrix to understand why we're using the methods I'm requiring them to use--what they can expect to get out of conducting interviews and observations and collecting artifacts.  I'm meeting with each group individually over the coming week, and I plan on discussing coding with them and providing them with the analytical models for mapping resources and looking for handoff chains so they can get a better idea of how they might make sense of the data they're collecting.  Once they've all gathered their data, we're going to spend some time working with triangulation tables. 

Outstanding. One of the reasons I developed this book was to provide heuristics that would help people conduct hands-on audience analysis in a structured way. For a full semester study, the entire book is useful. But for mini-studies like these, it makes a lot of sense to pull out basic heuristics such as the research design matrix, resource maps, handoff chains, and triangulation tables. In fact, these are the same heuristics I highlight in my chapter in Solving Problems in Technical Communication.

Second, Chris is using Topsight as a guide in developing his own dissertation research:

I find the diagrams and flowcharts you've included in Topsight really helpful for stepping back and getting some perspective on where I'm at in my research, what questions need answering, and where I need to go next. It's kind of given me a sense of topsight for my own research process.  

In a follow-up email, he added:

One more thing: I forgot to mention how useful I found the section on pitching a study to stakeholders. A couple of interviews have not gone as well as they could have simply because I wasn't able to assuage their skepticism toward me and my study. Some of the biologists I've interviewed seemed to think that I--some guy from the English department who doesn't know a falcon tube from a pipette--was either there to criticize the way they do things or call their authority into question. If I'd been able to give them a clear and concise elevator-pitch right at the get-go, I think they would've opened up about their work a little easier, and my data would've been a little richer.

Yes. As I told Chris, the pitch process I describe in Topsight was based on my own (sometimes painful) trial and error. In fact, I don't recall seeing other field research texts describing how to pitch studies to stakeholders—mostly they tend to assume that you'll work it out. But as I've discovered, and as many of my students have discovered, people are often reluctant to take part in studies unless you can give them a clear idea of how they'll benefit. Topsight helps you formulate that pitch ahead of time. It's actually one of my favorite things about the book.

Anyway, thanks to Chris for writing.

Are you using Topsight? If so, shoot me an email. I'd love to hear what your experiences are.

“You know how in L.A. everyone has a movie script? In Austin, everyone has a startup."

That's the lead quote from my story on coworking that was just published by Shareable. Check it out. And if you're interested in coworking, consider joining us at GCGC2013.

Reading :: Net-Works

Net-Works: Workplace Change in the Global Economy: A Critical and Practical GuideBy Marvin S. Finkelstein

I ran across this book at UT's library while looking up a book on a related topic. It's written to introduce undergraduates and other nonspecialists to a sociological take on the global economy—chapters are named with declarative sentences such as "The Workplace is Socially Constructed" and "Teamwork Trumps Individualism at Work"—but I thought it might offer some concepts that weren't familiar to me.

Did it? Sort of. But it raised more questions than it answered.

On the plus side, the book provides some good overviews of sociological arguments that bear on the global economy. For instance, in Ch.1, the author discusses bureaucracy, putting it in a Weberian context. In other places, the author discusses the differences between groups and teams (p.66) and the concept of boundary management (p.72).

On the minus side, the book tends to advocate quite strongly for "flatter, less hierarchical social structures [that] can help make workplace arrangements more participatory, flexible, and able to cope with rapid change" (p.29); it contrasts participatory workplaces with authoritarian ones, claiming that the former "help create a more successful workplace" (p.39). Although I quite like the idea of such workplaces, different organizational structures and excel at different sorts of things. I agree with the author that flatter organization is usually associated with "creativity and innovation" (p.39), but it's also associated with higher transaction costs, lower efficiency, and lower ability to produce predictable outcomes. A participatory workplace might be "a more successful workplace" if you're talking about a creative shop that provides unique, innovative solutions, but it might be dramatically less successful if you're trying to ensure water quality or manufacture a million identical widgets.

I'm also skeptical about the author's claims that an authoritative workplace means that "we can't be ourselves" (p.42), while in a participatory workplace, "core inner feelings can be expressed through social roles in conscious ways" (p.43)—at best, an oversimplification. Even when working in small, flat organizations, people still perform.

The simplified contrast between authoritarian and participatory workplaces shows up in other ways. For instance, the author later argues that "individuals rely on the shared values, beliefs, and common goals of others to create informal social relationships that foster information feedback and rapid communication" (p.49)—something that is true of some, typically stable, organizations, but that doesn't fit well with the thin trust of collaborative communities, temporary alliances among organizations that share a goal, or people working within overlapping relations. Not to mention coopetition. Indeed, the author later mentions that some net-works are composed of temporary contractors, and worries that these net-works will reduce mutual obligation and trust (pp.108-109); he never quite squares this circle.

Ultimately, I was dissatisfied with the book. Although it does explore issues in the global economy, in my reading, it mistakes fundamental changes in work structure for voluntary changes in workplace relations. Consequently, it portrays globalized net-work as an aggregation of work, globalization, and new technologies rather than a qualitative change in work.

Reading :: Doing Pragmatics

Doing Pragmatics
By Peter Grundy

When I picked up this book—the 1995 edition, not the later one you'll find at the link—I thought, "Oh yes, pragmatics. Why did I not enjoy this in grad school?" Somewhere around Chapter 7, I remembered: It's all so very detailed.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm certainly glad that linguists are interested in studying and explicating the details. And Grundy provides a gentle-but-thorough introduction to several aspects of pragmatics, including indexicality, relevance, presupposition, and intentionality, using common (and very British) examples to demonstrate these aspects. The writing style is easy and casual, managing to illuminate concepts that may be difficult to the lay reader.

If you're planning to study pragmatics, or even if you just want a refresher, this book is a solid pick. Personally, I don't plan to do much with pragmatics—but now I know enough about it that I can have an intelligent conversation about the subject.

Topsight > How are you using Topsight?

Have you gotten your copy of Topsight yet? If so, I'd love to hear from you. Shoot me an email and let me know how you're using it. Are you

• considering it for an undergraduate or graduate class?
• using it for your own organization?
• using it as a guide for your graduate field research?
• using it for consulting?
• [some other use here]?

I'd love to hear what you're using it for, and what you think of it. CS

GCUC 2013

Coworking has fascinated me since 2008, inspiring a series of blog posts, a research study, and most recently, an article about coworking in Austin.

Like the rest of the world, Austin has seen an explosion in coworking spaces, and with it, a thriving and rapidly diversifying coworking ecosystem. Among other things, Austin is now hosting the Global Coworking Uncoworking Conference for the second year in a row. It's an exciting event, and I'm happy to be part of it.

This year, I'll be moderating a panel on Specialization in Coworking at GCUC on March 5. Come join us and see what kinds of coworking spaces are popping up.

(upcoming)

I've been quiet on the reading front lately, but that's not because I haven't been reading. Here are some of the books I'll be reviewing soon:

• Grundy. Doing Pragmatics
• Finkelstein. Net-works: Workplace Change in the Global Economy
• Steinberg. The Republic of Korea: Economic Transformation and Social Change
• Suh and Chen. Korea as a Knowledge Economy
• Kim. Crisis and Change: South Korea in a Post-1997 New Era

Topsight > Topsight on Good Day Austin

I just finished a segment on Good Day Austin about my new book, Topsight. Thanks to Keri and everyone else at Fox 7!

(Practical ethnography)

A recent tweet let me to a site for a book-in-progress called Practical Ethnography: A Guide to Doing Ethnography in The Private Sector. It looks interesting. Although it covers some of the same ground as my own book Topsight, it's an ethnographic approach (as opposed to Topsight's case study approach).

The author, Sam Ladner, is a Senior User Researcher at Microsoft and a sociologist by training. And partof what I like about the book description is that you can see her practical bent: the book will cover "How to manage clients and corporate stakeholders while doing ethnography" and "How to get buy-in for ethnographic findings."

The book's site has two sample chapters for download. The writing is engaging, the concepts are well explained. If you're interested in applying ethnography to the private sector, take a look.

Reading :: Writing the Economy

Writing the Economy: Activity, Genre And Technology in the World of Banking
By Graham Smart

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I hadn't gotten to this book until recently. To be honest, I kept thinking I must have read it at some point—partly because I've read other of Smart's publications about this same two-decade ethnography set at the Bank of Canada. But when I picked up the book itself, the sheer scope of the project became clear.

The book is ambitious, covering how policymakers at the Bank developed policy, using texts, software, models, and other strategically deployed information resources. Smart uses activity theory, genre theory, and a number of other related frameworks to examine this work, not just in terms of how these information resources conveyed information or explicitly persuaded people, but also in how they worked together to implicitly persuade stakeholders, how they embedded assumptions and warrants, and how they functioned differently in different contexts.

The book relies heavily on long ethnographic interviews, and block quotes are frequently interspersed with interpretation in the central chapters. Smart also uses close readings and examinations of texts, including representative documents in the appendix. In fact, Smart works hard to make this book a true ethnography, both citing and using the methods of critical ethnography.

Writing the Economy makes several contributions in terms of advancing theory, applying ethnography to the study of work, and examining relationships among texts. It's a solid book, and one that I expect I'll read again.

Topsight > Come to ATTW/CCCC and talk to me about Topsight

Planning to be at ATTW or CCCC in March? Interested in using my book Topsight for a course?

If so, contact me. I'll be in Las Vegas from Wednesday evening through Saturday morning (speaking in sessions on Thursday and Saturday), and I'll be happy to meet with you and share my experience teaching an undergraduate field methods course with the book. I won't try to give you the hard sell, just discuss the book and whether it will fit into your program. And I'll bring a couple of copies so you can take a look for yourself.

See you at the Cs!

Topsight > Get a sample

If you're thinking about buying Topsight, but you're not sure, don't forget:

• Amazon will let you search inside the book. 
• You can also download the front matter and first chapter on Kindle, which should give you a good idea of how the book is structured.
• The book's website provides downloads and extras, including figures and a sample lesson plan.

I expect to continue adding downloadable materials as time goes on—and I'm taking suggestions. What extras would you like to see on the website and/or in the next edition?

(Getting the Nexus 10)

Usually I blog about reading and writing, but occasionally I talk about tech. Today's tech topic is something that I actually did not want to buy: a tablet.

I've long resisted buying a tablet for myself. Tablets occupy a space between laptops (such as my Macbook Air) and smartphones (such as my Galaxy Nexus), and frankly, I didn't think that space was big enough to fill. The biggest reason would be to read Kindle books and PDFs, and I had something that would do that: A Kindle Touch (which I similarly resented when I bought it).

In fact, I like my Kindle Touch very much. No, I can't practically surf the Web on it, nor can I easily listen to music, nor can I watch movies. But I don't particularly care to do any of these things in a tablet form factor. I can read, and the e-ink screen is great for that function. Battery life lasts forever. And it's portable.

But the Kindle Touch is too small. I can read some PDFs on it, but not all, because the screen doesn't have enough real estate. I can't mark up PDFs. And the larger Kindle, the Kindle DX, is no longer sold. As I faced the prospect of spring classes with heavy PDF readings, as well as the prospect of traveling with either printed PDFs or PDFs on the Kindle that I could barely decipher, I sighed and decided that I had to buy a tablet.

Which one? The iPad was an obvious choice, and I'm quite familiar with it. I just don't like it. I don't like iOS.

So I made the hard decision to buy the Nexus 10. Not the Nexus 7, which is a good deal cheaper and more portable—I didn't think it would be big enough to display some PDFs—but the 10, which is roughly the size of the iPad. And once I bought it, I decided to use it for everything I could, not because I particularly wanted to, but because I wanted to get as much out of it as I could.

So here's the results:

• The tablet is indeed good for reading and marking up PDFs. In fact, I now store my PDF library on Google Drive, so I can use the Drive app to find a PDF and touch it to bring it up. If I want to mark up a PDF, though, I have to save it locally.
• In fact, Google Drive turns out to be very good on the tablet. I can make spot changes to documents without much trouble, and I can download them to the tablet for offline reading (but not editing). Drive has really improved the commenting function too.
• The tablet's just okay for reading Kindle books, but I got tired of the glare and the big screen isn't an advantage; I prefer the Kindle Touch for this application. 
• On the other hand, it's very good for scanned Google Play Books. For instance, I read Franz Boas' The Mind of Primitive Man (free from Google Play), a book I had been meaning to finish for a while. Annotations are easy.
• Instagram pictures are way too big on the tablet.
• The big winners are Google Calendar and Astrid (the to-do app where I currently manage my projects). I've managed both via my phone and laptop, but the tablet combines the advantages of both: a more portable form factor than the laptop, but a bigger screen than the phone. 
• Web surfing and email are fine, but suffer from the current limitations of the mobile platform. I find myself turning to the phone first for light use.
• Presentations would be a great application, but the tablet's video out is a micro HDMI, which doesn't seem to play well with VGA. If I can resolve this problem, I'll probably leave my laptop at home when I travel in March—not only is the tablet lighter, it doesn't need to be pulled out of the luggage when I go through security.
• The tablet is okay for bringing up documents in meetings. But I have not tried to take notes on it; the screen can't accommodate fast enough typing.

Overall? I really resent having to have another screen in my life. But I do see definite applications for the tablet in my tech ecosystem, especially for travel. YMMV.

Writing :: Topsight

Spinuzzi, C. (2012). Topsight: A guide to studying, diagnosing, and fixing information flow in organizations. Austin: CreateSpace.

This is the seventh post in my series on writing documents, but it's also another entry on how I wrote and published Topsight. But the main focus is going to be on the writing process.

I've been kicking around the idea of writing a methodology book for a while. In fact, I've been teaching graduate and undergraduate versions of a field methods course since 2001, when I taught a graduate-level course on user-centered design at Texas Tech. Early on, I used Beyer and Holtzblatt's excellent book Contextual Design—even though I didn't agree with some of their recommendations, they did really groundbreaking work in terms of making field methods understandable to lay readers. 

Later, I started using my own Tracing Genres through Organizations in undergraduate classes, although I had to supplement it heavily with lectures and additional texts to make it usable. In particular, I had begun stringing together analytical constructs that had developed after TGTO, such as sociotechnical graphs, and I had to use lectures and extra texts to wedge these into a larger system of analysis. 

The other problem with TGTO is that although it's about methodology, it's not an introductory text; it doesn't teach students how to design a study, discuss research ethics, or describe the tips and tricks that I have developed for eliciting responses or getting people to buy into the study. In fact, few methodology books do this. And that's too bad! I've been conducting field studies since 1997, and in the process I have discovered several ways to ruin studies. I could tell students about these wrong moves in class, but I lacked a text to help them with pitching and conducting a field study—and I began to realize that most methodology books didn't go very far in this direction.

In the meantime, I began conducting some seminars on field methods along with longtime research partners Bill Hart-Davidson and Mark Zachry, as well as a solo seminar early this summer. At the end of the solo seminar, I came away convinced that I needed to write a book that would address all the issues above. This book, I realized, should

• be written in a clear, engaging style
• use common-sense, concrete examples and analogies
• take people step-by-step through the process of designing, conducting, and analyzing a study—and turning it into concrete recommendations
• provide clear terms and figures

The last point—"provide clear terms and figures"—was especially pressing. I was using unwieldy terms such as "Contradiction-Discoordination-Breakdown Tables," then shortening them with three-letter acronyms: CDBs, STGs, GEMs, CEMs, ASDs, ANDs, OTs. And my figures were done by hand in Google Draw. These confused people. And I didn't want them to be confused. So I had to develop clearer terms and figures.

As I've discussed, I decided to publish this book myself—a big decision, but one that allowed me to retain control over the book. That meant that I could set my own conversational style, using the contractions and Scooby Doo and Simpsons references that give the book its friendly tone (and that would likely be scrubbed out by an editor). I took full advantage of this freedom to create a methodology book that I would want to read and that I thought readers (from undergraduates to grad students to consultants) would enjoy. 

Writing in this style was hard at first; I had to keep pretending I was blogging so that I wouldn't drop parenthetical citations everywhere.

This decision also meant that I could work on an accelerated timetable. I worked on the manuscript part-time from July to November, using my existing materials as a starting point and soliciting feedback on the finished manuscript from people who were familiar with the methodology. That feedback loop was critical: self-publishing can mean posting work without review, but I knew it was critical to get knowledgeable people to tell me where I had gone wrong. They did, and they ended up changing the book for the better. 

The rest of the time, from November to yesterday, was production work. 

Perhaps it's because the production cycle was so short, but I am still excited about the book. I keep turning to different pages and getting excited about the information I was able to provide, information that I rarely see in other methodology books. Information such as 

• how to introduce yourself to participants—and how to gently correct mischaracterizations of your study
• how to put together an elevator pitch for your study
• how to design a study at macro, meso, and micro levels, collecting both etic and emic data
• how to systematically develop representations of the data, including activity systems and activity networks
• how to write an interim report and a recommendation report based on the study

So: this writing route allowed me a lot of freedom. I wouldn't choose this route for every book—in fact, I'll soon be looking for a publisher for my next book project—but it was certainly worth doing, and it certainly resulted in a different writing experience from the others I've discussed in this series.

Topsight > Go buy my book!

I'm excited to announce that Topsight is available for purchase!

Currently you can buy one of two different versions:

• The Kindle version is available on Amazon right now. Only $9.99. You can search inside the book too.
• The printed version is available via Amazon CreateSpace now, and will soon be available via Amazon.com. $24.99. 

Wow, that means that you can buy both the printed and the Kindle version for less than the list price of Tracing Genres through Organizations. Which you really should also buy. 

When the printed version propagates to Amazon.com, I'll update my Amazon author page. Until then, follow the links. And let me know what you think!

Topsight > The publishing process

It seems like forever since I first announced that I was planning to publish Topsight. But I get my final proof from Amazon CreateSpace in the mail tomorrow, and I've viewed a draft of the Kindle Direct Publishing version already. So I'm hoping that I can pull the trigger midweek—and I'll announce it here when I do.

While we wait, here's some observations about the self-publishing process. I've already talked about why I decided to self-publish this book; here, I'll talk about what the process looks like.

The printed book: Amazon CreateSpace
I chose to use Amazon CreateSpace (ACS) because Amazon has a great distribution network, because I already have an author page, and because self-publishing is simple there. ACS is a print-on-demand platform, which means that each book is individually printed. That means higher per-book printing costs, but I don't have to worry about volume; extra copies won't be sitting in warehouses waiting to be pulped.

ACS prints the book, but technically, I'm the publisher. That means that Amazon takes a percentage of each sale for printing and distribution, and I get the rest. In practical terms, I can set my own royalties. (But I'm setting the price fairly low so that everyone can enjoy Topsight.)

In practical terms, I supply ACS with two files:

• A cover PDF
• An interior PDF

ACS supplies Word templates for the interior, and also supplies design services for an extra fee. However, I opted to hire a graphic designer, copyeditor, and production person out of my own pocket to produce the print-ready PDF. I also rented Adobe InDesign (about $99 a month) to implement final changes by hand. These costs added up.

The designer and production person also developed the cover. ACS provides a specific formula for calculating the width of the spine, based on the paper you choose. 

The range of choices and services is impressive here. You can choose book formats as small as 5"x4" (the size I chose) or select a custom size; you can hire Amazon to design the cover and interior or do it yourself; you can use their Word templates. You can even hire them to do copyediting.

Once the PDFs were ready, I uploaded them and ACS automagically identified potential PDF errors. The cover went though fine, but I had to correct several errors involving headers and text that ran slightly into the margins. Each error was highlighted in the online view—I was impressed with how thoroughly error checking was handled and how easy it was to understand the errors.

After a few tries, I generated an error-free PDF and proceeded to the next step: a human being checked the document. It took less than 24 hours. 

At that point, I had the option to order a proof or just launch the thing. Although I was impatient, I ordered the proof (about $5) and paid a premium (about $25) to deliver it as soon as possible (5 days).

While awaiting the proof, I was guided through the pricing process. ACS gives several options here too, each of which might involve extra fees or affect royalties. Despite the extra cost, I opted for expanded distribution channels so that libraries and bookstores could order it ($25) and also opted to allow printing in different countries (a royalty fee). 

Once that was done, I was guided to Kindle Direct Publishing for the option of creating a Kindle book.

The Kindle book: Kindle Direct Publishing

Clicking a button transfers the cover and interior PDFs and metadata to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). KDP is a different animal. For one thing, you have different, more simplified formatting options. For another, you can't use the same ISBN (and you don't need an ISBN at all.) Third, distribution channels are more flexible because you're not moving paper around, just bits.

Two of these are headaches.

First, the formatting. Kindle books are modified, simplified HTML. That means that an InDesign file doesn't translate directly to Kindle. The easiest thing is to build a Word file, then convert it. In fact, if you read Kindle publishing guides, they claim that you have to convert the final version to HTML; fortunately this is no longer the case.

To handle the conversion, I did the following:

1. Went into InDesign's Story Editor, copied the body, and pasted it into a Word file.
2. Went into the Story Editor again to copy the front matter, then pasted it into the same Word file.
3. Went through the entire InDesign document, identified all materials outside the main story (tables and figures), copied them into Preview, saved them as JPEGs (per the Kindle publishing guide), then placed them each into the Word file.
4. Reformatted as appropriate, including deleting page numbers from the Table of Contents, List of Tables, and List of Figures.
5. Discovered that the procedure for autogenerating TOC hyperlinks doesn't work on Word for Macintosh.
6. Deleted all but the first level of the TOC, then hyperlinked these by hand.

I then uploaded the Word file to KDP. Within minutes, it gave me a preview on a simulated Kindle Fire screen. (You can switch orientation or simulate a Kindle HD, second-generation Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite, iPad, or iPhone screen.) I also downloaded a Kindle version to view on my Kindle and my Nexus 10. 

I'm glad I did, since I found some conversion errors. For instance, I discovered that I had to save the graphics at a higher resolution and set them to the proper size. On the whole, though, the process was tedious rather than challenging; I probably spent about six hours on the conversion.

It's worth noting that if I had used the ACS Word template, the conversion would have probably been even less painful. If I do this again, I'll probably go that route.

Once I was satisfied with the Kindle version, I was given the option to take 35% royalties (which would allow me to set any price) or 70% royalties (which limited me to charging $9.99 and was available only in some countries.) I tried various configurations, then set a price.

I'm also not entirely happy with how graphics render in the Kindle version, so I've made some of the graphics available from the book's website; I'll likely add more as I go.

Lessons learned

I'm really impressed with how easy it is to publish in both ACS and KDP. It's not for the faint of heart, and it involves more detail work than I like to do, but it has allowed me to turn out a book at relatively low cost, quickly, while retaining creative control. And that's been tremendously exciting.

What would I do differently next time? I would consider developing the PDF using one of the existing Word templates rather than InDesign. That's not because the product would look better—I think it wouldn't—but it would be quicker, easier, and cheaper to produce, as well as being easier to convert.

Overall, though, I'm very happy with the experience. Looking forward to seeing the proof.