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. 

Reading :: Networked

Networked: The New Social Operating System
By Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman

I have been meaning to review this book for a while—I probably finished it in July—but I have been put off by the sheer amount of work it deserves. Let's see if I can do it justice.

In this book, the authors explore how networks among people have transformed how we connect with each other, both personally and electronically.

Chapter 1 summarizes the book's main argument pretty well. People "have become increasingly networked as individuals, rather than being embedded in groups. In the world of networked individuals, it is the person who is the focus: not the family, not the work unit, not the neighborhood, and not the social group" (p.6). They term networked individualism "an 'operating system' because it describes the ways in which people connect, communicate, and share information" (p.7). Its characteristics are

• personal
• multiuser
• multitasking
• multithreaded (p.7).

It requires new strategies and skills for solving problems (p.9). And it involves a "triple revolution":

• We can reach beyond tight groups (p.11)
• We have new communication power and information-gathering capabilities (pp.11-12)
• Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are a "bodily appendage," always accessible (p.12).

Here, the authors italicize their main points; I'll just bullet them:

• "Many meet their social, emotional, and economic needs by tapping into sparsely knit networks of diverse associates rather than relying on tight connections to a relatively small number of core associates." (p.12)
• "Networked individuals have partial membership in multiple networks and rely less on permanent memberships in settled groups" (p.12)
• "A key reason why these kinds of networks function effectively is that social networks are large and diversified thanks to the way people use technology" (p.13)
• "The new media is the new neighborhood" (p.13)
• "Networked individuals have new powers to create media and project their voices to more extended audiences that become part of their social worlds" (p.13)
• "The lines between information, communication, and action have blurred. Networked individuals use the internet, mobile phones, and social networks to get information at their fingertips and act on it, empowering their claims to expertise (whether valid or not)" (p.14)
• "Moving among relationships and milieus, networked individuals can fashion their own complex identities depending on their passions, beliefs, lifestyles, professional associations, work interests, hobbies, or any number of other professional characteristics" (p.15)
• "At work, less formal, fluctuating, and specialized peer-to-peer relationships are more easily sustained now compared with the past, and the benefits of boss/subordinate hierarchical relationships are less obvious" (p.15)
• "The organization of work is more spatially distributed" (p.16)
• "Home and work hae become more intertwined than at any time since hordes of farmers went out into their fields" (p.16)
• "While ICTs have shattered the work-home dividing line, they have also breached the line between the private and public spheres of life" (p.17)
• "New expectations and realities about the transparency, availability, and privacy of people and institutions are emerging" (p.17)
• "In the less hierarchical and less bounded networked environment—where expertise is more in dispute than in the past and where relationships are more tenuous—there is more uncertainty about whom and what information sources to trust (p.18).

With that summary in mind, the authors dive into the rest of the book.

In Chapter 2, "The Social Network Revolution," the authors discuss social networks (in the sociological sense, that of relationships among individuals) (p.21). They identify several major trends:

• Widespread connectivity (pp.22-27), including more ground and air travel, more telecommunications and computing, and more commercial and social interconnectedness due to trade.
• Weaker group boundaries (pp.27-30), due to changes in family composition, roles, and responsibilities; the rise of ad hoc, informal networks over structured and bounded voluntary organizations; and the fragmenting of media markets.
• Increased personal autonomy (pp.31-34), due to increased work flexibility; falling barriers related to ethnicity, gender, religion, and sexual orientation; and the rise of IRAs and the decline of defined benefit pensions.

Although people still think they're in groups, the authors say, they're really in networks (p.35). In networked sociality, boundaries are more permeable, interactions occur with diverse others, hierarchies are flatter and more recursive (p.37). The authors provide a table comparing group-centered society with networked individualism (p.38).

In Chapter 3 and 4, "The Internet Revolution" and "The Mobile Revolution," the authors turn to the rise in Internet and mobile connectivity, discussing how these changes connected us in different ways. In particular, mobile devices make us hyperconnected (p.95) and hypercoordinated (p.99), and norms have not caught up to practice (p.105). For instance, "mobile hyperconnectivity in fuzzily bounded public-private space" can lead to problems such as private conversations overheard in public spaces as well as questions of who should and shouldn't be in the loop.

In the next section, the authors address how networked individualism works. In Chapter 5, "Networked Relationships," they describe communities as fluid personal networks, noting a post-WWII shift from door-to-door to place-to-place communities (p.122). With the triple revolution, we're undergoing another shift, from place-to-place to person-to-person (p.123). "Their networks are sparsely knit, with friends and relatives often loosely linked with each other" (p.124). And the authors suggest thinking in terms of "a networked self: a single self that gets reconfigured in different situations as people reach out, connect, and emphasize different aspects of themselves" (p.126). In their personal networks, communities become sparsely knit—most members aren't directly connected—and specialized—different network members help each other with different types of support (p.135).

In Chapters 6 and 7, "Networked Families" and "Networked Work," the authors note similar changes in the family. Lifelong marriage has gone the way of lifelong employment. Work involves multiple teams and multiple purposes (pp.171-172). Work trends include 

• globalization of work, consumerism, travel (p.172)
• a shift from atom work to bit work (p.172)
• the internet and mobile revolutions (p.173)
• the ability to work at a distance (p.173)
• the resulting trend toward mobile work using primarily laptops and smartphones (p.173)

These trends especially affect workers whose organizations are "permeable"; workers directly connect with each other, and their work structure is "more flexible, laterally coordinated, team based, and boundary spanning" (p.177). Information is the key asset, and its flow is critical for success (p.178). Networked organizations have familiar characteristics:

People often work in multiple projects with different teams. This allows firms to assemble ad hoc teams with diversified talents and perspectives. As workers shift among teams, they can develop cumulatively larger networks of expertise that are "glocal," with both local interactions and global connectivity. Instead of submitting to the traditional hierarchical ode of authority, workers have more discretion about the work they jointly accomplish. Networked organizations have advantages for boundary spanning, as employees work and network between work groups and organizations—and at times, between continents. (p.181)

In these organizations, the structure tends to be flatter, with fewer reporting relationships, and more informal (p.182).

Networked work also involves more work from home (p.186).

Let's leave it there. The authors have plenty more to say: about networked creators (Ch.8), networked information (Ch.9), how to thrive as a networked individual (Ch.10), and the future of networked individualism (Ch.11). But I'm most interested in the analysis above, which is so worthwhile that I regret sitting on this review for so long. If you're interested in networked individualism, certainly take a look at this book.

Reading :: Explorations in Information Space

Explorations in Information Space: Knowledge, Actor, and Firms
Edited by Max H. Boisot, Ian C. MacMillan, and Kyeong Seok Han

I just reviewed Boisot et al.'s Collisions and Collaboration, and in that review I discuss Boisot's I-Space in detail. This collection further discusses and applies I-Space.

The book's purpose is "to provide some theoretical perspective on the nature of organizationally relevant knowledge and to indicate the kind of research that might generate empirically testable hypotheses and hence to further the development of a knowledge-based theory of the firm" (p.6). The I-Space is central to that theorizing, meant to provide insight into "the nature of information and knowledge flows in any system" (p.7). The authors assume that "the speed and extent to which information diffuses within a population of agents is a function of how far that information has been structures" and that "information only becomes knowledge if it gets internalized and becomes part of the recipient's expectational structure—that is, if it affects the recipient's belief structure taken as disposition to act" (p.7).

For me, the interesting stuff started in Chapter 4. The authors start by claiming that "How far knowledge gets articulated determines how speedily and extensively it can be shared" (p.109). Although economics has taken the default assumption that markets underlie all other forms (p.109), Boisot et al. argue that "the heterogeneity of organizations, not their homogeneity, had to be taken as a default assumption when analyzing organizational strategies" (p.110). Since organizations are characterized by heterogeneity, articulation and sharing are thus impeded, and so "transaction costs and benefits remain heavily stacked against the kind of articulation of knowledge that would be required to make the choice of markets either ubiquitous or even symmetric with that of organizations" (p.110). So, they conclude, "in the beginning there was the organization" (p.110).

Given this assumption, the authors outline E-Space (epistemic space), with the axes of codification and abstraction. At the most uncodified, concrete corner, we get embodied knowledge; at the opposite corner, we get abstract symbolic knowledge; and in the middle, we get a band of narrative knowledge (p.123). The authors then add the axis of diffusion in order to produce the familiar I-Space—and we now see that embodied knowledge tends to be the least diffused, while abstract symbolic knowledge tends to be the most diffused (p.131). That is, the more well-compacted and abstract knowledge is, the more mobile and fluid it tends to be. Yet at the same time, codification and abstraction involve data losses (p.131).

Boisot et al. claim implications for economics. For our purposes, the most interesting one is that, below a certain threshold of codification and abstraction, a shared context between sender and receiver favors hierarchies rather than markets (p.136).

Chapter 5 continues exploring the nature of organizations. Here, Boisot discusses the evolution of bureaucracies from Gemeinschaft (local, personalized) to Gesellschaft (large, ubiquitous, impersonal) (p.147). Boisot pegs this shift to the printing press, which provided information storage and diffusion (p.148). Similarly, Boisot argues, modern ICTs might favor options other than bureaucratic hierarchies and competitive markets to other options, such as clan-like networks (p.150).

To make this argument, Boisot discusses bureaucracies, markets, fiefs, and clans in the same terms that he discussed them in Collisions and Collaboration. He adds that we can think of three types of complexity:

• Codification: Descriptive complexity
• Abstraction: Computational complexity
• Diffusion: Relational complexity (p.155)

"We hypothesize that building effective institutional structures in market and clan regions widens the complexity region and helps to stabilize it while simultaneously reducing the size of the region in the I-Space from which they chaotic regime can 'attract' transactions—that is, its basin of attraction" (p.159). Furthermore, modern ICTs shift the diffusion curve because of two effects:

• The diffusion effect: "at any given level of codification and abstraction, more information will reach more people per unit along the diffusion scale than hitherto" (p.160)
• The bandwidth effect: "any given proportion of the population located at some point along the diffusion scale can be reached at a lower level of codification and abstraction—that is, at a higher bandwidth—than hitherto" (p.160). 

In fact, "the rightward shift in the diffusion curve appears to privilege both market institutions over bureaucratic ones and clan-like institutions over fiefs" (p.161). Evidence for markets-over-bureaucracies: "the average size of firm in the United States has actually been falling over the past thirty years" due to outsourcing (p.161). Evidence for clans-over-fiefs: "the emergence of interpersonal networks and relational contracting between firms" (p.161). 

I don't think I've sufficiently assimilated Boisot's work to relate it well to other frameworks I've examined. But I am really intrigued by this line of reasoning, particularly Boisot's consideration of how ICTs change the landscape of organizations. If you're similarly intrigued, take a look. 

Reading :: Collisions and Collaboration

Collisions and Collaboration: The Organization of Learning in the ATLAS Experiment at the LHC
Edited by Max Boisot, Markus Nordberg, Said Yami, and Bertrand Nicquevert

I picked this book up primarily because it was one of the few recent books out there to use the term "adhocracy"—a term that I'm currently researching for a project. But it turns out that Boisot is quite well known for his writings on information and strategy (though not so well known in the circles where I typically read and publish, alas). After reading this book, I can understand why: his I-Space framework is useful for thinking through the relationships between organizational characteristics and the circulation of information.

Let's talk about I-Space first, then get back to the book project.

I-Space is depicted as a three-dimensional space, a cube with three axes:

• Codification: from very uncodified to very codified information. "Codification is indexed by the amount of data-processing required to distinguish between categories and to assign events to these" (p.33).
• Abstraction: from very concrete to very abstract information. "Abstraction is indexed by the number of categories required to perform a given categorical assignment." (p.33)
• Diffusion: from very concentrated to very diffuse. Here, we're talking about the degree to which information can be diffused over time. "The greater the degree of codification and abstraction achieved for a given message, the larger the population of agents that can be reached by diffusion  per unit of time." (p.34)

Within this three-dimensional space, Boisot et al. say, we can map a social learning cycle. This cycle follows six phases:

1. Scanning
2. Codification
3. Abstraction
4. Diffusion
5. Absorption
6. Impacting (p.39)

Mapped in I-Space, the social learning cycle typically looks like an S-curve. But it looks different for each organization, since each organization's I-Space tends to be different—that is, different organizations have different characteristics of codification, abstraction, and diffusion. Indeed, "to the extent that individual agents can each belong to several groups, each locatable in its own I-Space, they will participate in several SLCs that interact to form eddies and currents" (p.38).  

In fact, if we map parts of the I-Space to cultures and institutional structures, we find that different structures have different "homes" in the I-Space:

Fiefs. These thrive in situations with concrete, undiffused, uncodified information. Characteristics:

• "Information diffusion limited by lack of codification to face-to-face relationship." 
• "Relationships personal and hierarchical"
• "Submission to superordinate goals"
• "Hierarchical coordination"
• "Necessity to share values and beliefs"

Bureaucracies. These thrive in situations with abstract, undiffused, codified information. Characteristics:

• "Information diffusion limited and under central control"
• "Relationships impersonal and hierarchical"
• "Submission to superordinate goals"
• "Hierarchical coordination"
• "No necessity to share values and beliefs"

Markets. These thrive in situations with abstract, diffused, codified information. Characteristics:

• "Information widely diffused, no control"
• "Relationships impersonal and competitive"
• "No superordinate goals—each one for himself"
• "Horizontal coordination through self-regulation"
• "No necessity to share values and beliefs"

Clans. These thrive in situations with concrete, diffused, uncodified information. Characteristics:

• "Information is diffused but still limited by lack of codification to face-to-face relationship." 
• "Relationships personal but non-hierarchical"
• "Goals are shared through a process of negotiation"
• "Horizontal coordination through negotiation"
• "Necessity to share values and beliefs" (p.49)

These different institutional types are similar to those of Ronfeldt's TIMN, Cameron and Quinn's Competing Values Framework, and Mintzberg's categories of structures, but they're defined via the three axes in the I-Space. Essentially, Boisot et al. are arguing that certain institutional structures thrive because they best adapt to specific conditions in a given I-Space. 

Yet they also posit that modern information and communication technologies (ICTs) are shifting the curve, making it easier to diffuse messages and thus to reach more people at a lower level of codification and abstraction (pp.50-51). This shift is a big deal. Up to this point, to be widely diffused, knowledge had to be highly codified and abstracted—something that naturally favored bureaucracies and markets, which are set up for those conditions. But due to ICTs, the shift in the curve might favor clans as well as markets, to the comparative detriment of bureaucracies (p.51). "Over time, this is likely to favor clan-like network cultures that have a tendency to closure ... rather than the more open market processes" (p.51).

So there's the I-Space framework. In this collection, Boisot (who is listed as an author on every chapter) and his coauthors apply this framework to the ATLAS collaboration, a complex multunational scientific organization that uses ATLAS, a high-energy physics detector at CERN; it forms part of the Large Hadrion Collider (LHC) (p.8). This organization coordinates without central managerial authority (p.55). 

In Chapter 3, the authors examine the ATLAS collaboration as an adhocracy, drawing from Mintzberg to identify the structure and then locating it "to the right of the region in the I-Space labeled 'clans'" (pp.74-75)—that is, further diffused than clans are. "As a geographically dispersed, loosely coupled adhocracy, the ATLAS Collaboration extends beyond the bounds of clan cultures as conventionally understood. Yet ... it remains driven in large part by clan values and practices" (p.74). Later, in Chapter 4, the authors add: 

As a loosely coupled adhocracy, ATLAS operates to the right of clans along the diffusion scale of the I-Space, in the region where, on account of the lack of structure of the knowledge being exchanged and the large number of interacting players, things could quickly become chaotic. The collaboration remains culturally cohesive, however, held together by shared commitments, norms, and a common focus on an infrastructure of boundary objects that over time deliver a clan totem: the detector itself. (p.114).

Boisot et al. credit modern ICTs for the success of ATLAS' adhocracy: "It is mainly the bandwidth effect [in which more people can be reached per unit of time] that makes giant adhocracies like the ATLAS Collaboration possible, and that is likely to give birth to a new scientific culture" (p.257). For instance, such adhocracies can involve "a re-personalization of science, a move away from the impersonality of anonymous peer reviewing and journal publications as the only way to get on and towards the building-up and exploitation of personal networks" (p.263). Via ICTs, "the culture of clans can be extended to more loosely coupled and geographically scattered adhocracies" (p.264).

Let's inject a bit of caution here. Many of the authors are involved in ATLAS or other aspects of CERN; this collection is not (exclusively) an outsider's account and shouldn't be considered a set of studies per se. In tone, the contributions are often a bit congratulatory.

But on the other hand, the collection does a great job of explaining and illustrating I-Space. If you're interested in how organizations work, or how I-Space works, this book is a good solid introduction with some intriguing analysis.

Reading :: Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes

Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes, Second Edition
By Robert M. Emerson, Rachel I. Fretz, and Linda L. Shaw

I've been meaning to read this book for a while. It didn't disappoint—although it's not a perfect book.

First the plusses.

Field notes are an essential part of ethnography, the main way of collecting data and beginning the analysis. And like any essential tool, field notes have developed into several variations, with different strengths and applications. Yet in many ethnographic textbooks, the discussion of field notes is relatively underdeveloped. Yes, we're told to write things down. But what things? When? How? How do we process field notes? How do we turn them into an analysis? Ethnographers and other qualitative researchers can generate an enormous amount of text, but may not be consistent enough to examine the same thing over time, or may not be organized enough to extract consistent insights from that writing.

That is, field notes don't simply involve writing down what the ethnographer sees, hears, and experiences. There's enough in a minute of observation to fill a book if one were meticulous enough. Field notes have to interpret and record what the ethnographer believes is the most important information, and they have to do this consistently in order to generate comparable data over time. That's tough.

In this book, the authors systematically address various aspects of field notes—from jotting to creating scenes, from stylistic considerations to member meanings, from coding to memoing, and finally to inserting fieldnotes into an ethnography. At each point, the authors provide plentiful examples and discuss the different sorts of choices ethnographers make as they write.

And that brings us to the minus—the drawback to the book. Field notes tend to be detailed, and the book similarly dives into the details of producing and processing them—often too quickly, without doing enough to surface and signal the overall structure of each chapter. I had to read each chapter with one finger on the first paragraph, flipping back periodically to remind myself what these particular details were meant to address.

But that's a relatively small issue. If you are interested in learning more about field notes, put Post-Its on the appropriate pages and dive into this book.

Topsight > Triangulation tables

In previous posts in this series, I've discussed two meso-level analytical constructs, two constructs for making sense of what we see minute-by-minute in people's work. Handoff chains help us to envision regular sequences, while resource maps let us see the connections among the information resources that people use.


Think of your research site as a football game. In handoff chains, the camera follows the ball, tracing through the series of handoffs and tosses that move it downfield. In resource maps, the camera follows the game, watching systemic dynamics and tactical changes as players and artifacts all over the field continuously reconfigure themselves.

Can we follow the ball and the game? Can we find a way to coordinate these two models? Sure: That's what we use triangulation tables to do. They allow us to triangulate data: to compare the stories that we get from different sets of data in order to make sure they agree.

Triangulation tables are based on Bruno Latour's sociotechnical graphs, but they've been adapted to mesh together what we learn from handoff chains and resource maps. For the messy details, see the paper that Zachry, Hart-Davidson and I put together a few years ago:

Spinuzzi, C., Hart-Davidson, W., & Zachry, M. (2006). Chains and ecologies: Methodological notes toward a communicative-mediational model of technologically mediated writing. SIGDOC  ’06: Proceedings of the 24th annual international conference on Design of communication (pp. 43–50). New York, NY, USA: ACM Press.

You can also see it at work in my book Network.

The basic idea is pretty simple: we put together a series of tables or matrixes that relate the chain of sequences to the resources used at each point in the sequence. We start with the individual visit, then expand to the group, then to larger units.

In our implementation, triangulation tables are tables in which 

• columns represent communicative events from the handoff chain
• rows represent different points of comparison - different data sources, different participants, or different groups
• cells contain information resources that are used for a given communicative event within a given point of comparison

For instance, here's a triangulation table in which the researcher examines a single participant's work, using two different data sources (field notes from the observation and the post-observation interview). Notice that this table helps us relate communicative events from the handoff chain to the resources from the resource map. And it helps us to see how our field notes differ from the participant's account. It helps us to triangulate the two data sources: we can see how closely they line up and where they disagree or are partial. See the italics in each cell: these are texts that are mentioned in just one account.

Table 1. A triangulation table for a single participant.

	Communicative events
	Prepare for call	Contact customer and discuss bill	Record notes on call
Arnold - Field notes	collections list, annotations on collections list, database screen for customer, database screen for customer's collections information	Phone call to customer, collections list,database screen for customer's collections information	database screen for customer's collections information, fax cover sheet, sticky note, collections list
Arnold - Interview	collections list, annotations on collections list, bankruptcy notices, spiral notebook,phone calls from coworkers	Bills, phone call to customer	collections list, annotations to collections list, database notes, database screen for customer

Now suppose we do the same thing for multiple participants. We can collapse the list of texts from both data sources into one list for each participant, then compare the participants -- and we begin to turn up similarities and differences in how individual participants work. Triangulating at this level helps us to do the following:

• figure out which texts are "core" texts, the bare minimum for executing each communicative event
• spot innovations that one participant uses and others don't

For instance, in Table 2, Clara uses a text that the others don't use: a log of previous customer interactions. Does this log function as a substitute for some of the texts that others use, such as Arnold's spiral notebook? The triangulation table helps us to spot differences and reexamine our data - including our copies of the spiral notebook and the log - to answer questions about how participants work differently. Through this triangulation, the table helps us to catch innovations and workarounds, showing how these substitute for other texts.

Table 2. A triangulation table for multiple participants.

	Communicative events
	Prepare for call	Contact customer and discuss bill	Record notes on call
Arnold	collections list, annotations on collections list, database screen for customer, database screen for customer's collections information, bankruptcy notices, spiral notebook, phone calls from coworkers	Phone call to customer, collections list, database screen for customer's collections information, bills	database screen for customer's collections information, fax cover sheet, sticky note, collections list, annotations to collections list, database notes, database screen for customer
Bill	collections list, annotations on collections list, database screen for customer, database screen for customer's collections information, bankruptcy notices	Phone call to customer, collections list, database screen for customer's collections information, bills, spiral notebook of call log	database screen for customer's collections information, collections list, annotations to collections list, phone call to supervisor
Clara	collections list, annotations on collections list, database screen for customer, database screen for customer's collections information,log of previous customer interactions	Phone call to customer, collections list, database screen for customer's collections information, log of previous customer interactions	database screen for customer's collections information, collections list, annotations to collections list, log of previous customer interactions

If the organization is large enough, you may triangulate to spot differences in how groups do their work. Groups can be

• participants doing the same work at different locations
• participants taking on the same role at the same location and in the same workflow
• participants at the same location, working in the same role, but with different characteristics (training, experience, access to technology)

For instance, if a company has two offices, it's common for the offices to develop different ways of doing things due to different technologies,  training, backgrounds, expectations, or innovations. A group-level triangulation table can help you spot those differences as well. Table 3 shows how two offices might handle the same communicative events differently - and how the second office has managed to use one text to substitute for many.

Table 3. A triangulation table for different groups.

	Communicative events
	Prepare for call	Contact customer and discuss bill	Record notes on call
Group A	collections list, annotations on collections list, database screen for customer, database screen for customer's collections information, bankruptcy notices, spiral notebook, phone calls from coworkers	Phone call to customer, collections list, database screen for customer's collections information, bills	database screen for customer's collections information, fax cover sheet, sticky note, collections list, annotations to collections list, database notes, database screen for customer
Group B	collections list, customer folder with contact information and last bill	Phone call to customer, customer folder with contact information and last bill, calendar	customer folder with contact information and last bill, Word template, email

The triangulation table helps you to easily relate information from the other two analytical constructs and spot differences. It's a way to manage complexity so you can get a handle on the meso level. Which is great, because we're almost ready to move to the micro level—the level of habits and reactions. More on that soon.

Topsight > Advance praise for Topsight

As I work my way through the final revisions for Topsight, I wanted to share some of the advance praise I received from two readers—one from industry and one from academia. Like me, they're excited about the potential for this book.

Topsight is a proven, structured way to uncover and analyze the information flow in a process, department or organization. In contrast to many user-centered methods, it goes beyond the user and the screen to expose the work itself, identifying the parts that are broken and the connections between the users, their tools and their tasks. Topsight is ideal for large-scale, strategic design work and this book is required reading for anyone wanting to build a successful social platform, intranet or collaboration tools.

—Fredrik Matheson, Manager, Social Computing & Collaboration Group, Bekk Consulting AS

You may think you don't need to know much about doing fieldwork to manage change in your organization, but Clay Spinuzzi shows you why it just might be in your interest to learn about it! If you use the methods in this book, you'll learn where your communication strategy is working, where it could improve, and where you need additional information to make effective changes. In Topsight, Clay Spinuzzi presents a series of inquiry moves that anyone interested in organizational change can use. The methods are powerful, and they have been honed in over a decade of research experience and many peer-reviewed publications. But Spinuzzi presents them here for the first time as a straightforward and clear process for learning where your organization—and your people—can communicate more effectively. I believe those who think about communication practices in groups and organizations—as researchers or managers or practitioners—will find valuable insights and helpful tools in Topsight.

—William Hart-Davidson, Associate Professor of Rhetoric & Writing and Director of the Rhetoric & Writing Graduate Program, Michigan State University

Topsight > Using Topsight to teach a class

I developed Topsight for several audiences: consultants, people who want to change their organizations, people who need a gentle introduction to field research in organizations, graduate students. But in particular, I was thinking of my own undergraduate students in the course I often teach, Designing Text Ecologies.

The link goes to the spring 2013 version of the course. And I'm excited that I'll be using Topsight for that course. You can follow the link for the particulars, including the projects and the pacing. But if you're thinking about using Topsight for your own graduate or undergraduate course, here's a template for a 13-week course that might be helpful:

Week 1: Field studies and topsight (Preface, Ch.1)
Week 2: Developing a study design; building in protections (Ch.2-3)
Week 3: Gaining permission; preparing to study (Ch.4-5)
Week 4: Introducing yourself to participants (Ch.6)
Week 5: Observing; interviewing (Ch.7-8)
Week 6: Collecting artifacts and other sorts of data (Ch.9-10)
Week 7: Navigating data: triangulating and coding (Ch.11-12)
Week 8: Reporting progress: The interim report (Ch.13)
Week 9: Introduction to the analytical models; resource maps; handoff chains (Ch.14-16)
Week 10:Triangulation tables; breakdown tables (Ch.17-18)
Week 10: Activity systems and activity networks (Ch.19-20)
Week 11: Topsight tables; describing systemic issues (Ch.21-22)
Week 12: Turning findings into recommendations; writing the recommendation report (Ch.23-24)
Week 13: Turning recommendations into new solutions (Ch.25)

Topsight > I just looked at the proofs for the book...

... and I got excited all over again. I'm really thrilled that this book is coming together. Part of what I'll be doing over Christmas break is to go through the proofs and identify the final tweaks so that this book will be professional-grade.

Some of you have also contacted me in various ways—on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, email, and even face-to-face—to express interest. Thank you.

Although I hoped to get Topsight uploaded to Amazon CreateSpace by the end of 2012, it looks like it'll happen in early 2013 instead, due to some tweaks that still need to happen. It's this last mile—making sure the footers are right, watching out for widows and orphans, adjusting page breaks—that slows things down, but that also gives the book that finished, professional look.

In the meantime, I'll keep blogging and uploading content to the Topsight page. If you're interested in Topsight, please do keep watching this space—and if you know others who are interested, point them this way.

Topsight > Resource maps

One analytical construct that I discuss quite a lot in Topsight is something I call "resource maps." The name might be unfamiliar, but I've been discussing resource maps since 1997 under another name: "genre ecologies."

Why the name switch? "Genre ecologies" gets at the theoretical aspects that are important to academics. But they take a lot of explanation for non-academics. The concept of genre itself takes a lot of unpacking. But I've found that when I talk about mapping information resources, people can more easily grasp what's going on—and are sometimes more open to seeing unconventional or idiosyncratic resources as part of a system.

Let's take the classic example I use in my first book. Various people, in various locations, working in various organizations, all struggle when trying to use a text-based information system in conjunction with a street map. That's a classic usability problem, right? But a subset of people find ways to route around those problems. One copies down information onto a sticky note and keeps it in a folder. Another photocopies parts of his map. And so on. For these people, the information system doesn't have a usability problem, because they've successfully added an information resource that shores up the weaknesses of the current set of resources.

In some cases, these systems tend to standardize. For instance, in my second book, I describe how collections workers for a telecommunications company take a printout of people who are late on their payments, annotating it to turn it into both a checklist (who do I call next?) and a record (when I called this person, did I talk to them, leave voice mail, or what?). Even though these people all told me that they didn't learn this annotation system from anyone else, they were able to read and understand each others' checklists when necessary.

At the same time, these systems tend to have components that can be borrowed from anywhere—previous jobs, personal lives, other organizations, other domains—piled, sometimes haphazardly, in a heap of information resources. Since they come from different places, these information resources sometimes assume very different things and follow very different logics. And those mismatched resources sometimes develop disruptions.

Tracking these resources—again, not abstractly, but in the minute-by-minute, meso-level ways that they're used by actual people—can help you gain a detailed understanding of how complex the work is, how information flows around the organization, and where things go wrong. And it's a lot easier to track them if you map them out like this:

Here, each box represents an information resource that was actually observed during a field visit. The lines indicate points at which two or more information resources were observed being connected. For instance, if you see someone looking at his notebook when filling out a dialog box, you can connect them with a line. But if you never see him using the dialog box in conjunction with a folder, you don't.

Observation is crucial here. People connect information resources in a lot of different ways, including:

• juxtaposition (two information resources attached to or overlapping each other)
• placing (two information resources placed side by side, in a stack, or in regular places)
• annotation (writing or altering an information resource)
• transfer (using one information resource as source for filling in another)
• modeling (using one information resource as a model for another)
• reference (using one information resource to interpret or operate another)

And they don't always tell you about these connections. Some are too habitual, others seem too obvious (to them), and still others can seem petty or even embarrassing to them (few people will say that a sticky note is the linchpin of their work). But you need to be able to map them if you're going to gain topsight.

Resource maps and handoff chains are two important ways to analyze the minute-by-minute, meso-level interactions you'll observe in organizations, and I discuss them extensively in Topsight. They're two ways of looking at the same information resources. But they need to be connected. Soon, I'll discuss how to connect them.