Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Notes from: SXSW 2013


Content from SXSW Interactive 2013

Workshops 

 Yes, and . . . A Design Thinking Bootcamp
  • "We teach design thinking at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, aka “the d.school.” Our process is user-centered and prototype-driven. As a bootcamp participant, you will be part of a small multidisciplinary team and work through a hands-on creative challenge from start to finish. You will gain a strong grasp of the key tenets of design thinking and be able to execute them within your organization."
  • Bootcamp Bootleg  is an introductory experience to design thinking.
  • Empathy is important- first you figure our need then figure out solution. 
    • Needs=What
    • Insights = Why
    • Synthesize
      • User------>Need--->Insight
      • Persona-->What--->Why
      • Ask "How might we......"
  • During Brainstorm (flaring/diverging  process)
    • ask How? 
    • defer judgement
    • Use Yes AND statements
    • be visual
    • be collaborative
    • build on others ideas
  • during Design (focusing/converging process)
    • choose an idea
    • prototype (quick prototype, less emotional investment)
    • fail early
    • fail often
    • create experiences
    • prototype, and have users actually go though experiences
    • vote on most innovative, most likely to delight
    • go though multiple cycles quickly, rather then spending a long time on one cycle 
    • process is iterative
  • If you already think you have a solution going in, you might not be addressing actual needs, less likely to innovate. 
  • Design Thinking for Educators
  • Creative Listening "I’m convinced that creative breakthroughs and innovative solutions require creative listening. Unfortunately, it’s an all-too-rare skill in many organizations. In fact, just the opposite happens. When someone shares a “crazy idea,” the instinct is to cite all the reasons why it wouldn’t work—shutting it down with a “No, but” response.  Imagine how much untapped potential could be released into the world if more of us opened our minds—and ears—and responded with a “Yes, and” to wild-eyed outliers like Jorge Ordon." via

Peer to Peer: Nonprofit Social Media Managers
  •   Social culture integrated across departments
  •   When people interact, collaborate, sparks innovation
  •   Failure is not an F word, have after action review.
  •   How does you organization react to failure?
  •   Social Media is collaborative, need buy in from everyone (curation approach). 
    • Inspire sessions, group training session.

Presentations
Muppets to Mastery: UX Principles from Jim Henson
What's So Funny About Innovation?
  • Paul Valerio, 10x10 Method series , 
  • Baratunde Thurston Cultivated Wit
  • Create innovative services that engage people. 
  • Innovation  & Comedy are not random, but they are also not linear, nor are they run on certainty. 
    • Business run on process and certainty. 
  •      What's So Funny About Innovation? 
    • 1. Know Your Audience, Then Ignore Their Advice 
      • know the room, know the context
      • familiarity tests well
    • 2. Data Does Not Replace Insight 
      • more data ≠ more truth (Nate Silver)
      • algorithms can't solve for poetry, magic, jokes, insight, but data does make it easier to pretend to have insight.
    • 3. Keep It Fresh 
      • audience likes familiarity, but that prevents innovation. (Louie C.K)
      • Improv keeps it new every time, also builds trust between group.
    • 4. Develop Your Own Point of View 
      • audience does not always know what they want until they see it, risk of too much research.
      • what is your metric for success? 
    • 5. Create a Story Around the Material 
    • 6. Even Friendly Audiences Need to Be Won Over 
    • 7. Don’t Expect Everyone to Get It 
      • have goals but not expectations       
    • 8. You Can’t Test Your Way to a Decision
      • Standup, test by doing, iterative,
      • Too much data can result in confusing brand
      • Quantitative data is good for identifying patterns

WTF Is a DEO? The Mashup of Creativity & Business
  •  “A “DEO, or the “Design Executive Officer”, is a hybrid of a strategic business executive and a creative, problem solver who places design and creativity at the center of their organization.”
  •        DEO treats everyone =
    •  Focus on people, be empathic, be accessible.
    •  Recognizes importance of design.
    •  Design is an active verb à change, ideate, innovate
    •  Groups need to ideate together
    •  Be open to change, accept failures
    •  Design thinking = iterate àprototype àtestàfailàrepeat
  •        Catalyst for transformation, champions creative work culture.
  •       Build space where people can self-organize and collaborate.
    •    Make surfaces writable
  •  We not me, collaborative.   
  •        System thinkers (non-linear)
  •       Get just enough research to build a hypothesis
  •        Feedback loops, always beta
  •       Types of DEOs
o   The Artistic DEO “Be Bold”
o   The Maker DEO “Be Ambitious”
o   The Hacker DEO “Be imaginative”
o   The Strategic DEO “Be Strong”
o   The Founder DEO “Be Persuasive
o   The Starter DEO “Be Brave”

DJ Epistemology: Producing & Knowing
  • DJ methodology of learning ßcreative learning process/experiences ß DJ set ≈ writing a research paper
  •  Too much information, need to manage that complexity, new methodology for learning. 
    • tech gives you access to so much information it can be overwhelming
    • tech can mediate that experience (but over reliance on tech to make judgments can be a danger)
  •     Quotes= samples àmash up
  •    DJs improvise, but that improvisation requires planning and knowledge of database.
  •   Remix (Lawrence Lessig) is an act of synthesis.
  •      Imagineàcreateàplayàshareàreflectàimagineà…
  •      Sampler: conceptual constructions for creating regenerative remixes of content, remixes identify formal or conceptual connections
    •   Idea that limits facilitate serendipity
    •  limits can engender creativity & innovations
  • Concern: we invest computational data with power to make meaning (stats, big data, metrics like grades badges, testing) . We value data that is machine readable, what about information that is machine readable? 
  • data that is machine readable   Vs  Critical thinking (difficult to quantify, more holistic)
  • Argument: sampling and mixing creates human readable meaning. Deep learning requires deep synthesis. 
  • Education should be designed to make meaning, but it is designed for machine readability.  
Utopia/Dystopia: Inspiring the Next Digital Native
  • Cultural studies approach to teaching fictions/technology
  • Science fiction portrays today tomorrow
  • In Utopian/Dystopian fiction,writers/designers engage in design thinking (SciFi World building), extrapolate today out to tomorrow and examine issue of unintended consequences. 
    •  dystopia you start with object
    • Utopia you start with concept
  • Speculative design: start with today --> project into future-->world building--> infuse with absurdity and satire 
  • use technology to interrogate texts, not to mediate experience. challenge apparatus by counter program 
  • information design confers false authority, it is its' own legitimizing force.
  • form ≠ content
  • theory<-->practice
  • technology<-->humanities
  • technology is neither good or bad, it is a tool.

Why We STILL Love the Honey Badger
  • people respond to information presented in authentic, distinctive voice. 

Talks/Keynotes 

Rachel Maddow Talks Books and Birthdays at 2013 SXSW Interactive Festival
  •      Clash of equals --> Better arguments = better policy outcomes
SXSW 2013 Video Recap: Watch Matthew Inman's 2013 Keynote
  •      Find your voice
  •      Art not formed in vacuum or tornado 

2013 Video: Bruce Sterling Dissects Disruption at SXSW

Reoccurring themes

http://dschool.stanford.edu/dgift/






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Thursday, September 26, 2013

Bibliography for 09/25 Discussion on the Scholarly Monograph & University Presses


Compiled by Clarke Iakovakis

Association of American University Presses. (2011). Sustaining scholarly publishing: New business models for university presses. New York.
Bargheer, M. & Schmidt, B. (2008). Gottingen University Press: Publishing services in an open access environment. Information Services & Use 28, 133-139. doi:10.3233/ISU-2008/0569
Crewe, J. (2004). Scholarly publishing: Why our business is your business too. Profession, 25-31. 
Dalton, M. S. (2009). The publishing experiences of historians. In Greco, A. N. (Ed.), The state of scholarly publishing: Challenges and opportunities. New Brunswick, N.J: Transaction Publishers.
Donoghue, F. (2008). The last professors : The corporate university and the fate of thehumanities. New York: Fordham University Press.
Fitzpatrick, K. (2011). Planned obsolescence. New York: New York University Press.
 Greco, A. N., Jones, R. F., Wharton, R. M., & Estelami, H. (2007). The changing college and university library market for university press books and journals: 1997-2004. Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 39(1), 1-32. doi:10.3138/jsp.39.1.1
Howard, J. (2013). For new ideas in scholarly publishing, look to the library. Chronicle of Higher Education, 59(22), 20-20.
Jagodzinski, C. M. (2008). The university press in North America: A brief history. Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 40(1), 1-20. doi:10.3138/jsp.40.1.1
McGreal, R., Chen, N.S., & McNamara, T. A comparison of an open access university press with traditional presses: Two years later. Information Services & Use, 31, 211-214. doi:10.3233/ISU-2012-0650
Morrison, H. (2009). Scholarly communication for librarians. Oxford: Chandos Pub.
Steele, C. (2008). Scholarly monograph publishing in the 21st century: The future more than ever should be an open book. Journal of Electronic Publishing, 11(2). doi:10.3998/3336451.0011.201
Suber, P. (2012). Open access. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Retrieved from https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/open-access
Vincent, N. (2013). The monograph challenge. In Vincent, N. & Wickham, C. (Eds.), Debating open access. London: British Academy.
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To the extent possible under law, Clarke Iakovakis has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to Bibliography for 09/25 Discussion on the Scholarly Monograph & University Presses. This work is published from: United States.
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Friday, September 20, 2013

History Brownbag: The Historical Profession, Open Access & Scholarly Communication

Recently the AHA (American Historical Association) released a Statement on Policies Regarding the Embargoing of Completed History PhD Dissertations. This position sparked quite a bit of discussion, on ETDs and embargoes as well as on larger issue around Open Access, Scholarly Communication, and tenure.

 Below we have gathered selected quotes from a variety of responses, with the intention of giving an introduction to this conversation before the Department of History Brownbag Series talk on 9/25/13 . 

 In addition to this blog entry, we also request that you please take a moment to read this overview on Open Access and the Historical Profession
Topics for this brown bag are as follows:
  • Scholarly Communication
  • Open access
  • ETDs & Embargoes

Transformations in Scholarly Communication
“The problem is that the apparent economic imperatives of the academic publishing industry run directly counter to a central value of our profession: the open dissemination of historical knowledge.”
“The percentage of university funds allocated to academic libraries shrank for the 14th straight year in 2009, dipping below 2 percent for the first time, according to updated figures from the Association of Research Libraries.”
“Just because the existing scholarly publishing system has served the academy fairly well in the past does not mean that it has an intrinsic right to continue to exist in perpetuity. It should not, and must not, become a barrier to our aspirations and our innovations. If the day has come when the scholarly publishing system impedes scholarship, teaching, and learning it should—indeed must—be replaced by a new and more responsive system. As Don Waters of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation famously reminded us, “It’s the scholarship stupid.”We need to remember what’s really important here, and what our ultimate goals are.”
Cliff Lynch as cited in Scholarly Monograph Publishing in the 21st Century: The Future More Than Ever Should Be an Open Book

Prioritizing the print book in the Historical Profession

Library budgets are decreasing, as serial publication costs are increasing exponentially. In order to cover their expenditures on serials, many libraries are cutting their book budgets, which in turn causes University Presses to cut their acquisition budgets or to look for texts that will have crossover appeal.  
“One university press director commented,  “Some manuscripts, even if published electronically as dissertations, are appealing regardless of their electronic availability because the audience for them  in print form is substantial enough that  it does not matter. There is a substantial market for certain works of Civil War history, for instance, that is quite broad. The lay readership for Civil War history,  for instance, wants to have the book and would not likely know or have access to the text in dissertation (electronic) form. Even if they knew, they would likely still want the book.”
“On the side of the library, Duke University’s Scholarly Communication Officer Kevin Smith twice addresses the misinformed claim that academic libraries, the primary market for academic monographs, are purchasing less books based on the open availability of dissertations. He points out the AHA’s lack of substantial evidence to support their claims, and argues that more likely, less books are being purchased due to shrinking budgets, and the need to support broad curricular resources not specific academic niches.”

“Since 1996, history was—by one measure—the only field where university presses produced more than 40 percent of all new titles.”
via History and the Future of Scholarly Publishing. This entry was written in 2003 about how the field’s reliance on academic presses “could become a critical problem in the coming years, if many junior faculty members can’t publish their first books.” The issues the author pointed out have only become more pressing in the intervening years, and this article makes no mention of ETD or Open Access.


via ARL Statistics 2010-11

"The Historical Profession, the Book, Embargoes, and Open Access"  


“…the book has in many ways become an end to itself.  Rather than creating research outputs that are best suited to content and audience, academic historians must produce a particular kind of object.  The effects of this are not inconsequential.  Promotion and tenure committees within academic institutions have little impetus to reconsider the markers and measures of academic quality.  As such, non-traditional research outputs –  including those produced in open access formats, such as blogs, data sets, and websites — are not only devalued, but most promotion and tenure committees have poor measures in place to assess them.  It is this, rather than any threat to publishing prospects, that threatens the success of junior scholars who might be eager to produce scholarship in the open access environment.  Likewise, the open access movement has much in common with the aims of Public History, a field in which openness and accessibility play a prominent role and in which research outputs diverge from traditional academia.  Prioritizing the book over other forms of scholarship reinforces a division between those who produce work for other scholars and those who produce work for and with the public when, in fact, both academic historians and public historians should be producing work for and with other scholars and the public.”

What is Open Access?

“Open access is a broad term that describes the principles, practices, and movements associated with the attempt to make information, especially digital information, freely available.  For many open access advocates, the desire to share knowledge is a socio-political project.  At its core is the the principal of global social equality in which everybody, regardless of background, should have equal access to knowledge.”
“What open access isn’t, of course, is an attempt to seize the intellectual property of dissertators, nor is it a tool to facilitate plagiarism. Nor is open access an attempt to prevent new PhDs from pursuing a career in academia. As Kelly points out, the evidence that publishers choose not to work with scholars whose dissertations are available via open access is very weak indeed, perhaps even non-existent….In a cogent response to the AHA’s policy statement, editors at Harvard University Press pointed out the obvious: if you can’t find a dissertation, you can’t sign a dissertation.”


Past examples of technology, the Historical Profession & anecdotal evidence

“The historian in me, of course, looks for past examples of how technology has changed the way we work—often for the better. And in the controversy over open access, I remembered the blog hysteria of 2005…. That summer, an academic going by the pseudonym ‘Ivan Tribble’ wrote a column in the Chronicle of Higher Education warning of doom to all job seekers who chose to also blog. Tribble indicted blogs for not being peer-reviewed and therefore also illegitimate as forms of disseminating scholarly knowledge. The response to Tribble’s (rather inane) column in higher education hiring circles was pretty dire. I went to a forum for job candidates that fall during which the facilitator begged us to delete everything about ourselves from the internet and to never, ever post pictures of our cats. In other words, the anecdotal experience of one person who could not even share his name with the world suddenly became concrete evidence that within the blogging world, the sky was falling. The rumor spread: blogging damaged one’s chances at an academic job.”


ETDs & Libraries

Expanding on the library’s voice in this discussion, the anonymous Library Loon writes,“…the academic library’s central mission with dissertations produced on its campus is the dissemination thereof.  (The records-management, cataloging, and preservation functions twine neatly into this mission, of course.) Open access to etds, and advocacy for open-access etd policies, clearly fulfill the library’s mission.”The university library’s role, now more than ever, includes advocating for author’s rights and supporting the broad reach of scholarship to the benefit of faculty authors, emerging and senior. Its not our place to get in the middle of disciplinary modes of research, but to suggest that they have the opportunity to be reinvented, for the good of the discipline. In terms of the dissertation, the library serves not only as a preservation and access agent, but also the legal and ethical one, ensuring the evidence of the scholarly record at our particular institution... In the case of AHA vs. ETDs, the inherent miscommunications between acquisitions editors at university presses, faculty advisors in academic departments and subject-specialist librarians has led to a battle between them and the emerging scholar, over policies dictated by the administrative body of the Graduate School. ... Too long the system has leaned in favor of the middlemen, rather than for the creators and consumers of knowledge.”


ETDs & Publishers

“Audience is a key consideration for university presses: ‘We normally consider theses or dissertations for publication only if the author is willing to revise them for a broader audience; this is our practice regardless of the availability of an ETD.’”
“Publishers continue to comment on the lemming-like rush of doctoral students to try to get their dissertations published. The blunt fact is that the vast majority of doctoral students in the social sciences and humanities will never see their theses published in traditional monographic form by university presses. Australia alone has around 35,000 students undertaking doctorates by research. The vast majority of theses in the social sciences and humanities are of no commercial interest and only a small minority can be rewritten for a general trade readership. Students would be better served by their supervisors advising them to make their theses available on the Internet through the various national digital theses programs.”

Position of current graduate students in the discipline of History

“Let me start by saying that I entirely understand why individual graduate students want to embargo their dissertations and I don’t question their decisions to do so.  A recent study seems to suggest that, while most university presses are still willing to consider publishing books based on openly accessible dissertations, a significant minority will not.  And given the incredibly difficult professional situation in which new PhDs in history find themselves today, they cannot be faulted for doing what they must to maximize their chances for professional success.But as Rauchway and others have pointed out, a situation that effectively forces young scholars to keep their work out of circulation is fundamentally bad for the profession…and for young scholars themselves.  Faced with the dual crises of academic hiring and academic publishing, our best response as a profession is not to try to approximate a status quo ante that is unlikely to return, especially if doing so discourages the dissemination of historical work, as the embargo strategy does”
“I am not defending the AHA’s statement, per se. It does indeed ignore the broader issue of what the AHA intends to do about the long-term, systemic problem of the undue influence and interest of university press publishers in the profession and the profession’s transition into the digital era, more generally. I am, however, going to defend the policy of allowing students the option to embargo.The profession is in a liminal moment. That is, while the rest of society and many professions have moved into the digital realm, the academic history profession has not. Historians have taken it upon themselves to bring our work and other perspectives into the digital world. There are exciting new digital history projects being created all the time. But the administrative structure of the profession (i.e., universities, departments, university presses, and professional organizations) has been much slower to adapt to the digital environment. This disconnect between practicing academic historians and the administrative structure of the profession has led to some of the frustrations with the AHA and the profession, more generally....All that said, as an academic history blogger and podcaster and a proponent of digital humanities, I am especially concerned with the profession becoming more digitally proactive and with issues of how we define the dissertation and the practices of hiring and tenure committees. Nevertheless, dealing with the present does not preclude one from also working toward improving the future. The AHA has done the former; now, it must do the latter.”

Graduate Students at UTA & the ResearchCommons

Currently, graduate students can choose an embargo of 6 months, 1 year, or up to 2 years
Resources & Guidelines:





9/25/13 ETA

For Profit Publishing

Elsevier Fact Sheet " According to The Economist, Elsevier made $1.1 billion in profit in 2010 for a profit margin of 36%. T&F’s profit margin is 25%, per T&F."
"I did not initially pay much attention when publisher John Wiley announced early in September that they would impose download limits on users of their database “effective immediately.” .... And it also reminded me that the best weapon against unilateral decisions that harm scholarship and research is to stop giving away the IP created by our faculty members to vendors who deal with it in costly and irresponsible ways.  One of the most disturbing things about the original announcement is Wiley’s reference to “publishers’ IP.”  Wiley, of course, created almost none of the content they sell; they own that IP only because it has been transferred to them.  If we could put an end to that uneven and unnecessary giveaway, this constant game of paying more for less would have to stop. 
via An odd anouncement by Kevin Smith, J.D.

  And it also reminded me that the best weapon against unilateral decisions that harm scholarship and research is to stop giving away the IP created by our faculty members to vendors who deal with it in costly and irresponsible ways.  One of the most disturbing things about the original announcement is Wiley’s reference to “publishers’ IP.”  Wiley, of course, created almost none of the content they sell; they own that IP only because it has been transferred to them.  If we could put an end to that uneven and unnecessary giveaway, this constant game of paying more for less would have to stop. - See more at: http://blogs.library.duke.edu/scholcomm/2013/09/20/an-odd-anouncement/#sthash.0eTjcT27.dpuf
  And it also reminded me that the best weapon against unilateral decisions that harm scholarship and research is to stop giving away the IP created by our faculty members to vendors who deal with it in costly and irresponsible ways.  One of the most disturbing things about the original announcement is Wiley’s reference to “publishers’ IP.”  Wiley, of course, created almost none of the content they sell; they own that IP only because it has been transferred to them.  If we could put an end to that uneven and unnecessary giveaway, this constant game of paying more for less would have to stop. - See more at: http://blogs.library.duke.edu/scholcomm/2013/09/20/an-odd-anouncement/#sthash.0eTjcT27.dpuf
Open Book Publishers 

UNT Press
Open Access Academic Publishing: What It Is, Why It’s Important, and How to Use It
 Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC): Open Access


 9/26/13 ETA Bibliography for 09/25 Discussion on the Scholarly Monograph & University Presses

Q&A

If you have any questions on Scholarly Communication, you can email us at
LIBRARY-SC@listserv.uta.edu

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