You can now cite my Fedora research using this APA citation
Harrelson Hubbard, D. (2013, July). An Exploration of Fedora’s Online Open Source Development Community. Paper presented at the Free Software Workshop, FISL14, Porto Alegre, Brazil. Retrieved from http://softwarelivre.org/wsl/blog/wsl-2013-schedule
You can view it on Scribd.
Hi everyone!
Just a quick update to inform those who follow me due to my work on Fedora. A version of my masters thesis will be presented in Brazil (via video) on July 5th at the International Free Software Workshop.
You can find more information here: http://softwarelivre.org/wsl
I’m in Session 4.
You can find my full paper as submitted here: http://tux.gseis.ucla.edu/WSL2013_papers/Harrelson-fedora03.pdf
There may be edits to this paper as a result of this workshop.
More to come!
Edit: You can now cite my Fedora research using this APA citation
Harrelson Hubbard, D. (2013, July). An Exploration of Fedora’s Online Open Source Development Community. Paper presented at the Free Software Workshop, FISL, Porto Alegre, Brazil. Retrieved from http://softwarelivre.org/wsl/blog/wsl-2013-schedule
So, while staying up late to do a paper for class (yes it is spring break, PhD students never rest!), I got this wild brainstorm of how to apply both my development training (I work in an agile development environment as a UXD), and the lean startup methodology I spent all day hearing about at SXSW toward my PhD studies. Below is what I quickly jotted down (instead of writing my paper) as the clock turned from 1am to 3am due to DST.
Agile Development – As in, how to quickly get started and iterate on a project in order to get it to releasable state as fast as possible.
I believe the biggest problem with most of us PhD students is just getting started on that damn 20 page paper or huge research project. Why? Because we don’t know how to begin. Well, who says you need to start at the beginning? If you know that you can knock out a section of your document faster than the others, why not start there then move on to the next fastest and the next fastest until you’ve reached the one part that will take you the longest and now it won’t take so long because you’ve already written the rest and it all applies to what you have left!
MVP: Minimum Viable Product / Paper / Project – What’s the least amount you can get away with? As in, what can I do to make a C? Then, what do I need to do to make it better in order to get an A?
Do what you need to in order to fulfill the barest and most minimum of requirements of your assignment, then build on it. At least at that point you know you’ve touched on every point the professor asked of you, and now you’re going above and beyond.
Or – how to quickly iterate on a paper. Write out a bunch of crap for a paper even though you know not all of it will go in, because you know at least some of it will and you just need to get it typed out. Then, you go back and cull it down to something respectable and focus just on that one thing rather than the overly broad dribble you spewed out to begin with.
Pivot – Change in direction after gaining valuable information
Ever get to that point in your research where you go – “damn it, now that I know more I should really go in this direction instead of the one I originally intended!” Go with it! Change the entire direction of your paper/project it even if it takes more research. In the end your final product is so much better than it would have been had you gone on your initial assumptions without exploring your research further.
Business Plan Vs Business Model – Paper/Project Plan vs Paper/Project Model
What’s the difference? One you’re following simply because you’re told that’s the way you’re supposed to do it (plan). The other you’re modifying and iterating on until it fits your paper/project needs (model). Both give you something to start with, it’s just one is a lot more versatile than the other. You end up with something much better when you can improve upon it rather than sticking with something just because “that’s the way it’s done”.
Metrics – Quantify your results
I figure for us PhD students this plays out in figuring out the least amount of time you can spend on something and still get an A. By keeping track of the time you spend doing each part of the task for each project you do until you know with certainty how long it will take you to nail that paper/project you can then plan accordingly and be not only much more efficient in your work, but also be a lot more engaged in it because of your confidence level and high ROI.
It isn’t a finished piece of work, but hey – I got it out as fast as possible and I can always iterate on it later – especially if I get feedback from readers! So tell me what you think. 🙂
As always you can find me @sollitaire – or email me diana [@] cyber-anthro.com.
Virtual Ethnography is a highly interactive process that provides the ability to make observations of and participate in computer/device mediated cultures through a multitude of non face-to-face methods. It is used to better understand the behaviors and knowledge of participants in and contributors to those cultures. It is also concerned with the artifacts these cultures produce and the methods in which these cultures share, use, and iterate on them. The key to virtual ethnography is not to consider digital lives separate from real life as they both belong to the same life and can only be holistically understood when approached as one.
This is something short and sweet I came up with on the fly when asked for something completely different. I’m reposting it here so it doesn’t go to waste!
As I get time in the coming weeks I’ll work on expanding and rounding it out. If you have any contributions you’d like to make or opinions on it let me know what you think!
Wow, it’s been a while I know!
On August 12 I presented my practicum / thesis to my anthropology department on the Fedora Project titled: An Exploration of the Fedora Project’s Online Open Source Development Community.
The unique part of my project was that I used virtual methods for almost the entirety of my research. The methods entailed the following:
Based on the data gathered during this research I was able to structure my findings into five themes.
In the final report each of these themes had key points that surfaced to support them and recommendations that were made based on analysis of the data gathered throughout the entire research project. You can find the community version of this report here. If you would like the full thesis / practicum paper (a bit more academic than the community report), please email me: diana [@] cyber-anthro.com. If you would like me to give the presentation again, just let me know. I am more than happy to share this data with anyone in the Fedora / FLOSS / Anthropology or Academic communities.
My committee was very pleased with my work and the results of my research, which culminated in the previously mentioned final report and presentation. With that, they signed off on the last of my graduation requirements and on August 13th I graduated with my Master of Science in Applied Anthropology!
I am hoping to find time in the coming months to write up a report on how I approached my research from a virtual methods perspective and did everything virtually from taking down and organizing field notes to daily interactions within the community. Not to mention the trials and tribulations of doing a study like this and lessons learned for those who wish to embark on a similar path. If you think you’d find this useful, please email me and nudge me to get it done!
Last year I applied and was accepted into the Interdisciplinary Information Science PhD (IIS PhD) program at UNT where I started this fall. I will be focusing my studies on Human Computer Interaction and Information Policy. Due to my academic record I was nominated for and subsequently awarded a fellowship that covers my full tuition for the next four years. I can’t tell you how excited I am to be continuing on with my PhD studies, daunting though they may seem right now!
While my PhD is not in anthropology, the program is heavily centered around research, which is where my anthropology background will be a huge benefit. I will be utilizing all of my anthropologist skills in each of my research projects and final dissertation. Being interdisciplinary, I am able to blend all of my previous education as well as my skills in information architecture, usability, interaction design, and user experience together into a combined subject of study.
I am very excited to start down this new path and my goal is to aim my studies on the same subjects I did for my undergraduate and masters degrees. Those being, gaming, social networking, blogging, online communities, and open source. My hope is to also extend this into the realms of the digital divide, digital property rights, net neutrality, information accessibility, and more!
Thank you to each and every single one of you who worked with me on my Fedora research. Every single one of you made a difference and I hope we get the chance to work with each other again!
From a direct email Best Buy sent me:
“Next time you’re at a Best Buy store you can conveniently get the product information you need right from your mobile phone. Learn more about specifications, ratings and reviews using the new QR Mobile Code Reader APP.
From a post I made December of 2008:
Two ads come to mind immediately of stores mentioning how they provide access to a computer right in the store in order to research the product and their competitors prices. I think though, that they should take this one step further, why not offer an in store wireless connection that mobile phones can use to do the research with. Through that connection offer a ‘homepage’ or default page that comes up when they go to connect with all of the in-store specials. These specials then list not only the store’s price, but also their competitors online prices as well as specs, compatibility, and upgrade information about the product itself.
While yes, I agree that few people will use this in the beginning, but imagine those people then SHARING that information with the people around them. Then those people the shared it with learning of it, using it, and then sharing it with others too. It’s an in store marketing device, one that they are already providing through the use of an in store computer, but one that is a bit more private and a hell of a lot more useful than most sales people.
This can then be extended even further than that — say using a barcode scanner or photo recognition software. Just imagine the possibilities when you put access to pertinent information in the palm of a consumers hand.
One example would be utilizing Target’s Amazon relation ship by putting URLs on the tags for all the electronic items in the store. Here I can go an extra step and actually read the reviews for the item I’m looking to purchase. I not only get to look up prices, specs, and other important information, but I also get to see what OTHER people think of the product too. Then, if I purchase it in store I can say perhaps get $5 off my next Amazon or Target purchase if I leave a review thus perpetuating the cycle.
Someone should pay me to come up with this stuff. I come up with these sorts of ideas all of the time!
(Yes this is a repost as I realized recently I had copied out the wrong paragraph from the BB email!)
I’ve been avidly following a discussion on the anthro-design list about guerrilla research and thought that perhaps my reply as both a traditional researcher and a guerrilla researcher may be useful to those who follow my blog. So, here it is!
Little about me:
Academically, I am finishing my masters degree in applied anthropology in 3 weeks where I focused on cyber anthropology – or studying culture online and using virtual research methods (as long as everything goes according to plan). Additionally, I am starting my PhD in 4 weeks in Human Computer Interaction.
As far as work experience I have 13 years in the computer industry and over 10 years in the fields of software development (JCPenney internal marketing applications that serviced over 5000 internal employees and over 1000 stores), graphic design (various jobs over the years from traditional print to web design), and user experience including positions as interaction designer (school information systems), information architect (at an interactive ad agency), and user interface engineer (designing HR software) / designer (designing mobile, desktop and web tools).
My Experience:
In all of my experience I have rarely ever been able to properly conduct user research. Even the one time I was given the go ahead to do so the recruitment methods which were performed by the product management team were so awful we only had a total of 6 people participate!
This means I’ve had to utilize any opportunities available to me to conduct ‘guerrilla research’.
Methods I’ve used include:
‘Participant Observation’ – I sat in on and participated in training classes where support people were being trained on current versions of software and were able to voice their concerns for themselves and their customers. I was able to take this information plus a heuristic review of the software’s current state and use that as my basis for what challenges needed to be tackled in the new interface and process design.
Subject Matter Expert (SME) interviews. Here is where I went deeper than the stakeholders or even those that called themselves SMEs and ferreted out those people who had to be SMEs not because it was their job title, but because their positions within the company required them to be. I found a great source to be the Sales department (and sales engineers) of all people. Why? These people are the ones on the front lines trying to sell the software. They are the ones that do the most competitive research and are asked the most questions by both potential customers who are shopping around (so I saw in this demo by this other company they did it this way – why do you do it different?) AND existing customers looking to upgrade (so why should I upgrade to the new version when the version I have does everything I need it to – or the current version is no longer meeting my needs and I’m not sure the new version will either – why should I stay with your company when I need this, this, this and this that you have yet to offer). Additionally, these people are GREAT to reconnect with after you’ve done your job and they are selling the software you’ve designed as they can give you both potential and current user feedback on it that they receive during demos!
Developers, developers, developers… They get such a bad rep because they are seen as the ones that just do the behind the scenes plumbing and aren’t as concerned as how it should operate on the front end. This, for one, isn’t necessarily true and in most cases is a simply out dated notion. Though many aren’t sure what to do on the front end, once you give them prototypes or wireframes and actually talk to them about your ideas they can help you expound on them 10 fold because they know how the system works, why it works the way it does, the current pitfalls, and ways to not only improve the front end based on all of this information but also ways to improve the backend which also has implications for user experience especially in terms of things like errors and page loads etc etc.
Online forums! Getting out there and seeing what people are actually saying about previous/current state is a huge help. Though it can be damaging to the ego once they start talking about YOUR contributions to the project, it is definitely a place to gather at least unabashed criticism and sometimes helpful suggestions to the product.
Stakeholders – really, I go to these people last. Especially in terms of product managers. They have too many people to answer to, to be in the right mindset of user experience most of the time. Though I’m not their adversary, I look at myself as the user advocate and the person that has the user’s voice when things come up where they might want to sacrifice usability and accessibility needs for niceities/unnecessary features/timelines.
More traditional methods done in a guerrilla way:
Site visits – can’t stress this enough. Though we only got a chance to visit two offices, just being able to see the tools they work with (monitor size, the size of their browser windows, how busy their office is etc etc) were very insightful.
Phone interviews – these were most helpful when the user already answered a set of predetermined questions up front and the phone call was used to expound on them.
Journals – having users take screen shots of problem areas and talk about them prior to our visits or phone calls was very helpful in that it got them thinking about where their problem areas were and it saved us time in that we could jump right into issues they were experiencing in the WAY they were experiencing them even if we couldn’t be there to see how they got to the issue, why they got there, or how they had to satisfice their way around it at the time (and all previous times).
Card Sorting – we had several different types of people across two offices take a stack of cards with navigation points on it and asked them to sort them in what they would most navigate to in terms of top level navigation and where they’d classify the rest of the cards beneath that top level. This was very insightful and helped our client see that yes 13 top level super cats was a bit ridiculous.
Shadowing internal users – when you have the opportunity to develop for in-house clients shadowing them is one of the least obstructive and most informative research methods I’ve been able to perform.
Examples of work:
If you’re at all interested you can find out more about my work via my resume, and my portfolio, which doesn’t include anything from my current job – but you can see an example of the work I’ve done for them here.
Let me know if this was useful!
Hello again Fedora!
I know it’s been a while, and for that my apologies. But you see, I’ve been working very very hard this last month and a half to bring you the results of the research study we worked together on. I want to thank each and every one of you who worked with me on this study. By taking me in at FUDCon Toronto, letting me bug you insistently over email and IRC, and letting me pester you enough to take the survey – we’ve been able to create something both interesting and useful that I hope you find will be worth all that time and trouble.
For those who want to learn more about this research study you can start here at the beginning or you can browse the Fedora tag in my blog for relevant posts.
Without further adieu here is the beta version of this research in two forms both a PDF available for download so that you may share it or view it offline and an online version available here on my blog if that is your preference.
Why beta? Well, I feel this can perhaps be improved based on your feedback. I’ve already conducted an alpha release with those who directly contributed to the interview portion of the study. Now I am offering you all the chance to put your own mark on it. This document I am presenting here is after all for you Fedora contributors. So, if you have any questions or comments or feedback in general please let me know. You can either comment on here or you can email me directly diana [@] cyber-anthro.com.
I look forward to hearing from you!
This seemed pretty apropos for today’s comic as I’m writing up all of the reports for Fedora at this moment using a combination of qualitative and quantitative data. 🙂
Have about 10 minutes to spare (20 if you’re long winded ;)? Please share your thoughts in the Fedora Contributor Research Survey!
If you are not a Fedora contributor, please do not take the survey.
You can read more about the survey here!
Survey Now Available:
I am hereby inviting all Fedora contributors to participate in my Fedora Research Survey by clicking on the banner below!
If you are not a Fedora contributor, please do not take the survey.
Survey Details:
All responses are anonymous, so please answer as honestly and thoroughly as you can! Only caveat is that you MUST be 18 years old or older to participate. It should only take 10 to 20 minutes to complete, unless you feel you have a lot to add to the open text areas, which from a researchers perspective, the more data the better!
Spread The Word!
Please repost this in your blogs or anywhere else you see fit!
Feel free to use the code below to incorporate the banner shown above:
<a href="http://cyberanthro.limequery.com/44899/lang-en" target="new"><img src="https://www.cyber-anthro.com/images/surveyresearchbanner.png"></a>
First Time Hearing Of This Research?
You can learn more about my research by viewing my introduction post to it here and the research FAQ I created here.
As always, if you have questions feel free to comment or contact me diana [@] cyber-anthro.com!
Go Fedora!
And of course a preemptive congrats to all your hard work on Fedora 13, only 8 days away!
I was talking in #fedora-mktg with Mel Chua today about my dilemma of finding a count of currently active Fedora Project contributors. So she whipped up a twill script in python to get a count on contributions based on FAS authenticated activity.
So here is a challenge to you other hackers, can you find a way to do this better? And, can you do it by Friday?
During this next part of my research process I will be posting a survey available to all Fedora contributors. Luckily, this part of the participation process requires no signatures! So, those of you who were unable to participate in the interview process* will be able to easily participate in the survey portion as it is completely electronic.
The long and short of surveys is the quantitative statistical analysis that can be performed on them. The purpose of my survey is to help triangulate the data obtained during the qualitative (interview/participant observation) portion of my research against a broader sample that is more representative of the overall community. However, in order to do this properly I need to know how big the current overall community is.
This is where I need your help. I need you, Fedora Project contributors, to help me find ways to get at least an approximate count of currently active and contributing participants that can be verified by some means. This could be getting the number for how many people own packages in Rawhide or even how many people have edited the wiki in the past 6 months. Being that not everyone owns packages or edits the Wiki, we need ways to count the other contributors as well. Also, there is likely some overlap between several countable contributing groups so we need to keep issues like that under consideration. I understand that it will be difficult to come up with an exact number, so a close approximation will suffice as long as we have ways to support how we got the numbers and they are verifiable.
Not only will we need to ways to get the numbers, but also the people who are able to access that data and get it to me. So, if you come up with an idea but have no knowledge of how to actually get the data in question, feel free to brainstorm on this post with other people! I imagine that by working together we can quickly and easily come up with ways to figure this out. I’ll be hanging out in IRC as always, so feel free to ping me there or email me if you have ideas, questions, or numbers you wish to donate to the cause.
Once we have a number, then I can come up with a quota and will be able to release the survey!
I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you very much for helping me out with this process. 🙂
*If you still want to participate in the interview process and have the ability to return your signature to me electronically (print/scan, fax, xournal, signing with a mouse) then please contact me diana [@] cyber-anthro.com.
Research design in anthropology is a tricky thing. It is the part of the process you do before you do anything else, and thus you do before you have any real sense of the situation in which you will be researching and the people with which you will be working. It is the place where you lay down the questions to be answered, setup ways in which you will attempt to answer them, try and anticipate all of the ins and outs of the process as well as all the steps necessary to be taken with all of the stakeholders, which in my case includes my client, my masters committee, and my university IRB.
Then you get into the project and start your research, and only then do you start to realize and understand what you’ve got yourself into and just how many things you didn’t anticipate. So far with this project, being a cyber anthropological based research study (all of the research is being conducted online), my problems have all centered around technology.
My first limitation was understanding the process to get my blog on the Fedora Planet blogroll. With help and some ‘hacking the system’ I got on and while at FUDcon I figured out why it didn’t work in the first place (I wasn’t a part of enough groups!).
Now I am realizing my second limitation, that of requiring a signed piece of paper from all interview participants before each interview can commence. Pen and paper is perhaps one of the oldest forms of communication and technology known to man and yet it is the one thing standing between me an several potential interviews.
This was not a hindrance I anticipated when designing my research study, and it is perhaps not something with which people who are not researching under a university have to deal. However, it is something I now realize is important and am bringing attention to in case there are others embarking on similar research studies with similar IRB limitations that require them to have signed consent forms so they can account for this process in their research design.
Were I to design a similar project in the future under the same IRB limitations, I would ask my IRB to approve an electronic encrypted signature on my consent forms.
Here’s to hoping someone out there can learn from my mistakes!
That all being said, if you have a means for returning a signed document to me electronically and you would like to be interviewed for the Fedora research project, but have yet to contact me please do so soon! All interviews will be wrapped up (as best they can) by Friday!
If you would like to participate in the interview portion of the Fedora research project I am current conducting, please visit my informational post on it here!
I need at least 10 more willing participants by the end of next week. The most convenient way of participating for all involved so far has been through email. So if you have a little time and wouldn’t mind answering a few questions about your participation in Fedora via email, please let me know!
If you need alternative means of signing the informed consent documents, please note that you can sign it via a tablet as well as via fax (just email me for the fax number), rather than being restricted to having scan your forms in and send them to me.
Fudcon Tornoto was a blast – seriously, it reminded me why I miss lan parties (hey, I’m a gamer!). A bunch of hackers getting together and hacking for the LOVE of it was just awesome to witness and be a part of.
The festivities took place at York University @ Seneca in Toronto, Ontario Canada.
Barcamp
Day one was done barcamp style. There were about 150 people or so in attendance. Everyone who wanted to lead a panel suggested their panel and had 30 seconds to pitch it. They then took their panel pitch page outside to hang on the wall. After the pitching was done, everyone had the option to go out and vote for the panels they wanted to go to. The panels with the most votes were then put into a grid schedule on the wall as well as translated to a Wiki page (that was announced on the Fudcon IRC channel), so people could schedule the panels they wanted to go to and stay up to date with changes on the Wiki as they occurred.
There was apparently a record number of panels proposed at this Fudcon. Even so, it flowed VERY well and came together in about an hour.
Setup
All panel rooms had their own IRC channel (much like is done at SXSW – just a meebo chat instead of IRC there), and each panel had a transcriber in addition to the speakers that would transcribe the entire panel (as best they could) to the channel so that people who were there could talk in a backchannel and others could remote in from places all over the world to participate. Additionally, one to two panels an hour were audio streamed as well as audio recorded so that they could be posted online later.
There were 40 panels in all on Saturday, spread across 8 rooms and 5 hours.
The panels were a bit segregated in that there was a developer tract and a user tract. Though the design panels spread across the both of them, I felt they probably could have had their own tract, and thus made sure to attend at least one of those. In the end went to at least one panel of each of these three tracts to get a sense of who was there and what they were talking about.
My Panel
My panel was one of the last of the day in a room with about 20 to 25 people or so. At first I didn’t think I’d be able to talk an entire 45 minutes – but that really wasn’t an issue in the end. You can read the backchannel that was going on while I talked here, to get a sense of what it was like and the type of conversation that was going on. It was also audio streamed and video recorded. As soon as I get copies of those I’ll post them for you. I will also post about just my panel after I finish the overviews of each day!
Dave & Busters – FUDCon style:
That night we all went out to D&B, paid for my Fedora. We got to enjoy little burgers, chicken strips, snack trays, as well as tea, coke, water and a bit of pool on their dime. At one point I was pulled over into a conversation between to developers on the best way to package software that took into account not only streamlining processes, and procedures, but also ease of use for the user. Then I played pool a bit (and sucked horribly). I was never lacking conversation as many times people would come up to me and strike one before I even had a chance to strike one up myself. It was fun, I enjoyed the crowd. People came from all over the world including places like Germany, Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands.
Hackroom:
After D&B I was invited to participate in hackroom activities. In fact, they wanted me to participate in a specific project, that being creating a Design Spin of Fedora.
What is a Spin?
From their site: Fedora spins are alternate version of Fedora, tailored for various types of users via hand-picked application set or customizations.
This Design spin we created includes many tools required for designers and artists of all kinds to do their job using nothing but free/open source software. We came up with all the things in it by comparing what Mairin Duffy used in her Fedora environment versus what I use in my Macintosh (more traditional design based) environment. We found FLOSS equivalents for everything then had Sebastian Dziallas perform the technical part of creating the spin, while Mel Chua documented the entire process we went through in order to share it with others who are interested in doing the same thing.
As soon as this spin is made available I will be downloading it and trying it myself. It was rather interesting to see Mairin’s panel on Inkscape and realize she does exactly what I do in an open source program, where I use proprietary programs such as Omni Graffle or Visio to get the job done.
It was very nice that not only did they invite me to hangout in the Hackroom, but they also found something they wanted me to participate in.
I think we ended up getting to bed around 3am only to start it all over again at about 8am the next day!
As we start upon this holiday week (in the US) I am pulling together my resources in preparation for the Fedora developer conference the first weekend in December.
Part of this process includes making my introduction to the Fedora group, gaining access to several mailing lists, joining IRC channels, and of course updating this blog.
So far this has been an interesting learning process.
On the technical side, I am ashamed to admit I got on IRC for the first time this week, that and I still didn’t figure out the SSH bit for adding myself to the Fedora Planet blogroll and instead had someone do a hack to get me on. I feel like my geek cred went simultaneously up and down – I suppose staying even isn’t so bad. 😉
On the personal side I’ve had two great people step up to help me out both in terms of getting connected and getting a better grasp on the different things going on right now in the Fedora community. So thank you to both Mel and Mairin for that!
For those of you on Livejournal, I’ve syndicated Planet Fedora in order to make it easier for me to keep up with, perhaps you’ll find it helpful as well!
To get more familiar with Fedora as an OS, I am working on taking my Dell Mini 9 (my fieldwork laptop) and figuring out how to install the latest Fedora release on it (it came with Ubuntu). I have yet to even begin research on this! I figure it will be my pet project starting tomorrow. If you have tips or know of any resources that may be helpful, please pass them along!
Lastly, I’m going to put together a loose list of things to discuss while at the conference with everyone interested in this research. It being an explorative study, it is open to any and all ideas the community is interested in exploring about itself.
As a part of my research I’ll be conducting interviews at the conference. If you are interested in being interviewed and you think you’ll have time at the conference for it, please let me know! This way I can start a list prior to the conference and we can be sure to make time while we are there to talk. I’ll be happy to do this individually or in groups. Just let me know your preference.
If you won’t be at the conference, or would like the participate, but don’t think you’ll have time while you are there – don’t fret! I’ll be conducting interviews through the end of January either in person (for those local to Dallas), online (email/IM), or over the phone/skype. So if you’re interested in that let me know as well!
As always, if you have any questions as to what this is all about, who I am, or why I am doing this research feel free to email me at diana [@] cyber-anthro.com.
Hi!
First, I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Diana and I am an anthropologist currently in the midst of attaining my Masters degree in Applied Anthropology from the University of North Texas. As a part of my studies I will be working with Fedora, and hopefully many of you, to better understand the culture that surrounds open source software development.
As an applied anthropologist I want to stress that I will be doing research FOR and with the Fedora community not ON the Fedora community. My goal is to find ways to make your lives as open source developers better! And, if by some chance it can’t get any better than it already is, find out why it is so great so other open source groups can follow your lead.
My research methods will include participant observation, which means I will be hanging out with you all as you do what you do both in an online and offline context, interviews, and surveys. I will be using this blog as my major means of communication with everyone and as a way to make my research both open and transparent.
When my research concludes I will be providing the community with a report as to the findings of my explorative study so that everyone has access to them and can hopefully find ways to use them to your benefit.
As a side note for all anthropologists aspiring to do research online, I am documenting my entire process and will be providing a side report as my contribution to open anthropology.
For those of you who will be in Toronto for the developer conference in December, I will be there as well and will be providing a topic for discussion so that we can all get to know each other a bit better.
I want to stress that participation in this study is strictly voluntary! If for some reason you do not want to participate, or would like to speak to me in confidence, I will be more than happy to oblige.
You can contact me here by leaving a comment, or by emailing me Diana [@] cyber-anthro.com.
I look forward to working with all of you and to any feedback you may have, even this early in the process!
