Hello? … Hello? … Is thing thing on? … Contrary to appearances here on BlogSchmog, my writing hasn’t completely disappeared. It has been displaced.
Getting My Geek On
As a sometimes contributor to Wired‘s parenting blog, I’ve managed to publish nine articles this summer for the volunteer group blog, GeekDad:
- See Dick and Jane Bedoop
- Frye? … Frye? … Cameron is Moving and You Can Buy His House
- 10 Internet Memes You Can Share With Your Kids – And a Bunch You Can’t
- The 140 Project: Filmmakers Capture 140 Seconds of Home
- Happy 25th Birthday, PG-13
- Everything I Know About Parenting I Learned from Mythbusters
- Hey, Kid: Support Your Local Wiki
- Everything I Know About Parenting I Learned from Harry Potter
- Everything I Know About Parenting I Learned from the Apollo Program
The latter “Everything I Know” series has been a fun project to do with Amy. I may get the (unpaid) byline on Wired, but she’s the mastermind behind the actual parenting know-how. Maybe there will be a parenting book project in our future, if we can just get rid of these pesky kids.
To Meme the Impossible Meme
Oh, yeah … I wrote a book, too
You probably can’t tell from looking at this blog, but it has been a busy year. Last July, one of the professors at the School of Informatics passed my name along to a literary agent who was looking for someone to write a Twitter book. By August, I had a deal with O’Reilly Media. It wasn’t until this past March, however, that the book—Twitter API: Up and Running—was released. The effort was twice as long as estimated, both in time and content.
Although the technical descriptions and code in the book haven’t drawn complaints, it is the first chapter of which I am most proud. My original plan was to make that that book and just have a few chapters on the API. O’Reilly being a technical company, my “Twitter Culture” book will have to wait for a future manic period.
That bit of work, though, got me some invitations to do some talks (as well as some I couldn’t attend). The most interesting one happened last night, with a virtual trip to Googleplex for a Tweetup. (Google was smaller than I had imagined, in my little Skype window.) The event was organized by Sudha Jamthe, with help from others—especially Perrine Crampton and Shuchi Rana—and featured a panel of Twitter employees and developers.
The “talk” was pre-produced, to avoid any glitches with the online connection. I’m glad it worked out that way, because sound went in and out throughout the night. It was odd to listen to myself speak and occasionally hear a dog barking in the back of the audio track I made in my downstairs office that day. One happy outcome is that I finally created accounts in Vimeo and SlideShare to try out those services.
Maturation of the Twitter Ecosystem
Ready for Next
I’m at a bit of a crossroads at the moment, considering what my future is going to look like. The academic path I had expected looks less and less appealing by the day, and if it happens, I’m going to aim for a university program that values portfolio-based teaching. More likely, I’ll head back to industry, where I can apply whatever I learned at the School of Informatics to building things. I’ve had a couple projects this summer (one bust, one brilliant) and am spending more time with SociaLens (another place I may be blogging soon). With CHI 2010 deadlines in September, I need to make some decisions about where my priorities will be. It is not far-fetched to imagine taking a year off from the dissertation grind, before it starts in earnest, and play in industry a bit.
Wish me luck.