Tuesday, March 23, 2010

When The Last Database

My CCCC talk from last Thursday:

When The Last Database You Search Is Not Your Own from Derek Mueller on Vimeo.

Our panel, D.24, was relatively well attended. I printed 30 handouts, and we probably had an audience with that many people or a few more. Bradley has posted his presentation already. Alex may well do the same soon. We talked on Wednesday afternoon over a late lunch about whether or not we would put them online, and we easily agreed that web traffic for presentations like these generates far more exposure to the ideas than the conference venue alone. Feels like a case of pointing out the nose-on-face obvious (will this video get 30 views?), but there are a couple of different discussions this week on WPA-L, a rhetoric and composition listserv/variety hour, about problems fairly typical at national conventions: crowded, over-attended sessions and their opposite, the one-member-audience (a generous friend or colleague, no doubt). Whether the fire marshal was turning late-comers away at the door or whether the carpet mites were the only audience on hand to listen and ask questions, why not post the talk?

A couple of other points: We remixed our talks, delivering them in turn, three by three. The Q&A was terrific; we took several questions and enjoyed thoughtful conversation for the last 30 minutes of the session. Finally, all questions, ideas, suggestions, and insights are welcome in the comments or via email.

Bookmark and Share Posted by at March 23, 2010 10:30 AM to Academe
Comments

Well done. You may already be familiar with Tom Matrullo's rants on Improprieties about Jstor, but if not you might enjoy a look. There is just too much there to easily summarize.

Posted by: Jeff Ward at March 24, 2010 12:25 PM

Thanks for the link, Jeff. I hadn't read Matrullo's rants, but I certainly will do so soon. At first glance, I see parallels between Matrullo's concerned with firewalling knowledge and what I was working toward in this paper.

Posted by: Derek at March 25, 2010 9:43 AM