I also finished a complete draft of my dissertation and shipped it, in advance of my defense which takes place on Friday August 28. Plus I found a place to live in Chicago, and am in the midst of packing for the move. And, I got my very first smartphone for my birthday — a BlackBerry Curve 8900. I can’t say it has changed my life, but I do really really like it. With all this stuff going on, I feel like I should say something wise and profound about change or new beginnings or something, but I have no idea what that might be. Mostly, I am just taking things one day at a time so it all doesn’t get too overwhelming. I am totally thrilled to have been given this fantastic opportunity for the coming year, and am going to do everything I can to make the most of it.

Group information repositories are systems for storing and organizing digital information in a central location that all members of a workgroup or team can access. Despite the importance of the information stored within them, users of group information repositories (like shared folders and content management tools) often struggle to adhere to explicit rules or structures for information labeling and organization. Instead, as content accumulates over time, repositories become more and more disorganized and users have an increasingly difficult time finding the information they need. A group information repository is not a communication system in the same way as instant messaging or email are; nevertheless, words are chosen to represent the contents of documents, and also to suggest relationships among groups of documents. People can effectively communicate and share information with each other face-to-face (for the most part)—why is it so difficult to label and organize documents so that a relatively small group of teammates can find them? Might a social process, like common ground, be at work when the communication is mediated by a group information management system? In this dissertation, I focus on understanding social influences on information labeling, organization, and finding by people in situations that involve some form of collaboration or collective action. Using a qualitative case study of a group information repository and evidence from an experiment, I argue that social factors affect how the information structure of a repository grows and evolves over time, and that the choices and behaviors of users when producing or contributing content determine what can be found and accessed.

I left the pre-proposal meeting with the impression that a public defense would not be necessary; but we had talked about me doing it regardless of the outcome of the meeting since it is technically a requirement, and our department hasn’t had a public proposal defense for a while. So, come to the defense if you can! It will be nice to have moral support.

I have yet to find time to really sit and think about the feedback I received at that meeting, and the changes I need to make to my document and my research plan. I put off some teaching stuff in favor of the pre-proposal meeting, and had to play a bit of catch-up in that area. But now I need to have a plan for how to make all the changes by the end of next week, before I go to ASIS&T, so that my advisor and committee have time to review the changes before the defense. It all seems a bit overwhelming at the moment, but I’m sure that once I have a plan in place, I will feel better.

i used to love fall. when i was a little nerdy kid by the time August rolled around i was so ready to go back to school, i couldn’t WAIT for fall. for the past few years though, September has mostly meant sleep deprivation. with getting back into the teaching groove and the CHI deadline every year, i don’t look forward to fall as much as i used to.

and i can’t slow down yet! the annual phd student poster session is friday, and i haven’t even thought about making a poster yet. i am also in the process of scheduling my pre-proposal meeting and proposal defense, both to take place before November. ahhh, grad school.