It was pointed out to me by my brother that playing the guitar is a lot like playing a video game: There are certain things you need to do with your fingers at certain times, and you need to memorize the moves (either specifically or generally) before you try it so it works out better. He’s right. Having played electronic games for over two and a half decades, and finally poking about working on the ukulele, it’s entirely true.

I was a little surprised at how vehemently and viscerally I reacted. I’m sure my fellow Starbucks patrons were wondering why I suddenly burst out with an emphatic, “No it’s not!”

I’ve had (pretty much) the opposite experience from Nat’s. I’ve spent the past two and a half decades playing cello, and have never really gotten into video games. For a brief period of my youth, I was dedicated to Munch Man, but since then, it’s been less video game and more computer-mediated game play (solitaire, scrabble, boggle, etc.). Occasionally I’ve had the chance to play Guitar Hero or Rock Band when visiting friends. And I always come away from the experience frustrated because it doesn’t feel like playing a real instrument.

In one sense, I think Nat’s right: with video games, “your fingers have to be in the right place at the right time, just like fingering for chords on a guitar or other stringed instrument.” But with Guitar Hero, hitting the right button at the right time is the end of the story. If you do it right enough times, you win the game. On a real guitar (or other musical instrument), learning to put your fingers in the right place at the right time means that you are finally ready to begin making music. Playing the correct notes is more of a prerequisite than the goal.

This video of Max Roach is a perfect example that making music isn’t about how many buttons you have:

Like Nat, I’d be happy if playing Guitar Hero encourages more people to get into making music. But I think that it’s just as likely that kids who might have asked for a real guitar for their birthday will now be begging their parents for a cheap five-button fake, and that makes me a little sad.

• Jonathan Eisen, a biologist at UC Davis, posted on The Tree of Life about his quest to find an electronic lab notebook, and the ensuing discussion suggests that, while it’s possible to kludge together something that works, there aren’t many options specifically designed to support the day-to-day needs and constraints of an academic research laboratory. (And just try to find ones that play well with other information systems inside and outside the lab!)
• Richard Apodaca at Depth-First wants to stop talking about “electronic laboratory notebooks” and instead use the phrase “networked laboratory information.” He suggests that consideration of this new mental model would “start out with identifying the many forms of information we create and use, and the needs of those doing the creating and using. It would then move on to how best to share this information within our organization, and with our customers and partners in a secure manner.”
• Titus Brown has posted a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek Data Management Plan on his blog, Daily Life in an Ivory Basement:

“I will store all data on at least one, and possibly up to 50, hard drives in my lab. The directory structure will be custom, not self-explanatory, and in no way documented or described. Students working with the data will be encouraged to make their own copies and modify them as they please, in order to ensure that no one can ever figure out what the actual real raw data is. Backups will rarely, if ever, be done.”

These posts seem to highlight a tension that arises from individuals and small laboratories doing science in a computerized, networked, big science world. We hear a lot about how building massive databases and supercomputers is increasingly important for doing cutting edge science. The NSF, NIH, DOE, and many other agencies and organizations are putting significant funding and attention toward creating large, centralized scientific resources. But I wonder if this focus on the centralized portion of infrastructure sometimes comes at the expense of supporting local practice.

For example, Brown’s satire is written in response to the NSF’s new policy requiring grants to have data management plans. At least as it is described in the press release, the focus of the new policy is on “community access to data” and “open sharing of research data.” It seems that for the NSF, data management is only important insofar as it supports the one-way movement of data out of the lab and into the community. This is a shortsighted view of data management.

In a recent article, Karen Baker and Lynn Yarmey present a much more nuanced and complex understanding of data management for big science. They see data repositories existing within different “spheres-of-context.” For example, a local repository might be found in a particular laboratory or small group, where it is intended to support data use in the context of a specific set of research questions. On the other hand, a large remote archive might be aimed at preserving data for future reuse. Whereas the NSF policy treats the local context (e.g., the laboratory) as a pit stop on the road to a shared database, Baker and Yarmey remind us that laboratories are more than data factories, and that the data management challenges are about more than simply enabling data aggregation. Data management policies need to consider how data move through and around the entire “web of repositories.”

I think the spheres-of-context concept can help us think not just about repositories, but about the entire range of cyberinfrastructure. In the same way that the electricity infrastructure needs both power plants and wall outlets, cyberinfrastructures need both the local and the community contexts. Our investments in cyberinfrastructure won’t have the transformational impact we want unless we also pay attention to supporting new scientific practices in day-to-day laboratory life, and to meaningfully connecting those local practices with collective scientific activities.

—

Baker, K. S., & Yarmey, L. (2009). Data stewardship: Environmental data curation and a web-of-repositories. International Journal of Digital Curation, 4(2), 12-27.

I’ve noticed is that the way I am lit seems to affect how others see me. These meetings are often my only real-time interaction with my collaborators, and I want to be perceived as an important part of the group. Of course, I don’t want to miss what is going on, but I also want my collaborators to know that I am attentive and care about what they have to say. I don’t think good lighting will make it seem like I’m paying attention when I’m not. But I do think that bad lighting can give the wrong impression.

These are 3 pictures of my normal videoconferencing setup taken within moments of each other. In the picture on the left, I have only the regular room lights (an overhead fixture), with the camera set for automatic exposure control. In the middle picture, I’ve turned on the proprietary (and pretty amazing) Logitech RightLight feature, which finds the face and sets the brightness and contrast so that the face will look decently lit. In the picture on the right, I’ve turned on the lights. The colors are brighter, the shadows aren’t as deep, and there’s more contrast with the background. And even though I’m in the same position and have the same expression as the other two photos, I think I look more engaged.

I have a cheap but effective lighting setup. Two 25w Kvart clamp lamps from Ikea ($6.99 each) clamped to chairs positioned at about a 45° angle on the right and left. The fronts of the lamps are covered with tracing paper so the light isn’t quite so harsh. I also have a cheap gooseneck lamp on the floor behind me to provide some backlight. The camera sits on a cookbook stand that’s a little higher than the screen of my laptop (just about at chin level for me). The separate stand also makes it jostle less as I type. When I’m at the computer, there are two windows on my left, and behind me is a translucent curtain in front of a large window, so if it’s sunny outside, I’ll only use one lamp in the 45° position to my right. Even with all 3 lights I can get the whole thing set up in just a couple of minutes.

I use a high-quality webcam, but good lighting helps even low-end cameras.

I haven’t conducted rigorous trials, but I get the sense that when I am well lit, the people at the other end are more likely to include me in the conversation. Good lighting helps me feel less far away.

Supporting Scientific Collaboration Through Cyberinfrastructure and e-Science

Guest Editors: Charlotte P. Lee, David Ribes, Matthew Bietz , Marina Jirotka, and Helena Karasti

Scientific collaboration using cyberinfrastructure (CI), or e-Science, is forward facing. e-Science projects aim to support the collaboration of research communities, whether by facilitating distanced collaboration or sharing data and computational resources. The most ambitious e-Science projects are creating entirely novel scientific fields, anticipating and actively cultivating new scientific communities and practices. Such endeavors present original challenges to researchers in CSCW fields: questions of large-scale technology development, of supporting communities in addition to groups, and of long-term sustainability.
Cyberinfrastructure and e-Science projects are partially information technology research ventures, but they are also forms of applied sociology, e.g., building bridges across heterogeneous disciplinary traditions and scientific methods. Careful attention must be paid to the full range of participant’s activities as they go about their work. How to establish reliable, accessible and appropriate information infrastructure is a challenge for contemporary CSCW.

For this special issue on computer supported scientific collaboration, we welcome research on topics such as, but not limited to: case studies or comparative analyses of cyberinfrastructure & e-Science development or use; novel applications for large-scale scientific collaboration; and practices for supporting heterogeneous, distributed, or long-term collaborations. We seek empirically grounded studies with a sensibility for theoretical contributions to CSCW and closely related fields.

Schedule and Submission Process
October 11, 2009……….NEW DEADLINE. Deadline for submission of manuscripts
November 19, 2009……Notification of acceptance
January 30, 2009.………Submission of finished manuscripts
2010…………………………Publication

Instructions for Authors: http://www.springer.com/computer/journal/10606

Submitting Manuscripts: Authors should submit their manuscripts to the Editorial Manager (EM) system (at http://www.editorialmanager.com/cosu/ ). Select the appropriate special issue under Article Type: “Scientific Collaboration Through Cyberinfrastructure”.
About the Journal: Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) disseminates innovative research results and provides an interdisciplinary forum for the debate and exchange of ideas concerning theoretical, practical, technical, and social issues in CSCW. Coverage ranges from ethnographic studies of cooperative work to reports on the development of CSCW systems and their technological foundations.

But I’ve also seen recently that some people are reacting with outrage. Here’s from a discussion list I saw today:

It turns out I’m not the only one to notice these recent changes. When FB was just suggesting friends-of-friends, it was pretty easy to figure out how the suggestion was made. Or FB would tell you how it made the match: “You and Brandon Walsh both went to West Beverly High School.” While FB may actually be improving the accuracy of its predictions (in all these cases, it did predict real contacts, although maybe not “friends”), it also may be straying too far to the creepy side of social networking. It wonder if the unease will persist, or if it’s another “people will get used to it” situation.

I really like Atlas.ti for qualitative analysis, but I pretty annoyed by my recent experience. I have a license which includes upgrades, and a few weeks ago received a message that I should upgrade from version 5.5 to version 6. The new features looked great (including direct PDF import and interface improvements) so I loaded the new version. I didn’t discover until after I had installed that the new version uses a new file format and could not save files in the v.5 format. The lab I’m in specifically chose Atlas.ti for its collaboration features, but if you share your files with others, they must be using the same version of the software.

When I tried to find out if there was something I was missing, I discovered that Atlas.ti has published the v.6 software upgrade, but has not yet upgraded the manual. I guess we’re supposed to intuit what all the new icons mean and how to use the completely new features.

I have uninstalled v.6 and gone back to using v.5.

Guest Editors: Charlotte P. Lee, David Ribes, Matthew Bietz , Marina Jirotka, and Helena Karasti

Scientific collaboration using cyberinfrastructure (CI), or e-Science, is forward facing. e-Science projects aim to support the collaboration of research communities, whether by facilitating distanced collaboration or sharing data and computational resources. The most ambitious e-Science projects are creating entirely novel scientific fields, anticipating and actively cultivating new scientific communities and practices. Such endeavors present original challenges to researchers in CSCW fields: questions of large-scale technology development, of supporting communities in addition to groups, and of long-term sustainability.

Cyberinfrastructure and e-Science projects are partially information technology research ventures, but they are also forms of applied sociology, e.g., building bridges across heterogeneous disciplinary traditions and scientific methods. Careful attention must be paid to the full range of participant’s activities as they go about their work. How to establish reliable, accessible and appropriate information infrastructure is a challenge for contemporary CSCW.

For this special issue on computer supported scientific collaboration, we welcome research on topics such as, but not limited to: case studies or comparative analyses of cyberinfrastructure & e-Science development or use; novel applications for large-scale scientific collaboration; and practices for supporting heterogeneous, distributed, or long-term collaborations. We seek empirically grounded studies with a sensibility for theoretical contributions to CSCW and closely related fields.

Schedule and Submission Process

Instructions for Authors: http://www.springer.com/computer/journal/10606

Submitting Manuscripts: Authors should submit their manuscripts to the Editorial Manager (EM) system (at http://www.editorialmanager.com/cosu/ ). Select the appropriate special issue under Article Type: “Scientific Collaboration Through Cyberinfrastructure”.

About the Journal: Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) disseminates innovative research results and provides an interdisciplinary forum for the debate and exchange of ideas concerning theoretical, practical, technical, and social issues in CSCW. Coverage ranges from ethnographic studies of cooperative work to reports on the development of CSCW systems and their technological foundations.

The story: The CSC Lab is in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington. I’m a postdoc working with Charlotte Lee, who leads the lab. HCDE students get involved with faculty research by participating in for-credit research groups. We’ll be using the lab website to report on our NSF-funded research projects and on the work the students are doing. Check it out!

depts.washington.edu/csclab/

Nothing too surprising here, except what isn’t shown. I have “real” friends who don’t use facebook, but actually serve as connections between clusters. I also have friends who would connect clusters, but only show up in one because they made a conscious decision not to accept friend requests from any high school classmates. The only obvious individual that stands out is my bee-you-tee-full sistore, who connects the fam, high school, and undergrad.