EDCI 616 Summer 2012 - Journal 1

Mel Chua May 31, 2012

1
1.1

Introduction
Paradigms

This writeup is a bit unusual for education research, to put it mildly. Im using Radically Transparent Research (RTR), a deconstructivist approach[1] inspired by the radical realtime transparency practices of open communities such as Free and Open Source software, hardware, and content projects[2] which makes the following assumptions: Reality is neither singular nor knowable; attempts to precisely dene its nature miss the point entirely, but that doesnt mean we shouldnt try. We value doing over philosophizing, but also recognize philosophizing as a form of doing. Knowledge is constantly co-created and renegotiated by everyone who comes across it. We should capture that trail of interactions; its also knowledge, and knowledge-about-knowledge (meta-knowledge) is also valuable knowledge. Because of the multiplicity of viewpoints, one persons useless data may be anothers gold. The world is full of people who are smarter than we are, and the more we give them access to and permission to use and reuse our experiences and our work, the more they can help with it in unexpected ways we cant imagine yet. Therefore, we should default to open whenever we can, to give that serendipity the best chance of occurring. Objectivity is impossible. Traditional researcher/subject roles are social constructs that are just as hackable as anything else. As with all hacking, it is conscious awareness of context and the principle of rst, do no harm that lets us play freely; be bold and sensitive. The world is full of paradoxes and self-contradictions. Why not show that and embrace it? The general RTR procedure stands in contrast to the usual practice of analyzing condential, deidentied datasets behind closed doors. It goes like this: 1. Participants, including the academic(s) usually called researcher(s), engage to generate data (interviews, observations, documents, etc). Any technique or methodology may be used. 1

2. Copyright of the data is explicitly assigned to participants. For instance, interview transcript copyrights are assigned to the interviewees. Contrast this to most research projects, where data copyright is not even a consideration because that data will only be used by a small set of people for a narrowly dened, typically short-term purpose. 3. Participants release a public version of the data in an editable format and under an open license. Participants are usually fully identied and references given whenever possible, because the ability to run down someone elses trail yourself (not necessarily to reproduce it, because each person and situation is dierent, but rather to retrace it) is valued in open community culture, as evidenced by phrases like {{citation needed}} or show me the code. 4. Any technique or methodology may be used for analysis as well, but we work only with the public datasets and make our intermediate analyses and results available online under similarly open licenses, which allows participants and the communities they work with and within to see and contribute to the source code of the research project.

1.2

Context

Open source project communities claim to be technical meritocracies, yet remain largely populated by white men from the developed world, with minority groups of gender, race, and class often reporting feelings of exclusion invisible to those in more privileged groups. Project leaders and minority group members both bear, in dierent ways, the burden of constantly uncovering and compensating for these inequities in a supposedly equitable world. In doing so, they are simultaneously protected, constrained, and aided by the text-based, highly-distributed environments open source projects use for communication and collaboration in open source projects; the ability to see and show information only via deliberately-sent text is both a blessing and a curse. In-person events represent an infrequent but regular departure from that norm, a chance for distributed collaborators to meet each other face-to-face.

1.3

Participants

The academic (traditionally the researcher) in this microproject is me, Mel Chua, http://melchua.com. The non-academic (traditionally the subject) is Sumana Harihareswara, http://harihareswara.net. You can nd many details about our personal and professional lives and our friendship if you look around the web, but heres what we want to highlight. We are leaders of open communities, also called Free and Open Source Software (and content) communities, or FOSS, which Ill explain more in 2.2. Sumana is the manager of Wikimedias Engineering Community group, and thus oversees facilitating collaboration and communication between Wikimedia Foundation and its employees and the larger Wikimedia developer community, as well as facilitating collaboration and communication between the Wikimedia developer community and other Wikimedia communities.[3] In other words, she stewards the software that runs Wikipedia (and many other sites); its a huge job. Sumana is also a nontechnical woman and a rst-generation Indian-American immigrant - a rare combination of privileged and non-privileged. She is in the midst of preparing a keynote speech 2

for a major open source conference; the audience will be open source community members and thus primarily technical white males from the developed world, and has chosen to focus the talk on uncovering the imbalance discussed above, and frame the talk around how her bicultural upbringing has informed the way she interprets and approaches interactions with new project members. Were centering around the preparation of her talk as a performance on this topic for this audience. She and I have been friends for a long time; if you asked us to count, its been a bit over 5 years now since we ran into each other accidentally online, kept talking, visited, and stayed. Hanging out in the same sorts of online spaces, we just kept colliding; weve never formally worked together, but wed like to someday. I am also a rst-generation immigrant from an Asian culture (ChineseFilipino), though I am a technical woman, so we often speak about these sorts of issues amongst us, and read each others blogs, and comment on them, link to them, introduce each other to people.

2
2.1

Document
Document - Procedure

I asked Sumana to take a picture of her apartment; you can see more context and background on the document in the interview transcript portion of this journal.

2.2

Document - Artifact

See picture attached at the end of the document.

2.3

Document - Memo

The reason I wanted to use this photo was to show Sumanas work environment, mostly invisible to the people she works with every day. Nobody knows where she is or what that looks like; to some extent, they dont care. But it does matter and it does shape her actions, so this is it; her apartment living room in Queens, NY, where she sits on the couch and works with people from all over the world nearly every day shes working but not traveling. This photo is taken standing in the kitchen. A bathroom is behind the photographer; the door visible in the middle-right of the photograph is the bedroom. Her spouse (white and male, as she noted in the document she wrote during our observation) usually works from home as well, from the small guest room whose door is visible at the very right edge of the photograph. Thats the entire apartment. Ive been to their apartment before, and stayed there multiple times. The initial reason I asked Sumana for this photograph is that I wanted to capture the mix of inuences on her walls, which is sort of a performance in its own right; its an environment she and her spouse created as their home, but it also stands as a living example of the complexity of her position in the geek world. Notice the banner by the bedroom door with her name on it written both in roman letters and Indian script, an artifact of biculturalism. The rack of science-ction books by the end of the sofa; 3

an artifact of geekhood. The walls are almost tiled with posters and maps and artifacts, complexity on display. But the workspaces are clear; theres only a few books on the wall dividing the kitchen from the living room. This seems too normal for me; Im not doing a good job of stepping outside and pointing out and analyzing strangeness, because this isnt a strange space to me; its a space Im used to also, and a type of space Im used to. I need to show this to other people, to loop back to it, to look at it again alongside fresher eyes to learn more.

3
3.1

Interview
Interview - Procedure

I emailed Sumana the project background and context to frame the interview a bit, and then explained this (also over email): 30 minutes on IRC talking about the background of your keynote what its about, what its for, why you came to this topic, how youve been developing your ideas for it In other words, no set procedure, because I wanted to negotiate the territory and then ll it in together. I contacted Sumana in private chat several minutes before the appointed interview time and asked where she would like to have the conversation - privately here, or in a public channel of her choosing? She chose the #osbridge channel, which is the chatroom for the conference she was preparing her keynote for. Since this was a public channel, others were free to watch and chime in; if they did, the project was explained to them and they were asked whether they wanted their comments included in the data. (This negotiation is also captured in the transcript and discussed in the memo that follows.)h The unedited transcript of the channel during the time of our interview follows. Timestamps are in EST, the timezone both Sumana and I were in during the interview. Sumana (Harihareswara) is sumanah online, and I (Mel Chua) am mchua; mchua and sumanah are the nicks (nicknames, or usernames) we use in similar spaces every day, so we are highly recognizable to others whove seen us before, and easily searchable to those who havent.

3.2

Interview - Artifact

16:48 -!- mchua [mchua@sunjammer.sugarlabs.org] has joined #osbridge 16:48 -!- Topic for #osbridge: Open Source Bridge -http://www.opensourcebridge.org/ -- the conference for open source citizens. 16:48 -!- Topic set by selenamarie [] [Mon Mar 9 20:06:34 2009] 16:48 [Users #osbridge] 16:48 [ akfarrell] [ jhelwig ] [ mchua ] [ selenamarie] 4

16:48 [ an0maly ] [ jimmythehorn] [ philips ] [ sumanah ] 16:48 [ basic ] [ kcomandich ] [ reidab ] [ turoczy ] 16:48 [ christiek] [ keturn ] [ russell_h] [ wagle ] 16:48 -!- Irssi: #osbridge: Total of 16 nicks [0 ops, 0 halfops, 0 voices, 16 normal] 16:48 -!- Channel #osbridge created Fri Feb 27 14:11:46 2009 16:48 -!- Irssi: Join to #osbridge was synced in 1 secs 16:48 < mchua> Allllll righty. 16:48 < sumanah> hope you dont mind, but Mel Chua is helping me prep my keynote, and I figured theres no good reason to do it in private 16:49 < sumanah> as long as yall dont mind me blabbing here for about 45 min 16:49 < mchua> Yall should know (and Ill talk about this in a moment) that this transcript is going to be made public, analyzed, etc. 16:49 < mchua> BUT sumana will have the transcript and we *can* take anything you say out of it, and will if you request such. 16:49 < sumanah> (This is usually a pretty quiet channel right now) 16:49 * mchua nods 16:49 < sumanah> (I mean, when there isnt a specific meeting & the con is not on) 16:49 < mchua> So, as background for the channel (and Sumana, and my research group): Im taking a research methods class. 16:50 < mchua> Weve got to do an interview, an observation, and a document analysis around the same topic. 16:50 < mchua> And Sumanas OSB keynote seemed like a good one. :) 16:50 < mchua> So the observation = writing the keynote 16:50 < mchua> document analysis = Sumana, I was thinking a photograph of your normal work environment would be interesting 16:51 < mchua> since people usually never see you there -- youre on the intarwebz, youre at conferences, but youre usually in a totally different type of place. 16:51 < mchua> And then interview = talking with Sumana. 16:51 < sumanah> Hmm! ok 16:51 < mchua> But we can negotiate all this, Im just laying down the strawmen Ive got. 16:51 < mchua> So Im going to blab for a moment and get obligatories out of the way. 16:51 -!- tantek [~tantek@m9d0536d0.tmodns.net] has joined #osbridge 16:51 < mchua> sumanah: I think weve talked a bit about radically transparent research before, http://radicallytransparentresearch.org. 16:51 < mchua> Basically, youll get copyright for the transcript, you can edit and release any version you like under any license you like (CC-BY-SA or whatever you prefer), and Ill do my analysis on that data alone. 16:52 * sumanah takes photo of couch 16:52 < mchua> Now, since this is for a class project and class ends next Thursday, Im going to start analyzing the data *before* you release it so I can turn stuff in, but that analysis is going to go *poof* in 2 weeks and Ill re-do 5

on the public version if you push a public version. 16:52 < mchua> so thats a little different. 16:52 < mchua> But basically, I thought itd be a shame to lock this data up behind walled doors if its something you end up wanting to share. 16:52 < mchua> Does this make sense? And if it does, does that sound good to you? (And if it doesnt, we should stop and clarify that first.) 16:52 * mchua learns The Ways of the IRB 16:52 < sumanah> I think this all makes sense 16:53 < sumanah> it seems very very likely that any version that I OK for release will be bitwise identical to the transcript 16:53 * mchua nods 16:53 < mchua> yeah, i thought so. :) 16:54 < mchua> Ok! So, Sumana -- youll have to be a bit patient with me here... were taking a very emergent approach to this instead of "I ask questions, you give answers." 16:54 < sumanah> :) 16:54 < sumanah> ok 16:54 < mchua> This is going to be way more a co-creation thing than "You have Knowledge, and I shall Pull it Out of Your Head." 16:54 < sumanah> collaboration! 16:54 < mchua> (There is no way Im going to be an objective researcher with untainted data on this topic, so lets just chuck that out the window.) 16:55 < mchua> So the thing Id like to look at is, specifically, the design of your performance at OSB -- if the "performance" framing makes sense. 16:55 < sumanah> Sure. 16:55 < mchua> Youre a FOSS community leader that belongs to a lot of demographic groups that are historically minorities in the FOSS world. 16:56 < sumanah> Yeah, its a public performance. 16:56 < sumanah> Yup! 16:56 < mchua> So theres an interesting thing of privilege, and the different viewpointes you have when you *dont* have certain types of privilege. 16:56 < mchua> And usually you collaborate with folks youll see at OSB, and many people like them, online. 16:56 < mchua> But here you are, preparing in a few weeks to give a keynote to them face to face, on the topic of... 16:56 < mchua> ...did you have a title? I have scribbles on what I *think* your talk is on, but Id rather have it come from you. 16:57 < sumanah> The catchy phrase for it is "Be Bold" 16:57 < mchua> Ooo. And is there a subtitle or abstract for that? 16:57 < sumanah> no, not yet 16:57 < sumanah> Im quite behind on my prep 16:57 < sumanah> I shall make one up: 16:58 < sumanah> I have various fun or chilling anecdotes I will string together to help the audience see from the perspective of someone who doesnt feel self-efficacy. 16:59 < mchua> and iirc youll be drawing a lot from your experiences as a a 6

non-<foo>-typical FOSS community member -- someone whos bicultural, a woman, nontechnical... things that sometimes correlate with self-efficacy? 16:59 < sumanah> Along the way I hope to touch lightly on the third rail that is Indian participation in tech and FOSS and GSoC. 16:59 * mchua nods 16:59 < sumanah> Things that inversely correlate with self-efficacy, yes. 17:00 < sumanah> This is a strange experience for me because Im used to stand-up and to more topic-focused performances. 17:00 < mchua> Are you thinking the talk will be focused more around the bicultural/Indian correlation and mention the others (gender, class, etc...) or more evenly across all of them? 17:00 < mchua> Because you mentioned Indian participation specifically. 17:00 < sumanah> Stand-up is about amusing the audience and I only need a light throughline; more conventional presentations already start with a topic and certain useful constraints. 17:00 * mchua nods 17:01 < sumanah> I think (right now) that Im going to emphasize the Indian stuff more, partly because I think we dont talk about it as much as we talk about the women stuff 17:01 * mchua nods. 17:01 < mchua> That makes sense. 17:02 < sumanah> And I think the OSB crowd includes lots of people who have thought about women stuff 17:02 < sumanah> but theres this weird nativism around talking about outsourced programmers.... 17:03 < mchua> most OSB attendees are American? Not much overseas attendance? 17:03 < mchua> also, you mentioned this was different from the kinds of talks (stand-up, conventional topic-focused) youve given before... what sort of talk is this, then? If its not either of those two? 17:03 < sumanah> In my experience, most OSB attendees are from North America, with North American accents, and white. 17:04 < sumanah> There are some participants from overseas but its a quite small minority. 17:04 * mchua nods. 17:04 < mchua> coming from overseas specifically for the conference, or immigrants who now live in NA? 17:04 < sumanah> I dont know, sorry. 17:04 < mchua> No worries, just curious. :) 17:04 < sumanah> The organizers might, if you want me to ping them..... 17:05 < mchua> Nah, dont worry about it now, but we can poke at it later if we want to. :) 17:05 < sumanah> The difference I see between this and the other two kinds of talks: I have been given a pretty broad canvas, and I aim to make it an entertaining and useful experience 17:05 < mchua> I suspect therell be tons of stuff to analyze without that datapoint still. :) 7

17:05 < sumanah> so, more expectations and fewer constraints than in either of the other forms 17:05 < sumanah> I aim for it to take about 30 minutes 17:06 < sumanah> so in that its a similar length to stand-up and to other talks Ive given 17:07 < sumanah> Im not exactly BLOCKED regarding writing this; I think I just have to work on 1 piece at a time 17:07 < sumanah> vague outline would be: 17:07 < sumanah> 1) a story or 3 from my childhood, funny YET TELLING, DUN DUN DUN 17:08 < sumanah> 2) pulling out some of the philosophical and psychological stuff from there and linking it to stuff Indians and women often get told, and the structures in those families and institutions 17:08 < sumanah> 3) stories from my pals in India 17:08 < sumanah> (like, the kids who apply for GSoC, and the mistakes they make and how telling they are) 17:10 < sumanah> (and lessons from the Indian Education Program that Wikimedia ran -- it was a failure for various reasons involving logistics and culture) 17:10 < mchua> Oo, I didnt even know you had one of those. Fascinating. 17:10 < sumanah> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:India_Education_Program/Analysis/WMF_interviews 17:11 < mchua> Awesome. Thanks! 17:11 < mchua> (please do keep going) 17:11 < sumanah> and then, I think, inspiring stories 17:11 < sumanah> 4) 17:12 < sumanah> like my origin story in FLOSS, and yours, and my friend Yuvis, and Asheeshs 17:13 < sumanah> and the origin stories of South Asians who contribute to Wikimedia projects (our storytellers have some of those) 17:13 < mchua> Well, Im not Indian, but ok. :) 17:13 < sumanah> Right. You get my point. 17:13 * mchua nods. 17:13 < mchua> so: (1) Sumana case study, (2) step back from case study to reveal generalized structures of suck, (3) look, it happens to other people too, (4) but sometimes things go right! 17:13 < sumanah> And then, 5) So heres what we have to do. 17:14 < sumanah> That sounds like a reasonable summation. 17:14 < mchua> Nice. 17:14 < mchua> this is *incredibly* helpful (and I can see a bunch of interesting things emerging from it already). 17:14 < sumanah> Sounds almost boring to me, its so simple 17:14 < sumanah> but I figure that what is boring to me, in a simple structure, might be effective for others. 17:14 < sumanah> The trick is that I want to make them care 17:15 < sumanah> I want them to actually think its a shame there arent more of me in FLOSS 8

17:15 < mchua> These are experiences that are everyday to you, but not to them (well, most of them). So I would think your premise is likely to hold. 17:15 < sumanah> so I figure that being funny & heartwrenching will help 17:15 * mchua grins. 17:16 < mchua> Im just bursting with questions (and ideas, and commentary, and curiosity, and...) but -- lets see. How to make this maximally helpful for us both? 17:16 < mchua> (mind if I tell you what I have in mind for the rest of the process, and then you can tweak it to be as useful to Sumana-keynote-generation as possible?) 17:16 < sumanah> OK! 17:17 < christiek> yay people using the channel!! 17:17 < sumanah> hi christiek! 17:17 < christiek> sumanah hello! 17:17 < mchua> hullo christiek! 17:17 < mchua> if you scrollback about 30m therell be an explanation as to what the heck is going on. :) 17:17 < sumanah> christiek: (also you as con organizer get to know mchua, who is ten kinds of awesome) 17:17 < mchua> sumanah: So, Id like to get a picture of your work environment at some point (can send details, but this is easy to do later; stand in kitchen doorway, snapshot). Thatll be the document. 17:17 < mchua> sumanah: I think some cool things from that document analysis might be interesting for your keynote. Maybe, dunno. You have tons of cross-cultural stuff on your wall -- Indian stuff, sci-fi stuff, etc. 17:18 < sumanah> mchua: I did take that photo 17:18 < sumanah> might need multiphoto 17:18 < sumanah> you want it now? 17:18 < mchua> christiek: were doing a little research project around sumanahs keynote for a homework assignment of mine 17:18 < mchua> christiek: and figured that, hey, as long as were doing this, lets make it an open content project too so its useful to more people than... my professor 17:18 < mchua> sumanah: sure, whenever! 17:18 < mchua> sumanah: so that takes care of document, which is deliverable 1/3 for me 17:19 < mchua> sumanah: And for the observation, Id like to watch your keynote-prep process, however you think is easiest to capture. I dont know what sort of talk notes you take, or if youre planning on slides, or whatnot... but I thought that watching you draft notes/bulletpoints/citations/prose/whatever you normally draft, on etherpad might be an option. Thoughts? 17:19 < christiek> yeah, very cool 17:19 < christiek> I feel as if Ive met mchua, but Im not 100% sure. 17:19 < mchua> christiek: Ive always been sad to not make it to OSB btw. Its on my list of FOSS confs I really want to go to, but Im booked with research this summer. 9

17:19 < sumanah> mchua: so what I ordinarily do for a talk is a mix of bullet points in plaintext, scribbling on paper, sometimes simple slide decks 17:19 < mchua> christiek: https://www.google.com/search?q=mel+chua is pretty accurate 17:20 < christiek> mchua I understand. 17:20 < sumanah> mchua: I mean, to prep for a talk 17:20 < mchua> sumanah: ok. hrm. is there something I can do to observe that process? (or whatever part of it happens before, um, thursday morning?) 17:20 < sumanah> I have doubts that my work environment will be interesting..... 17:20 < mchua> sumanah: whats normal to you is interesting to lots of other people ;) 17:20 < sumanah> ha!! 17:21 < mchua> sumanah: i was going to offer to collaboratively pitch in on etherpad if you want to do things that way 17:21 < mchua> sumanah: were *totally* bluring the researcher-subject boundaries anyway, and... dunno, there may be parts I can help with 17:21 < sumanah> mchua: I can work on my keynote a little bit in the next ... 36 hours, while I am on the plane to Berlin and during my first day in Berlin, but not more than 30 or 60 min worth probably 17:21 -!- tantek [~tantek@m9d0536d0.tmodns.net] has quit [Quit: tantek] 17:21 < mchua> thats perfect, I cant analyze more than 30-60m of data anyhow 17:21 < mchua> my head would explode 17:21 < sumanah> hee! 17:21 < mchua> and my research group would kill me for bringing in 500 pages of writing 17:21 < mchua> (ok, not that much, but.) 17:22 < sumanah> ok, if you want to set up a git repo or an Etherpad or the like then Ill start working in that 17:22 < sumanah> working offline on the plane and then dumping stuff in -- git would be slightly better for this since then you can watch my commit history accumulate 17:22 < mchua> Hrm 17:22 < mchua> I was hoping for etherpad b/c thats more finegrained 17:22 < sumanah> I can just start a git project on my own and then let you clone it, actually 17:22 < sumanah> ah, true 17:22 < mchua> but if youre gonna be on a plane then git makes sense 17:22 < sumanah> yeah 17:23 < mchua> your call; this is your keynote first, my research project Nth 17:23 < sumanah> I shall do git 17:23 < sumanah> at least while on the plane 17:23 < mchua> Perfect. 17:23 < sumanah> and otherwise offline 17:23 * mchua nods 17:24 < sumanah> whats my deadline for sending you what Ive done so far? Ill try to mail it to you every once in a while.... 10

17:24 < mchua> sumanah: oh, if youre pushing to github theres no need to mail 17:24 < mchua> as fine-granularity as possible is awesome 17:24 < sumanah> oh yeah, I could use GitHub 17:24 < mchua> (like, every... sentence might be ridiculous, but -- as close to that as possible) 17:24 < mchua> (like "oh damn, maybe if I flip the sentence around so the dramatic pause is <here> there will be more pathos") 17:25 < mchua> Ill be grabbing and freezing whatever state this is in at 7am EST on Thursday morning. 17:25 < sumanah> ok. 17:25 < mchua> So whatever you push before then, Ill get. 17:25 < mchua> And whatever you push afterwards, Ill still analyze, but maybe not turn in. :) 17:26 < mchua> Ok, so weve got fine-grained git for an observation. 17:26 * sumanah needs to figure out .... thing 17:26 < sumanah> Sorry 17:26 < mchua> (...wow, I wonder how my class is going to handle that...) 17:26 < sumanah> Im like "how do you work, GH?" 17:26 * mchua grins 17:26 < mchua> seriously, if you find half an hour and pop an etherpad that might be easier 17:27 < mchua> http://openetherpad.org/sumana-osb-2012-keynote 17:27 < mchua> Ill look at this *and* git and grab whichever seems to have more stuff at 7am thurs morning 17:27 < sumanah> mrrrrh, but then you cannot capture what I do on the plane 17:27 < mchua> but use whichever... 17:27 < mchua> ...true, but I only need about 30m of continuous observation data. 17:27 < sumanah> oh I see! 17:27 < sumanah> hmmm 17:27 < mchua> So if you work on keynote for 30m before entering plane, Im set for class. 17:28 < mchua> and if you then switch to github, I *will* analyze that for you afterwards. 17:28 < mchua> Ill just not worry about doing that analysis for class. :) 17:28 < sumanah> I use Git to keep my personal coding-noodling-around in all the time, its just the first time Ive ever tried to actually do the git repo thing on GH 17:28 < sumanah> oh, ok 17:28 < sumanah> My keynote work may be Wed night, in Berlin, not before plane but after 17:28 < sumanah> but I shall! 17:28 * mchua nods 17:28 < mchua> thanks. :) 17:29 < mchua> I think that will take care of my "Mel needs to pass this class" data 11

17:29 < mchua> and then everything else is about Being Helpful To Sumana data 17:29 < mchua> If our schedules line up over the weekend or early next week, Id like to do a debrief -- quick, no more than 40 minutes (wed aim for 30) after the etherpad (or whatever) -- in case interesting things popped up during the observation that we want to note. 17:29 < sumanah> Weekend: not happening (hackathon) 17:29 < sumanah> Tuesday next week: possible 17:29 < sumanah> late Monday next week: also maybe possible 17:29 < mchua> But we dont *have* to do that class-wise b/c I think I can use this chat just now for the interview (its mostly that it might give us even more interesting things to dig around with). 17:30 < sumanah> ok! 17:30 < sumanah> I should email you work env photos 17:30 < mchua> I suspect well end up talking about this after the class if nothing else just because -- and also b/c I think of this also as getting the stuff we do out to a different audience (academia) 17:30 < sumanah> ok 17:30 < mchua> but thats way less important than your sanity/sleep 17:31 < mchua> and I dont need it for homework. 17:31 < mchua> just extra bonus awesome. 17:31 < mchua> so, yeah. I know I said wed wrap this at 17:45 17:31 < mchua> and want to make sure we do that, and let you go early, b/c youre... freakin packed. good god. 17:31 < mchua> your travel schedule makes *me* tired, and that says a lot. 17:31 < sumanah> HAHAHA 17:31 < sumanah> ok! thanks for pushing me into actually making an outline, which helps me feel less anxious 17:32 * mchua grins 17:32 < sumanah> I was thinking that I needed something INNOVATIVE AND NEW AND EXCITING to say 17:32 < mchua> halpful mel is halpful 17:32 < mchua> and seriously, if theres *anything* I can do to help, if you want stats tracked down or whatnot, let me know. 17:32 < sumanah> but that is not what a keynote is for; the subject should be nearly boring *to the speaker* and new to the audience 17:32 < mchua> This is keynote OF AWESOME. and you are the right person to do it. So. I am eager. 17:32 < mchua> Amen. 17:33 < mchua> So, youll email me work env pictures, and Ill watch github *and* etherpad before Thursday morning, and then well see what else we do? 17:33 < sumanah> yes! 17:33 < mchua> (That should take care of my class stuff -- getting to talk on Tues is a bonus) 17:33 < sumanah> thanks 17:33 < mchua> and then whatever I can do to help you out after that, since youre doing me a huge favor by letting me watch your process here. 12

17:33 * mchua nods. 17:33 < sumanah> Thank you1 17:34 < sumanah> ! 17:34 * sumanah does camera things 17:34 < mchua> hooyah. okay -- any last thoughts, questions, whatnot? Do you feel like were on the same page (or at least reading sheet music for different instruments but for the same symphony, or something?) 17:34 < mchua> (thank you) 17:34 < sumanah> Enough, yeah 17:35 < mchua> Cool-o. 17:35 < mchua> ah, I see etherpad already :) 17:36 * mchua pokes a bit 17:36 < mchua> in that case, I think we are... formally done here. 17:36 < mchua> You know how to find me if you have qs or whatnot.) 17:36 < mchua> ack, random parenthesis! ( 17:38 < sumanah> mchua: hee 17:38 < sumanah> mchua: uploading pics now so you can grab them 17:38 * mchua bounces happily 17:39 < mchua> christiek: btw, since you have a little bit of stuff in this transcript -- do you want us to leave you in it, or take you out? 17:39 < mchua> christiek: itll end up in an open-licensed (CC-something-or-other) document on teh intarwebz 17:39 < mchua> christiek: which Ill be analyzing for my qualitative research methods class as well 17:40 < mchua> sumanah: (i think were done here though. thank you! Ill hang around for a bit to make sure everythings ok but figure this is #endmeeting) 17:40 < christiek> I dont have a preference either way. 17:40 < sumanah> mchua: http://www.panix.com/~sumanah/pix/ grab the first 3 and then Ill take em down? 17:40 < christiek> Its not really relevant, so feel free to exclude me. 17:41 < sumanah> mchua: arggh regex problem, ignore 17:41 < mchua> sumanah: uhhhh... ok, holla when there are pics I should grab 17:41 < sumanah> ok, mchua , now 17:42 < sumanah> now the first 3 are the right ones 17:42 < sumanah> blrgh 17:42 < mchua> christiek: actually, Id rather include you if youre ok with that (that is, all other things being equal, Id like to show the "look, channel is open space and other people are in it and sometimes chime in!" dynamic) 17:42 < mchua> sumanah: grabbing 17:42 < sumanah> scping things right off a device evidently sometimes you get weird lag in the terminal? 17:43 < christiek> mchua yes, thats fine as well 17:43 < mchua> christiek: ok, thanks! 17:43 < mchua> Dear University Internet: Please Be Faster 17:43 * mchua should have used wget 17:44 < sumanah> we all say that 13

17:44 < sumanah> ok, see you later! 17:44 -!- sumanah [~sumanah@mediawiki/sumanah] has left #osbridge ["Leaving"] 17:47 * mchua grabs transcript up to this point

3.3

Interview - Memo

The transcript begins with some automatic computer text describing the channel (chatroom) and listing the other people logged into it. Its common for open source community members to choose nicks (handles, usernames) very close to their real names. Its also common to lurk channels when youre idle; very few of the people logged into a channel are actually actively watching and listening at any given moment. It serves the same sort of purpose as a lounge. At 16:48, Sumana kicks o an explanation to the channel, and we both explain (out loud, to silence) that well be talking in here. This serves as a signal ag to others: this thing is happening, heres why, and you can interrupt with questions; if you dont want to participate, continue to stay quiet. I explain the project informally, starting the process of actively shaping the interview together, explicitly talking about co-creation and rejecting the notion of objectivity at 16:54. At 16:51, another user (tantek) join the channel. We ignore this; its common behavior, similar to people moving in and out of a physical coeeshop or public space or lounge. Around 16:57, you can see a bit of the mode Sumana is in. Witty, short sentences that remind me slightly of her stand-up comedy. Shes performing here too, and so am I; we both know this dialogue is in a public and recorded space, though this sort of performance isnt unusual to either of us. Its where we spend a large part of the career portions of our lives, and the space is also simultaneously social. We throw out terms knowing that they are either common or googlable; FOSS (Free and Open Source Software), GSoC (Google Summer of Code, an internship program where university students work on FOSS projects for a summer), self-ecacy (a non-technical term from the world of psychology, but note how Sumana doesnt stop to explain it and I dont follow up with an explanation to the chatroom either; this conversation may be public, but its for the two of us). Self-ecacy is the only specic psychological term she uses, though: when I ask what topics shell be focusing on, she uses the terms Indian stu and women stu to refer to cross-cultural and gender dierence issues broadly. Having seen Sumana talk and write about these issues before, I know thats not for lack of detailed thought, analysis, or more precise vocabulary on these topics, but this feels like part of the performance to me; stu downplays it, broadens it and fuzzies it out, keeps us (non-white women in a world largely comprised of white men) from stepping too far outside the comfort boundaries of these communities were in. At 17:03, you can see one of the aordances that text chat gives us, which is multiply-threaded conversations. I can ask multiple questions at once and she can answer them at will; this isnt confusing in our online world, its fairly common practice. 17:17 is interesting; christiek (one of the organizers of the conference Sumana is writing her keynote for) pops in and waves, and we wave back, and I refer to scrollback to explain what we are doing. This was unexpected, but also No Big Deal. Casual greeting/introduction/explanation conversations with christiek (I introduce myself by sending her a google search result for my name, inviting her to 14

grab the context that makes sense to her) continue to interweave while Sumana and I discuss the capture of the document for this project (a photo of her workplace). You can tell which conversation is which because we begin prexing messages with the nick of the person theyre directed to, in contrast to earlier when Sumana and I didnt need to do that since we were the only people talking. Since our conversation is still the default topic in the channel at the moment, you can see (by the fade-out of prepended nicks in messages) when Christie fades back and we turn back fully to the chat between us. We give these signals online because we dont have body language or anything other than what we expressly indicate in text; in physical space, this would be the equivalent of turning towards Christie, chatting with her, then turning back towards each other. Similarly, we include a lot of things that would be obvious in physical space: grins, pauses, conversational llers like oh I see! or hmmm. It colloquializes things, keeps the ow going, keeps the beat going. A lot of our conversation is spent negotiating the generation of the other artifacts. A lot of hyperlinks are thrown into the conversation for further context. Its not an obligation to look at them; its a thread thats an option to climb through if you wish, but there wouldnt be consequences if you didnt. Around 17:29, I position myself on the same side of the table as Sumana by explicitly stepping outside of academia for a moment and almost putting the class assignment part of this project on a separate table on the side, way over there. At 17:30, I actually refer to the stu we do (stu that doesnt need to be elaborated upon, because the point is that we do the same stu) going out to a dierent audience of academics, even if Im also an academic. Im here on this side with you, Im telling her, the same way she and I constantly signal were here on this side with you to the communities we work with. At 17:31, Sumana thanks me for pushing her into making an outline; my research project has changed the course of her work. Actually, my research project is now merged somewhat with her work. Im not excising her temporarily out of her project and into mine, Im trying to walk into the space shes already doing her project in (a space Im used to) and helping her by doing my work in her space and shaping it that way. This is a common way of collaborating in the open world; you steer the world by working with and within someone elses work like this in real time, and stigmergic collaboration happens asynchronously. My research project is Just Another Thing that happens to collide with her keynote project, but many types of things collide with pretty much all projects in this world. I nd myself seeing my position in this project as an ambassador from the open to the academic worlds, and wondering how to explain our stu to my groupmates in class on Thursday morning.

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4.1

Observation
Observation - Procedure

I explained to Sumana that I wanted to do my observation with...

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30-60 minutes collaboratively tinkering on your keynote in etherpad, if thats a good way to see & work with the text. Ill watch as you write whatever you have in progress (seriously, at any stage, including I havent yet started or I dont write out full speeches, I take notes and they look like this) and help in places if you want it and well ask each other questions in the chat and such... basically, help hack on keynote the same way wed do it if I wasnt in a research class, Ill just be logging data is the only dierence. The rest of it was negotiated in the interview, which you can read about in the interview portion of this document.

4.2

Observation - Artifact

Heres a snapshot of the paper after Sumanas sprint; if you want to see a playback of the observation, go to http://openetherpad.org/ep/pad/view/sumana-osb-2012-keynote/latest and hit the Play button at the top right of the page. OSB Keynote 2012: Sumana Harihareswara - "Be Bold" 1) a story or 3 from my childhood, funny YET TELLING, DUN DUN DUN ("sumana case study") STORIES TO TELL: * My dad telling me, "dont do anything bold" * My middle school diploma shenanigan involving the middle letter Q, and how my parents freaked out when they saw the mislabeled diploma * When they wanted me to learn to program, they had an uncle teach me PowerBuilder * Lots of "dont hang around with boys alone" (but since I had nearly no female friends, this resulted in a pretty paltry social life) * My mom telling me: dont do what you love (such as writing), because youll get sick of it. Do something else, and then have your hobby! Like music. * When my parents came to California, they had choices among cities to live in, and chose the most boring city so as to reduce the number of distant relatives who would constantly call them from the airport and ask to be put up * Nearly every Indian-American I knew was a doctor or engineer; people working in lower-class professions, I assumed, were North Indians or Pakistanis. * My parents wanted me to be a doctor or engineer, or possibly a lawyer, preferably going into a government job. My older sister double-majored in psychology, married an Indian, and works for the US government. I rebelled by going to the top public school in the country (UC Berkeley) and majoring in political science BUT THEN NOT IMMEDIATELY DOING GRAD WORK, doing a summer abroad in Russia instead of India like my sister, dating (and eventually marrying) a white guy. * My origin story in FLOSS -- hanging out with folks in college (so, start the clock at 1998), reading Slashdot, hanging out with nerds, a little dabbling with Miro testing in 2007, AltLaw work in 2008-2009, GNOME stuff starting in 2009 -16

womens issue of GNOME Journal. Took 11 years to stick Maybe http://geekfeminism.org/2011/07/11/google-gossip-gamification/ 2) pulling out some of the philosophical and psychological stuff from there and linking it to stuff Indians and women often get told, and the structures in those families and institutions ("step back from case study to reveal generalized structures of suck") You cannot say no to your family. Your job is to serve. Grownups decide when to risk (such as immigrating), and children who benefit from that risk should leave well enough alone and choose stable paths with guaranteed jobs. Risk aversion (fix later) For a young girl, hanging out socially with boys will only lead to trouble. Family will stick around and friends wont. 3) stories from my pals in India ("look, it happens to other people too") (like, the kids who apply for GSoC, and the mistakes they make and how telling they are) (and lessons from the Indian Education Program that Wikimedia ran -- it was a failure for various reasons involving logistics and culture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:India_Education_Program/Analysis/WMF_interviews Nischay, a GSoC student from India, (will disguise his name in the final presentation) has gotten into open source! but thinks the only way to get a job is via placements. Even proof that its not only elicits "my parents expect me to do placements; how else can I get married?" Yuvi not only got into FLOSS, he did GSoC, then took a leave of absence from college to work at a startup, then the Wikimedia Foundation. And people still dont Get his deviation.... I work for Wikipedia, and my mom is now ok with that being a longterm thing because "everyones heard of it" and because they treat me well (and only secondarily because of its mission) GSoC applicants from India commonly ask what they need to do next <sumanah> 4) inspiring stories ("but sometimes things go right!") like my origin story in FLOSS, and yours, and my friend Yuvis, and Asheeshs <sumanah> and the origin stories of South Asians who contribute to Wikimedia projects (our storytellers have some of those) Yuvi not only got into FLOSS, he did GSoC, then took a leave of absence from college to work at a startup, then the Wikimedia Foundation. (Asheesh - need to interview) (check with the storytelling archives) 5) So heres what we have to do. Be aware of these issues among newbs Meet people halfway, with Indian/womens stuff (like that issue of GNOME Journal, FOSS.in) Subsidize travel ESPECIALLY for people abroad. When you do outreach to Indians, help them fight their parents. Names like Google and Wikipedia will help. 17

4.3

Observation - Memo

Etherpad is a collaborative text editor thats browser-based; multiple people can write in one document at the same time, and so you can watch other people write in real-time as they type. Sumana and I are both well-versed in using this for collaboration. I realize that this is blurring the line between observation and document analysis. Online, a lot of what you can observe is documents, or at least text. More blurring: this observation was part synchronous, part asynchronous. It started synchronously, but she and I had to take breaks at dierent times, so sometimes she was writing when I wasnt actively at my computer, and I was playing back her activity later. However, the data I got from watching that was exactly the same as what I would have gotten watching live and remotely. Sumana was sitting in Berlin, having own there shortly after our interview for an event for the community she works with, for, on, and within (Wikimedia/Mediawiki). Sitting in Indiana, I didnt have a lot of context, and I knew I was missing a lot; what did she look like as she sat in the hotel? What sort of hotel was it? What was on the walls, what was the background noise, what was going on? She knew that too, even without us discussing it; were both well-versed on how to give the small cues that allow people to gather context as they watch us in the limited-bandwidth of the internet. In the chatroom of the etherpad, which can be viewed at http://openetherpad.org/sumana-osb-2012-keynote, Sumana does exactly that. She notes when she stops to talk with people, throws in links to music that shes listening to. I have no reason to doubt that these things are true. I also have no reason to believe they represent any sort of unusual mental strain; this is what you do when youre online, to give people a sense of presence and connectedness and being-there-with-you, since they are so often not. I nd myself watching that sidechannel more than the actual document; the document generation itself seems straightforward to me. She writes linearly, in order, with no great resectioning of data, no giant deletes. This is probably because we started with an outline there, which was an outline that she improvised during the conversation of our interview; there wasnt much more to negotiate, just a structure to ll in. This, too, is a public performance. There is irony in the writing tone, all caps for emphasized phrases. This is written with the knowledge others might read it, stumble across it, watch it. But its not entirely public; this is a space thats technically public, but socially private because its not promoted. Its like talking in a park; youre in the open, but you have a fairly high certainty that what youre saying wont be broadcast. So Sumana puts in notes like (will disguise his name in the nal presentation) because... she will disguise it in the nal presentation, but if someone reads it in these notes beforehand, the world wont end. Its a small known risk. Its okay, at least for her in that world. (As someone whos now a researcher, I wonder if I should be drawing these ethical lines dierently now.)

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References
[1] Lather, Patti. Paradigm proliferation as a good thing to think with: teaching research in education as a wild profusion. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. 19.1 (2006): 3557. [2] Chua, Mel. Radically Transparent Research. Radically Transparent Research. n.p., 17 April 2012. Web. 30 May 2012. http://radicallytransparentresearch.org [3] Lanphier, Rob. New Engineering Community Group, headed by Sumana Harihareswara. lists.wikimedia.org. Wikimedia Foundation. 25 April 2012. Web. 30 May 2012. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2012-April/060330.html

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