Elmine is doing something I should blog a long ago – working on the project about passionate professionals:

I know a lot of people that work with so much enthusiasm and passion that they keep on doing it, no matter what. Their work and life seem to blend together and demarcation between private and work life seems not that relevant to them.

This project is about them, passionate professionals, and finding out why they’re such passionate workers. Using video-interviews I want to portray these interesting people that belong to my tribe.

It was fun and scary to be the first one Elmine interviewed for the project, almost a year ago, but was very rewarding too – having an opportunity to reflect on my work and passions with a good listener in front of me.

Elmine posted part the video with my interview, where I tell why I ended up doing a PhD and share things I’ve learnt in the process. I watched is a couple of days ago, making notes – to find out later those were exactly about the things I talked in the quotes Elmine pulled out for the post:

“Doing a PhD was a way to give myself time and space to explore and to work on something for a long term and have time and hours and also choices that would be mine.”

Not sure this is the best reason to go for a PhD :) It was definitely the source of many troubles, but also provided more opportunities for risk-taking – while struggling with becoming confident as a researcher I also knew I could afford being on the fringes as I didn’t plan a traditional academic career. I’m not so sure about not wanting to be an academic now, btw :)))

“In an organization, how do you manage things that you cannot control? How do you create conditions for people to be passionate about work, because this is what brings business benefit, but this is something we cannot tell them or put in a job description?”

The funny thing that I’m still there: asking questions very similar to those that brought me into doing PhD research. Hopefully, I’m a bit further with the answers :)

“If you would ask me if I would do it again [a PhD], I don’t know, but I am who I am today also because I went through the process.”

“Being an academic there are certain rules of the game and part of doing PhD is learning about those rules and either comply or breaking or stretching them. [...] If you work in an organization or business or whatever environment there are rules of the game and unless you’re very happy with the game and very happy about the rules you still have to find your own path given the circumstances.”

Happy to have the lessons. Now transferring to other contexts.

***

Just to make sure you’ve seen it: Elmine also has a series of shorter videos where people from “our tribe” talk about education of their children. Knowing quite a lot about their professional lives I find it interesting to peak into their more private and may be more important choices. Especially given that at the moment making those choices is a burning issue for me :)

• Hard choices: researcher vs. blogger?
• First derivative, knowledge workers and PhD
• Media literacy: from reading to writing and beyond

[This has been in drafts for a while, so don't be surprised with the date :)]

Following PhDs across the globe on Twitter helps to realise that the process and customs for a PhD differ between countries. For example, from what I understand in the US, dissertations are not published; a dissertation might be shared as unpublished version and/or converted into a book to be published. In the Netherlands PhD dissertations are usually published as books. The text is not adapted; instead, it’s formatted nicely and turned into a book with a cover and few extras.

So, my dissertation will be published too. Finishing it to be evaluated by the PhD committee was tough, but it did not feel definite, since I knew I could change a few minor things. I did not realise then that sending it to a printer is much scarier as it is definite: it will go public in that form.

The things that make it difficult are those that I should be comfortable with, given what I blog and I study blogging – passion, imperfections and confessional writing.

***

Historically dissertations in the Netherlands are accompanied by stellingen, propositions that sum up one’s PhD work. I always saw them as an outlet that reflects the author’s values/thinking/reflections in relation to the work done. I anticipated the pleasure of writing stellingen – as a legitimate part of the dissertation that would reflects my passions and my beliefs – and I even wrote the first version of “stellingen-to-be” in 2004.

To my surprise I did not feel like doing it when finishing my dissertation. Given that in Utrecht University, where I defend it, stellingen are not required as a formal part of the dissertation, I decided to go without stellingen.

I guess the main reason behind not writing something, which I view as a personal stance behind an academic work, is that I put all what I wanted to say in the stellingen in the dissertation itself. In that sense, the dissertation title “Passion at work: blogging practices of knowledge workers” reflects not only the content, but also the format of it: my own passions are present throughout the book, in the choices of topics, methods and ways to write about those.

It is scary to get that printed as a book: while being present as an author and confessional writing is normal and even desired in a weblog, this is not the case with most of the academic work. As a reader of confessional academic texts I know how helpful it is to see someone’s far-from-perfect work-in-progress, but it is scary to write such a text myself even if I believe that this is important.

Learning to show imperfections of my own research was a big part of the PhD process. In that respect I just loved the way Penelope Eckert puts it (in a “How I Write” conversation which is part of the series of conversations about writing with academics at Stanford University):

..the purpose of writing is not simply to tie a neat package around what was really frequently a very flawed process, but to actually discuss the flawed part of the process, because people can learn from that and I can learn from that, too.

She explains how it became part of her writing choices:

…one of the things that I am most concerned with in academics, because that’s where I live, is lack of confidence, insecurity. I was plagued by lack of confidence as a student and for years, and I know when my own students are plagued by lack of confidence; and the thing we learn to do in academics is to cover it up and act really cool. And when we do research we get—and when you teach—I remember as an assistant professor learning to act how I knew more than I did. And in research, learning how to make the final product look as if there had been no glitches beforehand, or as if everything had been done perfectly. And all that is doing is contributing to other people’s insecurity, and it doesn’t help mine because I know that I have been covering up.

Having been there myself I find it important to break the tradition and to make sure that I don’t add to other people insecurities by showing a polished version of my research. I try not to cover up in my dissertation, so it has a lots of traces of my passions and imperfections of what I did. But gosh, confessional writing is a scary thing to do, especially since doing it in an academic document is an art by itself (and I’m not sure that I mastered it :).

Well, the good thing is that the dissertation is out of my hands now. I can be scared as I want, but at least nothing could be done about it. And, hopefully, blogging about those fears helps someone else to get over theirs, pretty much as danah boyd‘s posts on sharing her dissertation online helped me to deal with my own.

danah in Taken Out of Context — my PhD dissertation

Knowing that I would share my dissertation publicly, I desperately wanted to create a perfect dissertation. Anyone who has been through this process knows how impossible that is. [...]

There was a huge part of me that wanted to hole up and not share this document with you, for fear of your criticism. This is not a perfect document. Not even close. There are holes in my argument structure, problems with my description, and loads of places where I can’t help but smack my forehead at my simplicity and lack of depth. With all of its imperfections, there is one very important thing about this document: it is done. And by the end of the process, I accepted the age-old PhD mantra: the only good dissertation is a done dissertation.

and in licensing your dissertation under Creative Commons

Part way through my dissertation, I realized that I had never read a dissertation. I was surprised to find that very few people make their dissertations easily available. Why? In some senses, the diss is quite embarrassing. It’s imperfect. You’re sick of it. But there are huge advantages to making it available. At the very least, it allows future students to get a sense of what they should expect. (There was nothing more nerve-calming than realizing that my mentors’ dissertations were totally sloppy at points.)

I will share my dissertation online, very soon. It’s under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 (that’s another story of learning from danah and other PhDs who wrote about their experiences :)

• Archaeology and ethnography in weblog research
• OKLC04: on knowledge work
• Final chapter of my dissertation for a review

We went again to Reboot, with all three of us. Although I really wanted to go, I have a bit mixed feelings after that. Because the people and the topics looked so exciting, but I couldn’t go to listen and to talk as much as I wanted to.

Going with a baby to a conference was a great experience (especially since it was the first one after my maternity leave). Going with 1,5 years old? Not sure. Although there was a kindergarten, Alexander is still too attached to us, so every morning we would stand in front of the schedule to decide who goes to which session and who is there for the babysitting rounds. As a result I missed a few sessions I would love to go, including the one that Robert did on Being free within organizational structures.

The good thing is that we’ve got smarter this year – staying in a hotel with many other conference participants (btw, loved it – Hotel Fox) provided an opportunity to socialise around breakfast and in the evening, after Alexander was asleep. We also took two days to drive there and back with a stopover at a German coast, turning it to a little holiday and making sure that Alexander had some fun after being so patient with lots of adults running around.

Anyway – was nice to catch up with old friends and get to know new people. I’ve got an inspiration topic-wise – those things are slowly sipping through, but would come out eventually in blog posts.

Themes to think about: architecture, structures that limit and create boundaries to play with, reinterpretation, encoding practices into structures, selfish altruism, nodal points… The “free” theme was also a perfect input for my on-going thinking about our need for structures and boundaries that comes together with the need to fight them.

• Plan for 2003: follow your passion
• BlogWalk Seattle: people
• On passion, imperfections, confessional writing and fears (re: dissertation goes to a printer)

Came across today at Torill’s blog:

From the journal Human Communication Research, vol 33, number2, April 2007, ‘Affectionate Writing Reduces Total Cholesterol: Two Randomized Controlled Trials’ by Kory Floyd, Alan C. Mikkelson, Colin Hesse and Perry M. Pauley.

This is also a good reason to write on research topics you care about :)

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/06/25.html#a1917; comments are here.

• In Full Flow: my PhD and more stories about passion at work
• On things that hide behind typical formats of reporting research
• Bloggers as public intellectuals and writing about them in a research report

As I wrote before, one of my difficulties with ‘digital bohemians’ as a focus of this BlogWalk was it’s connotation: the term assumed lack of full-time employment. I can understand from where it comes: many organisations restrict choices in respect of what to do at work and how (when, where, with whom…) to do it. As a result for many people breaking their ties with any type of full-time employment is the way to do their work in a way they want it.

I don’t think it should be like this – that working for an organisation means selling your soul to the devil sacrificing your values and your preferred working style. The only problem I guess is finding those organisations :)

Why I’d prefer to work for an organisation?

Infrastructure that allows me to focus on my core business. I have an experience of do-everything-yourself work in an NGO. It was extremely rewarding: to do what you believe in, to see how it make the world a better place, to be proud that you did everything yourself and to have pretty good pay as well. However, I spent a lot of time doing things (accounting, for example) that I didn’t really wanted to do, but had to as they “came with the job”.

At work I’d like to focus on my core business – things that I not only can do well, but I also love doing. For example, I can program (even did freelance programming during my student’s days), but this is something that I’d rather leave to someone else. Working for an organisation gives me such an opportunity. I don’t have to do accounting anymore, technology infrastructure is just there (sure I can buy hardware, install and update software, and solve most of my own tech troubles, but I prefer not doing it), I have access to on-line libraries and can get articles that I can’t find without figuring out what I might need and negotiating the deals, I can bring my input and shape new projects, but I don’t have to deal with contracts and legal stuff, I can get my post sent, trips booked and post-its bought by someone else.

Office space: people, serendipity and energy. Although I like working at home, there are good reasons for having an office. It’s creates a low threshold opportunity for being with other people (like-minded in some respects, different in others), serendipity of hearing a comment at coffee table that just fits the missing space in the puzzle and energy of working with others.

Of course, you can do the same in a technology-mediated way, but it’s not the same (as Carla said at BlogWalk – reading blogs doesn’t replace coffee-table conversations). Another alternative would be wifi-cafes and coworking spaces, but I guess it will take a while longer to have critical mass of people working there (enough to have unplanned very work-specific) conversation.

Is there a price to pay?

Sure, working for a company sets a lot of boundaries, many of which don’t make me happy (I long for a bit more flexibility, a bit more nature, a bit more fun and struggle with invisible work ). The good point that I can stretch those boundaries – and I prefer working on that (and not on accounting:).

At the end it’s up to following your passions and taking responsibility and risks, regardless of the form of employment. I wrote about crafting one’s workplace to fit personal preferences three years ago and I still believe in it.

Technorati: blogwalk blogwalkeleven blogwalkamsterdam

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/05/28.html#a1899; comments are here.

• BlogWalk: quiet
• BlogWalk 11 – Amsterdam, 18 May, Digital Bohemiens
• Travel plans: US in January – Hawaii/Minneapolis/Chicago

My PhD is a constant struggle with definitions and terms. This time it’s about personal perspective at work.

For me (knowledge) work practices are shaped by at least three different contexts: personal (me as a human being), social (my networks and communities) and organisational (a company I work for).

However, when I start talking about personal there are all kinds of misunderstandings, since it could mean both individual and private and I don’t like both terms in relation to my research:

• Individual means ‘not social’, while I’d like to focus on ‘me’ which has both sides.
• Private (when you talk about it in a work context) is usually perceived as ‘not work-related’, while I’m interested in ‘me’ as a whole (the one who goes to work and then goes home :).

I have stressed many times that I’m interested in knowledge work from personal, actor-centric perspective (it’s just a matter of focus), however this doesn’t mean that I want to exclude social and organizational sides of it. Even more, I’m interested how things in the middle are shaped by the interactions between two (or all three) perspectives.

Of course, the area in the middle is full of problems as well. For example, I was asked recently to separate in my analysis of work practices organizational and personal concerns. With some things it could be done easily: there are things that are imposed on you by the organization (e.g. working hours) and those that come from your being a person with specific preferences (e.g. preferred modes of communication).

However, the most interesting things at work can’t be separated so easily:

• If you do your work faster or better – is it for yourself or for your company?
• If you come up with a good idea – is it to make more money for the business or because it makes you feeling empowered or just fun?
• If you manage to sustain a good relationship with a customer after your product breaks – is it in order not to lose the contract or because you actually like the challenge and can’t stand making people unhappy?

I think in those cases it’s a sliding scale between ‘me’ and ‘my company’, where the specific ratio between those two is defined by many factors (e.g. situational choices or longer-term work-life balance practices of an employee). I don’t see an easy way to describe all instances of balance of organizational vs. personal interests in relation to that scale and, to be fair, given my focus I don’t believe it adds much value. What I’m trying to do instead is to describe the extremes and types of decisions that are made in the middle zone.

But all this thinking doesn’t make my PhD life much easier: I’m still trying to figure out how to talk about personal perspective without getting into ‘individual’ and ‘private’ and how to talk about all those sliding scales between three perspectives that define how work is actually getting done.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2006/11/06.html#a1851; comments are here.

• PhD invasion
• Case Research Methodology course
• OneNote for recording and coding qualitative data (+ more on tagging metaphor for flags)

Ross Mayfield:

Bottom-up phenomena has accelerated in recent years because of social software. A relatively simple decentralized pattern of enabling more connections and groups to form has complex results. These results (for example: open source, the long tail, heterarchical organization, emergent democracy, wikipedia and participatory media) hold great promise. Bottom-up production is driven by social incentives, comes at a lower cost, realizes economies of speed and enhances quality through diverse and greater participation. Despite these benefits, Bottom-up phenomena is perceived as a significant risk because the dynamic of control is uncertain. But every risk has its rewards and can be managed if known.

Where the bottom-up and top-down meet — middlespace — is the realm of policy, metrics, incentives, cooperation and sharing control.

Looking back now I realised what got me into doing my PhD at the first place – fascination with formal/informal interplay in learning… Where the bottom-up and top-down meet. Middlespace. Taking control over your life and leadership as releasing energy of others.

I remember the feeling that got me there, instant knowing that I found something that could keep me focused for four years of PhD and probably longer… I moved beyond looking for synergies between formal and informal learning, but I’m still there, fascinated by playing with forces in a middlespace.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/10/28.html#a1403; comments are here.

• Deadline silence
• Do you want to be a management guru?
• Dissertation approved :)

I’m on a flight back from London and finally I’m able to switch from intensive conversations to thinking and writing.

It was a good trip with a blend of fun and work that I like so much. However I had an underlying flavour of guilt building up. It’s something to do with invisible work as Suw labelled it.

Talking about blogging at last BlogWalk we went into discussion of how “not serious” blogging and especially reading weblogs looks from outside, an attitude I encounter pretty often – “you are probably not that busy if you find time to blog”.

Sure it doesn’t look like work – browsing through a bunch of websites that doesn’t look work-related and writing informal posts. Even when it is an important part of my work – a way to watch trends, to find references, to test my own ideas with a community of experts that you would probably pay to get into – even then it doesn’t look serious for an outsider.

I guess it’s something to do with expectations. For those who have work-life balance work is something you do in the office, sitting on your desk with serious face (even if you are actually checking for movies to go to tonight ;). Or, even better, work is about meetings that hijack you schedule, so you have to run around for the whole day. Even a coffee-table discussion looks good – everyone knows that a bit of socialisation with colleagues helps at work. Somehow all visible activities look more serious and more like work.

Having a work-life balance implies that you don’t bring work home – evenings and weekends are protected and only emergency deadlines can break through. It also means having fun at courses and conferences – a way to get out of usual environment and learn new things without a pressure of deadlines…

So, here I am coming back after 10 days of travelling with that “guilt flavour” that comes not from feeling that I did something wrong, but from thinking that from outside it looks like I had fun instead of working in the office. Feels funny to be guided so much by my imagination of expectations of others, but at the end we are social animals, aren’t we?

I know that most of work I do during travels is invisible. Like this time. Comments on my last paper over dinners that I probably wouldn’t get by email, a day at BlogWalk that left me more exorsted as any day in the office would, 5 days of AOIR with sessions that saved me time sifting through the web in search of people, papers and ideas, meetings with London-based bloggers that gave away secrets of implementing blogs in companies and created ground for future joint work, writing in trains, and, of course, email at all brief moments when I got a connection.

I probably did more this week than I would if I would stay in the office. Being visible at work is a good shield for procrastination that hits me from time to time, while I feel responsible for delivering visible results every time I work in “invisible mode”, at home or on the road. I know that the only way to deviate is to show that you do your job well :)

What strikes me is that I feel guilty, but also this strange paradox that in the era of knowledge work, era of invisibles and intangibles – ideas, trust, reputation – my work is still guided so much by “visibles” – being in the office during work hours, looking busy and doing something perceived as serious…

Discussions during this trip made me realising something that was implicit: my interest in blogging comes not from believing that this technology is better than others, but from sensing that it has a potential of changing working practices and workplaces to accommodate people with passion for work they do. Part of these changes is about learning to appreciate the invisible and to find a good ways to “manage” it. My quest for discovering the knowledge work iceberg is an attempt to make workplaces a bit friendlier to new ways of working, but it’s also very selfish – I want to work in the environment where I don’t feel guilty doing work I’m passionate about in a way that works for me…

Finally, after writing all these I feel peace inside instead of feeling guilty. I’m in a train half way home where I can finally unload my laptop from writing waiting to be posted, so I can think of my next paper, think of connecting the dots of knowledge work theories with my own experiences hoping that it would make work more fun. It means working on Sunday (again :), but ideas are funny creatures – they come to visit without thinking about appropriate time and place and they tend to choose moments when I’m relaxed and receptive – so I don’t feel like respecting work-life balance instead of thinking and writing. Passion for work could be a curse, but I choose to believe it’s a blessing ;)

This post also appears on channel BlogWalk

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/09/26.html#a1359; comments are here.

• Playing with forces in a middlespace
• Knowledge worker paradox
• The first dress

Although I don’t believe that plane hopping is my favourite sport, I do enjoy travelling. I’m pretty happy that I’ve got chances to travel for work-related purposes and I usually try to stay a few more days after work. Like this time.

Meeting of Knowledge Board SIG leaders in Lisbon was a good learning experience. Presentation by Martin Dugage (should be posted online, will link then), talks and sometimes heated discussions about KB moved my understanding of community dynamics to a new level (and the discussion about integrating KB and weblogs is likely to turn into actions :) I’ll probably come back to it later…

Of course I couldn’t miss this opportunity and stayed in Lisbon for a couple of more days. These days were full of thinking about passions and work-life balance…

Some people like drawing a clear line between work and “life”, but not me. I knew since long ago that my work is part of my life and I don’t want to draw lines in between. These days I was thinking how I would like to work.

I’m thinking about weblog discussions while sightseeing with Marting Roell, about spending a few hours in park with Monica Andre talking about implementing blogging in organisations, making notes connecting Emergence with ideas about community dynamics today on the beach and about last week conversations walking around NØrnberg… I love working this way and I wonder why these moments are so rare. Why on a average day I sit in the office even if sun is shining outside, why my working hours break my natural rhythms (my “productive” schedule is different when I’m not bounded by work hours), why I have to manage with eating sandwiches for lunch (hope my Dutch colleagues forgive me :) instead of enjoying food I like…

Don’t get me wrong, I like my work and office is a great space for meeting colleagues and serendipity of coffee talks. I’m just thinking about things what would make me more productive. A bit more flexibility, a bit more nature, a bit more fun… I know that there are organisations that make work fun and flexible to their people, but I wonder why they are so rare and what could be done to turn work into life. I guess one of the biggest obstacles is a myth about work/life balance, implying that work is not life, making us thinking that work should be that way – formal and full of discipline – and preventing thinking about other options…

Related: Personal or professional? by Jay Cross

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/06/06.html#a1229; comments are here.

• Plan for 2003: follow your passion
• Martin Roell
• Blog networking study: publishing vs. interaction

If you want some inspiration read My Life as a Knowledge Worker by Peter Drucker about experiences that taught him how to grow (found via Gurteen Knowledge-Letter).

Just two quotes. The first one is about perfection:

It was at about this same time, and also in Hamburg during my stay as a trainee, that I read a story that conveyed to me what perfection means. It is a story of the greatest sculptor of ancient Greece, Phidias. He was commissioned around 440 b.c. to make the statues that to this day stand on the roof of the Parthenon, in Athens. They are considered among the greatest sculptures of the Western tradition, but when Phidias submitted his bill, the city accountant of Athens refused to pay it. “These statues,” the accountant said, “stand on the roof of the temple, and on the highest hill in Athens. Nobody can see anything but their fronts. Yet you have charged us for sculpting them in the round–that is, for doing their back sides, which nobody can see.”

“You are wrong,” Phidias retorted. “The gods can see them.” I read this, as I remember, shortly after I had listened to Falstaff , and it hit me hard. I have not always lived up to it. I have done many things that I hope the gods will not notice, but I have always known that one has to strive for perfection even if only the gods notice.

The second is about conversation between Peter Drucker’s father and Joseph Schumpeter who were old friends:

By 1949 Schumpeter had become a very different person. In his last year of teaching at Harvard, he was at the peak of his fame. The two old men had a wonderful time together, reminiscing about the old days. Suddenly, my father asked with a chuckle, “Joseph, do you still talk about what you want to be remembered for?” Schumpeter broke out in loud laughter. For Schumpeter was notorious for having said, when he was 30 or so and had published the first two of his great economics books, that what he really wanted to be remembered for was having been “Europe’s greatest lover of beautiful women and Europe’s greatest horseman–and perhaps also the world’s greatest economist.” Schumpeter said, “Yes, this question is still important to me, but I now answer it differently. I want to be remembered as having been the teacher who converted half a dozen brilliant students into first-rate economists.”

He must have seen an amazed look on my father’s face, because he continued, “You know, Adolph, I have now reached the age where I know that being remembered for books and theories is not enough. One does not make a difference unless it is a difference in the lives of people.”

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/05/12.html#a1202; comments are here.

• WBC04: day 1
• KM change management
• Learning instructional design