a team effort

by my side1
Originally uploaded by angie cat

I've had two weeks of frenzied activity completing this and that. Luckily, Angie helps me by sticking close by my side at all times when I'm feeling pressured. As the pic suggests, it takes reading, typing and a pussycat to get results.

Last week I attended the 6th Annual CA/MCA symposium in Brisbane. It was interesting to attend a small conference where just methodology people (kind of thing) were presenting. I've been waiting for this conference for a long time i.e. the idea of being able to meet up with lots of other folk employing ethnomethodology. I presented my Click on the Big Red Car materials although these are in their early days yet. Rather ambitiously i have in mind trying to work two papers out of the data, one a CA focused paper, perhaps for a sociological journal. The other paper would be for an early childhood audience and would address young children and computers. It feels good to be writing about the children and computers recordings because it has taken such a time to get the project underway (mind you -nothing like the time needed for my phD -smile). At the same time, i've had a bee-in-my-bonnet about extended sequences in CA work since my phD so writing about that is unfinished business.

I worked on my data analysis from the presentation today and couldn't help but think how much could be said from just a little bit of data collected. Really, the children and computer data could keep me going until retirement. However, I have to bring myself back into CA mode to do that. I say this because i've spent several months working on the transcription literature and really got myself in another headspace. prior to last week's conference i was really thinking that i'd moved too far away from Ca to get back in -kind of doubted if i wanted to. however, the conference last week worked to remind me that the methodology is very powerful, and i just like it, it fits. So, a burst of energy this week in relation to getting back into proper CA analysis of my data.