[Air-l] Unusual request - Meeting around Internet Research 8.0

[Jan Schmidt]

Dear all,

this might be a somewhat unusual mail/request, but I thought I'd give it 
a try:

I'm a PostDoc researcher from Bamberg (Germany), focussing on social 
software / Web 2.0 from the perspective of communication sociology. Most 
of my contributions are in german (having an fairly sized academic 
community which is closed due to the language can be both a curse and a 
blessing.. ;-)), but I have also a couple of english ressources which 
describe my activities compiled on my blog 
(http://www.bamberg-gewinnt.de/wordpress/english-content/). Some of you 
might know me as the co-organizer (with Thomas N. Burg from Austria) of 
the "BlogTalk reloaded" conference in Vienna last fall (of which, by the 
way, the proceedings have now been published; see the above link).

I'm planning to attend the Internet Research 8.0 conference this october 
(actually my first AOIR-conference; I'm really looking forward to it), 
and will make my travel arrangements (i.e. booking a flight) within the 
next weeks. Since Vancouver is quite a distance from Germany, I'm going 
to spend not only the conference week, but some more time in the area.
I was wondering (and that's the point of this mail) if anyone with 
similar research fields would be interested in meeting in the week 
before or after the conference. More precisely, I'm planning to travel 
(by rental car) around the Pacific northwest (British Columbia, 
Washington State, Oregon, maybe even Northern California) for about two 
to three weeks around the conference. I'd be more than happy to arrange 
my trip accordingly to come to your university or organization, either 
for an informal exchange of ideas, or for a guest lecture, or for any 
other cool events that might come to your mind. :)
Based on my research interests, I could (for example) talk about the 
state of Web 2.0 & Social Software in Germany / the german speaking 
countries; about results from my (then finished) current research 
project on online-based networking (which focussed mainly on Blogs and 
Social Networking Sites), or on similar topics (suggestions are of 
course open to modification/specification). This might even lead to 
interesting research initiatives - I find there is a lack of thorough 
internationally comparative studies in this field.

Feel free to contact me (off-list) for any suggestions or questions - 
I'm looking forward to seeing where this request will take me... :-)

Best, Jan

-- 
Dr. Jan Schmidt
Research Centre "New Communication Media"
An der Universität 9 / 501
D - 96049 Bamberg

+49 (951) 863 2213 +49 (177) 520 5199
jan.schmidt at split.uni-bamberg.de
http://www.fonk-bamberg.de/
http://www.bamberg-gewinnt.de/wordpress [including english content]