Home is where the heart is

We finished on Friday. Saturday we did some paper work and saw the city. Then on Sunday we traveled back home. Since everyone was so tired from the week, most people slept. I longed for a conversation, but it's okay, I knew not everyone likes to talk frantically like I do.

The trip as a whole brought up some interesting issues. Some of them I've talked about and some I haven't.
- Crossing the Gender Barrier (when the interviewers don't share gender with the interviewee)
- Profiling (you've noticed a trend in your interviewees and use that trend to pick out new interviewees)
- Fear of Gender (when your interviewee is uncomfortable with a gender and because of that, they won't relax)
- Planning and Adapting (How much planning do we need when heading out into the field and how rigid does one need to be)
- Learning to Communicating without using words (How can you talk to your teammate without being able to say anything)
- Never trust Technology

Crossing the Gender Barrier: I've talked about this one pretty early in the project. An added strain occurs when you've got two interviewers of one gender who are interviewing someone of the other gender. Especially since you know some of the greatest stories this person has may put them in a compromising situation. I know, personally, I bite my tongue when talking to girls. I don't often tell the stories where I did something particularly stupid (not to say I have *shifty eyes*). So how do you deal with this problem? You can address the fact that everything is confidential, but that might have them escape for a moment and remember they're being "interviewed" and not just having a casual conversation. But if they're tense, they're already aware of the situation and can't immerse themselves. It's a tricky problem.

Profiling: This is one I've also discussed (just in the previous post). If you've noticed a trend in all your interviewees, such as they're all Caucasians  do you save time by only asking Caucasians to join you for future interviews or do you try finding that small percentage of non-Caucasians that also fits your profile? When do you sacrifice time for opportunity?

Fear of Gender: This ties into Crossing the Gender Barrier but a bit different. If you're on a team that is mixed gender, and your interviewee is extremely shy towards one of the people on the team. What then? Obviously you hope that your other partner can jump in and get the job done, but the person can no longer relax. In one situation, where my partner (Code Named: Wonder Woman) had made the interviewee quite uncomfortable, I found changing my words to exclude my partner helped a lot; I would say things like, "tell me about it", "I know what you're saying", "I would like to hear more about", etc. A side problem that ties into this one, is picking attire. Wonder Woman is into fashion, and as such dresses to look pretty, but this may make the interviewee feel uncomfortable. Ask most guys and they'll tell you, it's hard to relax when around a pretty girl.

Planning and Adapting: This is quite a pickle, because it ties into timing. How much time do you spend planning your tactics and how much time do you spend practicing them? Sometimes practicing them gives you a great flow, but without planning you might forget some key aspects. This is even more of an issue when   you only have a 4 days to do your work and it is the first time you're doing this work.

Learning to Communicate without using words: I think a good team has enough under-the-table gestures  and can read each others body language well enough that you two should be able to communicate without actually having to turn to each other. This was essential with the dynamic I had with Wonder Woman, because she was the only one I got to work with for two days. However, the problem comes that if you have 4 days to work on a large team, how often do you switch partners to obtain breadth, and how much time do you spend with one partner to obtain depth? What's more important?

And, I must repeat this again because it seems people are forgetting it repeatedly: Never Trust Technology!: We live in a world where technology is involved in almost everything we do. We wake up by alarm clocks, we listen to music to pump ourselves up, we talk on phones and live on our computers and TV's. This is a problem, because technology has no compassion towards us. It doesn't care if our day goes wrong. So make sure you double check all your equipment and that everything is functioning properly. I'm overly paranoid, but since I've become that way I've never had an e-mail that was never sent, a text message undelivered, an assignment not received, and in this case: an interviewed not recorded. I had 4 different places for back ups for each interview. A manageable level of stress and paranoia creates a working final product - never underestimate that.

Well, now I'm home and I can get back to studying for testing and reading chapters for classes. I'll update this blog less frequently now. Just whenever a major thought comes along. When I do update it, I'll put out a message on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Thank you all for reading it and giving me your feedback.
Au revoir à tous
". . . Home is where the heart is / So your real home's in your chest / Everyone's a hero in their own way / Everyone's got villains they must face" - Captain Hammer, from Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Day 3 + 4: When the novel ends

I will combine day 3 and 4 in this blog, but divide them in a way that you can read them in two sittings - if you wish.

Day 3: Difficulties are like a good bowl of fruit salad

I wasn't paired with Batman or Superman today :(

But I think Wonder Woman was a fantastic substitute. Wait, is there any Chinese females on the JLA? Not that I found, but that's okay, Wonder Woman is pretty awesome.

Along with having one of the hardest days (4 consecutive interviews followed by a 30 minute break, then another interview...) we had to try to get spontaneous interviews and also start transcribing material if we had down time. We were in crunch mode, which did bring up an interesting point.

Profiling: Assuming you have a short period of time, you've started asking people for interviews and all the people who have met your criteria for the research carry particular aspects (let's say... blonde hair), do you start profiling? Do you say, I'm only going to ask people with blonde hair? This was very interesting to me. On one side, you are losing out on the potential that a non-blonde fits your criteria; on the other side, you could be wasting time by using the whole pool of potential people - sometimes patterns fit. What do you do?

- - The situation was quite interesting. My partner had recommended that we sit in a cafe and see if we can spot someone that could fit our criteria (born and raised in york). I noticed 3 potential areas: a group of 4 girls, a group of 3 girls and 1 guy, and a Chinese guy sitting alone studying. I suggested that we talk to the Chinese boy, but my partner was confident that the target was not within our criteria. I knew she was right, but it would be great if he wasn't! It would have been good for the project. But, the upside was that there was another table beside him, and I thought that it would great if I was loud enough so the other table could eavesdrop. The sad part was that the target was not in our criteria, but the plus side was that the table beside him did listen in and one of them was within the criteria. So, my partner was right, but if I didn't ask we wouldn't have gotten the other interview. Interesting situation.

At the end of the day, we celebrated the birthday of my old partner (code named Batman). It was fun. Food, drinks (none for me because I don't drink), and music. It was a lot of fun!

Day 4: The very reason teams should be mixed genders

I was paired with Wonder Woman again, and it was perfect for today. I recommend that majority of the time, the teams should have both genders - especially if you have both genders as interviewees for the day.

Our first interviewee, a female, was very formal with me and wouldn't give details for anything. I ended up tapping my partner's leg and she jumped in. All of sudden the interviewee was very relaxed and told great stories. However, whenever I laughed or entered her sights again, she got more tensed and formal. It was interesting.

To top that off, a later male interviewee would not look at my partner. He ended up completely shifting his body towards me, and it looked like he tried his best to block her out of sight. It was interesting.

Anyway, it's past midnight and in this whole trip I think I've slept near 20 hours (that's about 4 hours a day...). Au revoir à tous!

"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, thought." - J.D. Salinger

Team > Work

Sorry there wasn't a post last night and won't be a new one till tonight. Last night was one of our member's birthday, and we all went out. I'm in a rush, so I won't get a new one out till tonight.

Day 2 - Trading Batman for Superman

I swapped partners today. Yesterday, my partner (like I said) was AMAZING! But he needed a little push. He kind of needed to be trusted into it, which we all did, but unlike the rest of us, my previous partner survived and became better for it.

Today's partner was equally amazing, but it was just built into him. He was able to create great questions, approach people quickly, and just knew what he was doing like it was instinct - or built into him.

Anyway, the project.
I had one interview today and it went really well. I think that now I had the experience already in doing a cross-gender interview, it was much easier the second time. Also, the interviewee was just so responsive to the slightest questions.
We did have two interviews cancel on us. Well, one rescheduled, the other was a no-show. That taught me a valuable lesson (provided to me by my prof): either do the interview immediately or make sure you get their instant contact information (ie, if they check their e-mail more than anything else, you want that). New approach gained!
We tried recruiting new interviewees, but that was unsuccessful. The nice part about this is that this didn't discourage either my partner or myself. We were able to keep on trying. After I was done my assignment, I did try going back out into the field to find more people to interview, but it turns out the Centre is not the location to find people born and raised in Yorkshire. It's okay, I'll keep trying. Eventually I'll get someone to interview.
I'm going back to University of York to do a few more interviews. Afterwards I'm planning to visit the CS department and use my school's name as a way in to see some of the profs there and try to get interviews like that - somehow. This isn't a well thought-out plan, but it is a plan nevertheless.

One final word of advice, and in all my years of computer science, this is the best thing I've learned - never, ever trust technology.

Well, I'm super tired, so I'm going to go back to studying then try one more run in the centre for more interviews. Sometimes when you don't have the JLA, you do it alone.

Some new things that I noticed in York:
When they show capacity for the bus they gave different configurations. So for a bus that had a max capacity of 66 people they also said, "seated 38, standees 26, wheelchairs 0 or seated 35, standees 31, wheelchairs 0 or seated 37, standees 23, wheelchairs 1".
They have a money plate on the bus where you put your change - you don't give it to the driver. But I only saw this on the bus.
"point" is an indicator of a location (ie, "beverages point" means "pick-up beverages here"
"First timer's luck" > "Beginners luck"

Au revoir à tous!
"You and I... with what we do... what's at stake... we can't fail. Others don't understand, but even if it's... impossible, we still have to succeed." - Batman

Day 1 - Teaching a child to swim by throwing him in the water

Sometimes the variables are not in your favour...

Our day has gone really well when it comes to the project as a whole. Some of the kinks were worked out a lot quicker than we expected; and building a flow with a random partner was a lot easier than any of us could have fathomed.

However, if you throw a child in water, the first feeling is fear - no doubt. I say this metaphorically. I never learned how to swing, but that doesn't mean I haven't been thrown in the middle of a high risk scenario and have me survive on my own.

Fear is a strong motivator - it drives you to become as close to perfect as one can be.

Okay, enough fluff - details:

We started the day with our morning meetings, which is great in any group. Agile dynamics tend to do this quite a bit. So we were all able to hear about what's going on for the day, plans, and how we have dealt with our parts of the project. The one thing we didn't consider was to glimpse into the future and use that for adjusting plans in the future.

After breakfast, 4 of us went to The University of York where we meet with another linguistics class and we presented our project to them while hearing about their projects. It was amazing to see a few things:
 - Other ideas that are floating in other linguistics communities
 - To see how much we knew, and how much they did
 - To compare the difficulty of assignments between Universities
 - Meet new people

However, my partner and I had our first interview at noon and had to leave before the final presentations. But the variables were not in our favour... My partner was also male, our interviewee was female, which kept some tension for a long period of time; and lulls were especially difficult. Also, we learned not to give your interviewee something to fiddle with (like business cards). I think the gender tension also created short narratives, which is difficult for us because the most casual style of speech is best elicited from narratives. Also, make sure you test all tech out prior to taking it out into the field - I really should have known that.

There were some good points. I felt the best drive for my partner was for him to take lead. I've had a lot of experience with this type of project and these methods (not from work, but from practicing and getting help from people). So I let my partner take over, and he did great! There were lulls - like I said - but it is hard to continually think of questions to ask someone while not taking over as the narrator. Also, the questions need to be engaging and non-offensive. It's hard to think of these questions all the time. What this method did allow was for me to ponder a series of follow up questions for each topic that my partner had hit. Once my partner ran out of questions I was able to ask all the ones I had - the great part was that this then allowed my partner to create his own follow up questions.

Post interview, we were tasked to recruit new people for future interviews. This was easier for my partner than for me. Each person he talked to that met our criteria and was free, booked with him. I was not so lucky. C'est la vie. It was good for him. He went to order a sandwich, and before they were able to make it, he had made one appointment. After the sandwich, and waiting for me to finish, he made another interview! Then he walked into a room of students studying, and got 2 more interviews booked! The man was on fire!

Now I'm in my hotel finishing the last pieces of the day's work. Hopefully things will go well for everyone tomorrow.

Interesting things I've noted here:
On their fire alarm it says, "Fire alarm, call point" - instead of "call police"?
"Your pleasure" instead of "You're welcome"
"Hisself" instead of "himself"

That's it for now!
"There are no permanent changes because change itself is permanent. It behooves the industrialist to research and the investor to be vigilant."
- Ralph L. Woods.

Prepping: traveling, arriving, and settling in (pt 1)

We've arrived. York has welcomed us with open arms!

Traveling was hard - a lot of hours of sitting around... I did practice my sociolinguistic interviewing skills on the plane. It is hard, but practice does make a difference.

I´m going to make this quick because my roommates are trying to sleep right now... Key things:
- Our professor is making us keep a notepad of things we find that are different linguistically to what we find in Canada.
- A hotel can define a 3 bedroom accommodations and really mean "we put 3 beds in a room that should only have one". We'll make it work though.
- At times it feels like everything is happening suddenly with very little prep; but other times I realize, "how much prep can one really get?"

I think that's it for now. I'll start posting all of the differences we find in later blogs - when I'm more awake. I'll also append to this post in the morning after I get some more sleep.

Au revoir à tous!

"Happiness... is not a destination: it is a manner of traveling. Happiness is not an end in itself. It is a by-product of working, playing, loving and living." - Haim Ginott

STORM! - Learning to deal with all your plans falling apart

Our flight was cancelled due to some extreme cold weather along with a lot of snow and some logistics that went on at the airport; but we did get a rebooked flight for tonight.

What I thought would be good to discuss is how one adapts to the unpredictable. I've found myself in this type of situation a few times - two winters back my 5 hr flight to Seattle from Toronto turned into a 36 hr adventure. From these multitude of events, I've learned quite a few lessons.

1 - bring snacks. You don't know what will happen in an airport. Either you will have to rush from one area to another, or you will be waiting for hours in one spot. No matter what, the last thing you want to do when you're stressed is spend 4 dollars on a bag of peanuts.
2 - keep smiling. Life is rough, and it never really gets easier. So what's the point on being sad. It's unfortunate that you didn't get to fly, but would you rather have risked the chance and end up crashing?
3 - it is not the airport's fault! - Do you think they would purposely ruin a whole plane load of people's days just for kicks? They don't want to deal with the fallout from this situation, but they have to do what is the safest thing for everyone.
4 - if you're with friends, keep everyone laughing - if one person starts to sulk you all will sulk, and it will be a sulking fest! Get everyone laughing, because then, no matter what, at least you had an adventure with friends.
5 - finally, if the weather is bad on your way to the airport, plan for a place to stay for the night and how to rearrange your schedule if you have to arrive at your destination a day or two late. It's best to have backup plans, and backups to your backup plans. Travelling is stressful, but when things fall apart and you have no backup plans, life becomes stressful.

As for the research part of my trip, and what should be the focus of this blog, there is not much to say. We haven't started anything yet. Some of our scheduled interviews are probably going to get rearranged, and we'll have to double our efforts to make up for lost time, but we can do it. After sitting with the team for 7+ hours last night, and getting to know them a lot better, I have to say I'm confidant that we can do this.

Hopefully everything works out today with no further delays!
Wish us luck! Au revoir à tous!
~Sid
"Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air." - John Quincy Adams