Update: Infoscape Lab Canadian Federal Election Tracking

The Infoscape Lab has been tracking the Canadian Federal election on-line in conjunction with CBC's Susan Ormiston on-line:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canadavotes/campaign2/ormiston/

I do not plan to post anything more until after the election is completed because my work will mostly appear on the page above under lab director Greg Elmer's care or through the lab directly:

www.infoscapelab.ca

The lab's efforts are collectively aggregated in both places, so a third blog is a bit redundant until October 14, 2008.

Remember to get political folks.

Update: I'll be offline until the end of August

Thanks to those who have sent in comments about my blog and questions wondering why I've stopped posting things over the past two months. I'll be off-line until the end of August working on my dissertation, so I'll post no new content until the Fall.

For now, here are some quick observations on Google Analytics blog tracking after not posting anything for a few months:

1) Direct and referring traffic to a blog drops off significantly on Google Analytics without increasing the content during a month.

2) Google search traffic goes through the roof though, and the most read story on this blog right now is the Bruno Latour lecture at U of T (posted below) because of this phenomenon. It seems people do a lot of searching for two main things listed on this blog: "Bruno Latour" and "Facebook".

3) Generally, for a blog like mine, it gets at least 150-200 hits a month even if no new content is placed on it.

I'll write more in month!

Cheers,

Peter

Jonathan Zittrain on Colbert

Here's a link for Jonathan Zittrain's discussion of his book "The Future of the Internet" with Colbert:

http://www.spike.com/episode/27765/st/2994516

Also, here's his new blog for the book:

http://futureoftheinternet.org/blog/

Bruno Latour's Keynote at Reclaiming the World: the Future of Objectivity

I just attended Bruno Latour's keynote address at “Reclaiming the World: the Future of Objectivity”.

It was a packed house at the U of T's Bahen Centre, and they will be putting a video recording of the event on-line shortly.

They said there was no problem if I made an audio recording, so I've attached my handheld audio recording to this blog post in case anyone can't wait for the official video copy. It's a Latour bootleg! If they ask me to take it down for any reason, I will... But they gave me the green light in person, so here it is (see the attached 1 hour itunes/QuickTime M4a clip; it's about 22 MBs -- I hope the sampling frequency is audible and the file size isn't too large for folks):

* Bruno Latour Keynote

If you're up to date with Latour's work, there wasn't much new in his talk on political epistemologies. He mostly developed ideas from his two recent works Reassembling the Social and Making Things Public for a North American audience. He also provided numerous examples of new data visualization tools and projects such as:

1) http://www.demoscience.org/
2) http://mapofscience.com/

Perhaps the most interesting part of the talk for Latour fans were the reactions to it. For example, Ian Hacking critiqued Latour's work as being an "insane phenomenology" with too many examples and not enough of a through line. Others from the more traditional and perhaps not so cutting edge U of T crowd similarly critiqued Latour’s work for not going into enough depth to develop a sense of how new data visualization projects are in fact “new” or leading to a redesign of society that is different from classical epistemologies. Also, many did not understand how networked technologies provided any resistance to dominant epistemologies.

My thoughts on the topic would be that if people are not seeing in Latour's work that new data visualization tools are "new", then they should stop using them and see what happens to their research. I believe other network theorists, like Yochai Benkler for example, would definitely support Latour’s analysis. Google, the military, and other big industries are banking on these “new” visualization tools, so there must be some reason behind it. To spell it out explicitly, beyond Latour's justifications which you can hear in the audio recording or find in his works, I would say that “new” data visualizations are "new" because of:

1) Massive Public Data Interaction: Open data access allow individuals to interact with massive networks that were not publicly available and at scales that have never before been studied, at such an instant speed of investigation (e.g. Just watch CNN's coverage of the Presidential race).

2) Automated Political-Technological Agents: The amount of technological penetration in Western society also increasingly has technology making decisions for us in our research as politically invested agents with their own in-built epistemologies that reflect particular dominant political groups. These epistemologies must be questioned and understood, especially when they do not fit into traditional epistemologies or ways of knowing.

3) On-line Discourse Domination: Decision making processes are moving on-line, and if different cultures want to be invested in science and technological decisions of "objectivity", then they have to become a part of this game, which is increasingly exclusionary.

That's my quick take on the topic. I'll write more as debate arises or time allows me to offer up more insights.

Overall, I was happy to finally hear the work of someone I have been studying for the past five years in person, and his slideshow was definitely very impressive. One of the main things that will stick with me from the talk is how the Maps of Science group and other scientometric tracking projects are demonstrating that globally there are about 12 major research clusters in the new knowledge economy of any discipline. That’s a fairly powerful data visualization of the realignment of social agents.

Okay, that's my final word, for now...

More from MaRS

Here are some more reviews from the MaRS event:

1) CBC Blog: http://www.cbc.ca/news/blogwatch/2008/03/blogs_and_politics_the_permane.html

2) Jesse Hirsch: http://www.jessehirsh.com/the-permanent-campaign-event-alpha-test-report

3) Maclean’s Kady O’Malley: http://blog.macleans.ca/2008/03/20/you-got-technology-in-my-politics-recapping-the-permanent-campaign-conference/

4) Greg Elmer: http://manu.rcc.ryerson.ca/~gelmer/?p=43

Growing Protests in Canada

Most predictions are that protests will increase in the coming years in Canada and North America as the demographic shift of power from the retiring baby boomers to the millennial generation causes structural tensions in all sectors of society. For example, many university faculty members are increasingly concerned about the administrative change to favour contractual labour and sessional positions as retirements increase, versus the more permanent positions of tenured jobs. Along with that dominant issue are the other pressures of increased class sizes, and more expectations for publication and committee work being linked with those contracts. On the student side of the issue are increases to tuition fees, decreasing quality of education and higher student debt.

We are most likely starting to see the beginning of these structural tensions spilling into formalized protests from examples such as the following:

1) University of Toronto non-violent student sit-in over new 20% tuition fee hikes that captured the police violently removing students from outside the President’s office on campus (today):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ketNtnZQIwQ

2) York University Sweat Shop Policy sit in that was peaceful and successful:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow9xDYGl_gI

3) York University protest over the Iraq war in 2005 that similarly captured police violently removing students from Vari Hall on video tape, and led to two students being sent to hospital: http://uppingtheanti.org/node/1119

Perhaps surprisingly, no large student groups at Ryerson have organized around the Chris Avenir case in a similar way, but this might best be explained by the fact that Ryerson student groups are still developing at the relatively young university.

Beyond student groups, one of the main issues in North America that we may see more protests developing around concerns the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) that the Infoscape Lab has found to be growing in the Blogosphere and on YouTube:

1) A media mash up by a Vlogger concerning the SPP that has become highly watched on YouTube can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDoaYILUMAs

2) Compare that story to CNN’s coverage of the same SPP story:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU3e8luD2Iw

3) The Montebello Summit Protest and the use of Miami Police Tactics:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St1-WTc1kow

4) NAFTA-gate with Obama and Clinton:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLJJ88HTiX8

Fallout from Facebook Decision at Ryerson

A blogger on the AoIR listserv posted this summary of the University's decision not to expel Chris Avenir, the Ryerson student who was up to be expelled for using Facebook:

http://onlinesocialnetworks.blogspot.com/2008/03/ryerson-facebook-study-group-student.html

Overall, the student won't be expelled, will receive zero for the assignment, and will have to take an Academic Integrity course: http://www.ryerson.ca/academicintegrity/

Avenir is still going to appeal the decision, and as of yet, Ryerson has not made any formal announcements from its own university portal, and have not addressed if anything would happen to other students in the group.

For more see on the back story: http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2008/03/university-facebook-policies-breakfast.html

Tools from MaRS and other places

Happy post-St. Patty’s Day to ye all,

I hope everyone is still feeling the luck of the Irish today, and are not too under the weather from the cheer last night.

I thought I’d just quickly post some new interesting tools coming down the pipe and also some other items that people might find interesting. First off, here are some of the tools that were demonstrated at the MaRS “Permanent Campaign” event that the Infoscape Lab attended today with Greg Elmer being the keynote:

1) aideRSS: http://www.aiderss.com/

This seems like a generally useful tool for those who read a large number of blogs. However, at the moment, aideRSS are keeping their ranking heuristics hidden, and they do not allow readers to set up their own advanced ranking methods. For instance, it would be useful for someone to just choose to read blogs that have a lot of comments, or that have a large number of blogs linking to them. It would also be useful for the aideRSS tool to present such information as comments and links in an easily readable manner along with the other statistics they offer. Test it out to see what I mean exactly, of course.

2) Blogscope.net: http://www.blogscope.net/

Blog surveillance technology from the U of T. These folks have even automated tone judgments of the postings on blogs in the beta version, which sounds pretty sketchy to me, especially since once again they do not share their heuristics for how they judge tone. Their plan so far is to also make it the blogger’s individual duty to de-list their personal information from their network tracking software, which profiles every blogger on the web. This could be potentially very controversial.

The company linked with Blogscope is: www.Sysomos.com

3) Iotum: http://iotum.com/

Free conference calls for everyone, using Facebook or otherwise. This might be useful, especially if they add video calls some day. It appears to be a step up from plain old Skype.

************************************************

Here are some other items not connected with the MaRS event, but connected with political tools in general:

1) Microsoft’s Blews: http://research.microsoft.com/projects/blews/blews.aspx

This software seems similar to the Blogscope.net platform above, but it appears to have a more elegant user interface. However, the team that has worked on it does not include any political scientists or sociologists, so I’m not sure how well it will target specific user needs to drill into political blogs and news ("blews") in the social media space.

2) Gapminder.org: Interesting use of data visualization software, and there is a TED video of Hans Rosling from the Gapminder.org group on their powerful use of data visualization here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUwS1uAdUcI

3) Morningside Analytics: http://morningside-analytics.com/
John Kelly from Columbia University who was at the OII SDP this summer has officially launched his company with the help of Leonard Lidov, who is a Torontonian. Their business looks interesting, and I wish them well.

4) Michael Zimmer’s bibliography of ethical and privacy dimensions of web
search engines: http://michaelzimmer.org/2007/06/30/scholarship-on-privacy-and-search-engines/

More to come on the MaRS talk when I get a second to write in April.

The Breakfast Club 2.0: University Facebook Policies

Here's a link to a Ryerson Student newspaper article on the changing Facebook policy that’s been circulating in the news and is currently a hot topic nationally and internationally:

http://www.theeyeopener.com/article/3816

I truly think it's going to be difficult for students to change the policy proceeding along the lines that this author is arguing. Students need to understand when on-line activity is "public" -- we've never been able to defame our bosses, openly cheat on examines and assignments, steal content and call it our own, and then document those crimes for all to see in an easily traceable manner back to the individual. Many of the acts they’re documenting here are the equivalent of cheating on an exam, and taking a picture of it, then showing it to the professor... How do they expect a school to react?

I think the school administration will definitely listen to arguments about voices of protest being stifled, academic freedom being infringed, and intellectual innovation issues along the lines of the Creative Commons movements, Open Source and other such things, especially if there are pertinent cases to draw upon. I think though what is more at issue in the above article is the draconian punishments that are being handed out, and the lack of using those opportunities to teach students about what does and does not cross respectable and lawful student or citizen activity. Completely destroying a student's life because they're exploring the possibilities of a new technology is different from using the moment to guide the student's poor decisions into a more productive activity within reasonable limits.

Some people were asking for some background on the Ryerson case, so here goes. Every university has a Student Code of Non-Academic Conduct, and here are some links to Ryerson's:

1) http://www.ryerson.ca/calendar/2007-2008/pg28.html
2) http://www.ryerson.ca/undergraduate/currentstudents/rr/pol61NonACCode.pdf

These codes serve as blanket liability protection for, among other things, cases when a student does something in public that makes his or her university look bad in some way and the university wants to distance themselves from the student (or expel the student completely). Some general examples of when this code might be used is if criminal behaviour occurs off of the campus or destruction of university property occurs while the student is not actively engaged in "academic" behaviour, which would be covered by the Student Code of Academic Conduct. Most professors list links to these codes on their course syllabi, but many students don't know what their actual rights are on campus because like the plagiarism policy, those sections are often glossed over. In truth, these codes also exist for Faculty, and students and instructors alike should know that they overlap in many ways to create community panopticon to favour the university administration, but at the other end of the spectrum they also protect all of the academic community.

All universities have been trying to reformulate these codes in light of the Web 2.0 challenges. At Ryerson in 2006, a business professor, was "owned" on YouTube, and the university admin moved fast to squash the video, which was taken off YouTube fairly quickly, but they never delivered any universal university statement about the event and they only dealt with the event internally to that business class from what I know. However, they have been working on this policy since that time.

Most recently, at Oxford students have been fined for posting incriminating pictures of "disorderly" behaviour on Facebook, and the university has warned students to set their settings to friends only privacy levels:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/jul/17/digitalmedia.highereducation

In other words, the Student Code of Non-Academic Conduct has always had protections against any negative forms of university publicity which could affect the "value" and "reputation" of a university's degree conferring status. After all, who would want to go to a university where “x” happened? While that seems to be the line universities use in these cases, the code has obviously been abused in the past, and perhaps is being abused in these current cases.

I hope this background helps. I believe Ryerson’s code at this point is at a nascent phase, and if the university will ever be at a point where they will consider student input, it will be now.

Good to hear people are interested in these policy issues! I would definitely recommend writing your own response to the admin, and formulating how the code should be used if you want to change things now.

Here are two links to some previous posts on this topic from last year where I was harder on High School students for abusing Facebook for similar things, but having been familiarized with High School suspensions myself (for artistic reasons, of course), I believe university suspensions are of a whole different degree because they can affect a student for the rest of his or her life, whereas High School suspensions really never affect a person again afterward, unless of course, it’s The Breakfast Club:

1) Michael Geist:
http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2007/05/geist-on-facebook-in-toronto-star.html

2) Supplement:
http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2007/05/suspending-students-supplement.html

Infoscape Lab Covers the Alberta Election 2008

For those out in Alberta, the Infoscape lab has started tracking Politics 2.0 for the Alberta Election:

http://www.infoscapelab.ca/node/376

There's not much of a story yet, but the election isn't over yet.

123 Meme: Archaeologies of the Future

My first blog meme, coming from Joris van Hoboken in the Netherlands, then from Michael Zimmer in New Haven, and originating at Wired.

Here are the instructions:

We have been instructed to open the nearest book to page 123, go down to the 5th sentence and type up the 3 following sentences. Or else. The note also demands that we forward this stupidity onto five others.

So the book I have is Fredric Jameson's Archaeologies of the Future: The desire called utopia and other science fictions (2005), which is a primary work that I'm using for my dissertation. Perhaps, the blog memes will be discovered in some future archaeology. However, this section has very little to do with my work, other than questioning grand narratives. The section reads:

The society in question may in other words be in the condition of a biological sport, of a malformed organism, of a tetralogical formation of some kind which can scarcely yield any clues as to the healthy organism it replaces. The discipline of anthropology is in other words necessarily normative, and reestablishes the model of a norm even there where it is unthinkable: only Colin Turnbull, in The Mountain People, and Levi-Straus himself, in Tristes tropiques, have reflected on the frustration involved in coming upon a society not merely in decline but in utter collapse. Still, anthropology (and SF itself) have a conventional context with which to domesticate such phenomena, and it is that projected by the Second Law of Thermodynamics and indeed by Wells' Time Machine (if not by Spengler): namely the grand narrative of entropy and devolution.

Okay, I hope I don't annoy anyone I'm sending this meme to, but we're in good company for people who have potentially been annoyed if you see the names above. I'll send the meme overseas to Jaz in Australia, to Ireland to get some luck from Daithi, to California to get some sun from Cuihua Shen (please send some sun our way in snowy Toronto), to somewhere local to share that sun Greg Elmer, and last, to the bookish librarians. Happy meming on Valentine's Day!

Perhaps, the meme is waiting to see how long it takes for the same book passage to come up. A potential experiment: copy my passage and see if anything happens, if you like to end memes and dreams.

Communication and Culture Graduate Conference: Intersections 2008

The new website is up for the current iteration of the York/Ryerson Communication and Culture Graduate Programme's Intersection Conference 2008, March 14-16 in Toronto: http://www.yorku.ca/cocugsa/conference.html

The conference is always a good time, and this year the conference received a record number of submissions. I'm biased, of course, from helping out at the conference over the past few years. However, the conference stands on its own merits without my bias, because it continues to grow each year. It is a great venue for seeing the interesting work that graduate students are doing in Communication and Culture research from around North America, and this year, the conference has gone global in the submissions it has received. I hope to see you there!

Ryan Bigge’s “Road-testing the $100 laptop's 'appropriate technology'”

Ryan Bigge continues to write thought provoking and insightful inquiries into our current technological situation. His most recent piece in the Ideas section of The Toronto Star (January 20, 2008) is unique for his interesting use of journalism across media. See:

1. Bigge’s original article in The Star (with an extra movie clip on how to use the laptop):
http://www.thestar.com/article/295647

2. Bigge’s Blogge (Yes, that’s humour) -- Extra excerpts from his article which were not included in the print piece are included on his blog:
http://thebiggeidea.blogspot.com/2008/01/one-more-underperformer.html

Bigge’s story is about the One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC). The charitable act of being able to purchase a laptop for $400, also provides a laptop for a child in a developing country. Despite the feel good nature of the project, I feel there are two further conversations that need to be opened up here:

1) About media use in general.
2) About the $100 laptop as a solution to the digital divide.

I’ll tackle the first item as follows: In the print version of his article, Bigge wasn’t able to fit his entire story, and so he includes extra excerpts on his Blog which add a more balanced tone to what originally read more like a McLuhanesque, techno-humanist piece in favour of the technology. The Blog remarks offer more of critical perspective to the piece with discussion of some of the issues the project has created and faced.

Another interesting point in terms of media is that the print format couldn’t offer a complete tutorial on how the laptop works, so the article provided a hyperlink to the digital video explanation starring Bigge himself (as seen at the link above). This coordination of media may in fact entice some of the techno-phobic into spending more time on-line because of the limitations and technical constraints of the print product. I know it worked for me.

This extra mediated experience only increases the use of our limited resources in terms of time and the resources of the natural environment, but offers a moment on which to comment during our current in-between media period, where we straddle several media options at once in the West. These coordinated media strategies are becoming more prevalent, and offer many narrative threads to trace for the interested, while also allowing more points of access to grab the attention of a potential audience.

I’ll develop this thought further as a part of my discussion on the $100 laptop. I was fortunate to get to visit the OLPC headquarters in Boston over the summer. Here’s some pictures from my visit:

1) One of the $100 Laptops (photographed at MIT):





2) Laptop display table at the OLPC HQ:






3) The Testing Lab at OLPC HQ:






When I read Bigge’s article, I had some rare quibbles with his description of the OLPC project based on my experiences during my own OLPC visit. As I said, I usually agree whole heartedly with Bigge, but here's a few things that I didn't find in either his article or Blog:

If one were to read only the print version of his work, Bigge seems to sit on the fence a bit when mentioning the problem of the new cheap laptop market that's formed because of Negroponte’s brainchild. In his piece, he mentions a bias for ‘appropriate technology’ that performs the logical tasks that a device should, without any useless or superfulous features that are currently being marketed. I've become a bit more Naomi Klein-ish about liberal markets since visiting the OLPC though, instead of just hoping technology will change the world. Klein's new book The Shock Doctrine talks about the entrenchment of neo-liberal markets during crises, like wars and natural disasters. Basically the idea is that when a crisis hits, big business moves in (e.g. Iraq and Haliburton).

I think something that could be added to her list is "the digital divide" crisis. Specifically, we can ask do agrarian societies need to be (or want to be) attached to the Internet?

Further, is an abundance of cheap laptops without a cradle to grave waste management solution just another environmental disaster waiting to happen? Like the billion cell phones dying in landfills, these $100 laptops aren't bio-degradable...

NB - Clarification from SJ's comment below: The OLPC Project is trying to make the laptops 100% recyclable and have a minimum impact on the environment, but they are still in the process of accessing how to ensure proper disposal according to the following site: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Environmental_Impact

I know it's all high and mighty of me writing this on my own computer, but when we were down at the OLPC they talked about how kids in the developing world were already using laptops (perhaps, not the OLPC laptops yet) in rare situations to make pornography (to make money), or selling them (for money), or hacking (for money), or being beaten by adults who would then steal the laptops (to again sell for money) – that’s just to name a few issues. Overall, in terms of liberalization, could these laptops just be a way of creating armies of third world call centre employees out of a young, cheaply trained labour force, while also taking time away from children's time learning skills they need to survive in a non-digital society? Think scary, Kittlerian style discourse networks here of the variety that occurred around the creation of the typewriter (and now, of course, the laptop).

During my visit to the OLPC, we had a number of problems on the technical side as well. For example, getting the laptops to work in the mesh network never occurred, and obviously Bigge’s own laptop all alone here in Canada will have problems linking to other mesh-network-ready computers since there are none (until other people purchase them).

Another problem during our visit included the laptop’s operating system freezing on a number of the computers we were testing. To their credit, the OLPC project admitted openly they were working on all of these issues, and the system Bigge demonstrates in his video is definitely a bit different from the one that I remember playing with. Hopefully the bugs have been worked out.

The one thing that I was hopeful about with the OLPC project was their commitment to on-going maintenance of the technology, and their focus on going to places and educating people about use and care of the laptop. However, without sustained money, the laptops do break and the issues listed above develop when there is no money to fix them. Several of my peers during the visit were emphatic about embedding the laptops in an educational environment to create a vital culture of care. Without a care network, if (or when) those developing regions become emblazoned with other problems, which they often do, the child cannot eat the laptop, which most would consider a more pressing need, but the laptop could instead be used by others to download bomb making instructions.

I thought I'd write and see what others thought, especially those who have connections to the OLPC project?

Specifically, I know that some other SDP-ers have blogged about this previously, and one of you has done the same as Ryan Bigge and contributed to the give-one-get-one campaign -- hopefull informed discussion can assuage such fears and issues as those listed above:

- Give-one-get-one: http://dpignett.blog.usf.edu/2007/11/21/give-one-get-one

- Law Professor Wendy Seltzer on the project (A comment in this post talks about Korean Laptop Boot Camps for helping Koreans get over Internet addiction): http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2007/11/14/one-laptop-per-child-plus-one.html

- Other links and pictures from people during the summer visit to OLPC:

1. http://dpignett.blog.usf.edu/2007/07/21/mit-one-laptop-per-child

2. http://www.lexferenda.com/25072007/closing-the-loop-zuckerman-and-best-on-africa-and-technology/

3. http://ictlogy.net/2007/07/

4. http://www.jorisvanhoboken.nl/?p=66

Brushes with Fame

Charlie Neeson was on The Colbert Report and challenged the Presidential Candidates to a poker match. I was fortunate enough to play poker against him at Harvard in the Summer of 2007 during the Oxford Internet Institute: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/080125/nyf065.html?.v=101

Neeson uses poker as a teaching tool, and he is very much an interesting and charismatic professor.

Tariq Amin-Khan is a professor in the Ryerson Politics and Public Administration department, and he was recently on The Hour describing the situation in Pakistan, where he use to be a reporter: http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/video.php?id=1889

Jean McNulty Talk: Getting a Job in the Public Service

Veteran Public Servant and Communication Researcher Jean McNulty gave a free talk to Communication and Culture Graduate Students on the topic of ways to become employed in the public service on Tuesday, January 22, at Ryerson (11:00 to 12:30, VIC104). There was a good turnout of about 25 people, and McNulty gave personalized advice to each student present, as well as delivering a prepared talk. James Cairns and the Communication and Culture Graduate Student Association were instrumental in organizing the talk. Barbara Crowe, the York Director of the ComCult Programme, facilitated the discussion.

McNulty’s talk focused on five basic skills required for being employed in the public service:

1) Policy Knowledge: She advised that policy knowledge in a specific area is a good start, but not enough to get the job. Students should have knowledge in an upcoming area of need for the government. For example, a lot of environmental policy is being worked on currently at all levels of government, but if you want to work on telecommunication policy, currently there is only work federally in that area.

2) Industry Knowledge: Along with policy knowledge, students should have working knowledge of, or experience working or volunteering with, the groups that the policy will impact. Policy is written with citizens, interest groups, and industry in mind from all sectors, and knowledge is needed of these groups to write informed policy.

3) Proven Expertise in Applied Knowledge: Ways of demonstrating your applied knowledge include published papers, professional reports, conference presentations, or work consulting on research projects (both quantitative and qualitative analysis skills).

4) Administrative Experience: Administrative experience does not mean just secretarial work; administrative work means managing people, budgets, and organizing groups to work effectively. Any experience doing this in terms of conference organization, journal publication, or being an instructor or teaching assistant and leading tutorials are ways of demonstrating administrative experience. Also, non-partisan experience in administration is definitely important for the public service. Administrative experience will also demonstrate that you know how to work with other people, and can understand your role and place working in a hierarchy or bureaucracy.

5) Writing/Language Skills: Communication skills are one of the most important skills to hone to differentiate candidates within a pool of applicants. Writing demonstrates a person’s attention to design, grammar, and detail. Knowledge of the culture of the public service and an understanding of the jargon are also demonstrated through writing, so writing and communication skills are the dominant skill for presenting the above four required skills. If you desire to work federally, French language skills are also needed.

McNulty advised that these five complementary skills will be needed for most Junior Analyst or Internship positions. She said that the main ways to get a foot in the door are through applying to positions such as:

1) The Ontario Two-year Internship Program (due by Jan. 30th each year): www.gojobs.gov.on.ca

2) Federal Government Policy Leader Program (posted in September/October each year): http://jobs-emplois.gc.ca/srp-rpl-rlp/index_e.htm

3) Apply for Open Positions: Open positions appear throughout the year at the above websites as well.

4) Term or Contract Positions: Summer internships, short term contracts, and student co-op placements are all ways to get a start in the public service. Once you’re hired you will also have access to internal postings which are not opened to the public.

5) Consulting Firms: Decima, Bearing Point, Price Waterhouse, and other major firms also hire in these areas. Junior level positions can be a place to get a foot in the door. Look for communication positions or junior analyst positions.

6) Foreign Service: For those with an eye to traveling, you might want to learn more about writing the Foreign Service Exam. See:
http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/department/service/apply-testing-en.asp


Remember: Make sure to thoroughly review the websites for any of the above places before applying or going for an interview.


Briefing Notes
In most of these positions, writing a briefing note will be a part of the interview. McNulty’s advice for writing the perfect Briefing Note includes:

1. Key Issue: Identify the Key Issue for the Government, and provide a limited number of options for dealing with the issue.

2. Options for Action: Itemize the options for action in detail, and describe each. Usually three or four options will be required at the most. (e.g.) 1) Immediate action items, 2) items that require more time or money, and 3) radical or extreme solutions that might require more investigation.

NOTE: You should check the "culture" and "format" of the place you are working for the options section of your Briefing Note, because some places will use old stand by options such as 1) Do nothing, 2) Wait and see, 3) Respond when action is required, etc. Other places may not use this language based on the work that is done and for stylization purposes. You can think of this as similar to New Journalism's turn away from the inverted pyramid style of writing news articles and press releases.

3. Recommended Option: Identify and explain the main recommendation.

4. Background: Provide background information on this recommendation, the history that has led to this issue arising, the parties affected by it, and sources where more information can be found on the issue.

These basic requirements should not be considered fixed in stone, and their order and structure can change depending on the issue being researched.


Links to McNulty’s Work

1) Mass Communication in Canada:
http://books.google.com/books?id=_2SQAAAACAAJ&dq=Jean+McNulty+Communication

Open CourseWare Consortium

I recommend taking a peak at the Open CourseWare Consortium site to see some of the interesting courses available there. The site is useful to see what is happening in different disciplines around the world from instructors who have the time and ability to post their entire course content and lecture notes on-line, without having a negative impact on their careers.

Open CourseWare Consortium:

http://www.ocwconsortium.org/

MIT Open CourseWare:

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/index.htm