Conference Fees

I'm getting ready for the National Communication Association's Annual Conference, this time in Chicago. I've attended that conference since 1991, missing only one in the intervening years. To me, the conference is a great chance to get caught up on emerging scholarship, share some of my own work, and meet interesting people. My favorite part, however, is the opportunity to reconnect to old friends going back to my undergraduate years. Having attended, I think, 15 NCAs, thus far -- and planning many more -- I regret only one thing. I wish I had bought a lifetime membership.

When registering for your first or second big-time professional conference, those lifetime rates seem exorbitant. And on a student's paycheck, they are. But by my fourth or fifth NCA, I knew that I'd gain membership to this profession somehow, and I knew I'd attend many more NCAs. So, I'm feeling an acute sense of "if only." If only I'd paid that rate back then, when the cost of attendance was merely exorbitant. With various inflationary pressures (some less necessary than others, I think), the yearly cost has become a real pain. Sure, I can afford it. But I'd rather have bundled all those bills up early and paid them at once than as a fee that climbs year after year.

Perhaps anyone reading this who plans on making regular conference attendance part of her/his professional plans may benefit from the lesson I've learned.

Oil Apocalypse Movie

The Guardian describes an upcoming movie called Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash that depicts a global crisis following the time in which oil production passes its peak and begins to decline, even as developing economies in China and India demand more and more.

In this article, I was struck by a particular line:

Oil companies say that there are still major reserves to be exploited. In particular, Arctic and Antarctic fields - which are being freed of ice and snow as the world heats up - are being sized up for their reserve potential.

One may find better examples of "vicious cycle," but not today.

Read the article: New 'disaster' movie warns world of oil apocalypse

Follow-up: Here are my 2008 reflections on the movie.

Wood Writing Guide - Its vs It's

Really? The difference between "its" and "it's" is so hard to decipher? Apparently for the writer of this article, it is.

This is the point where I remind you just how prone I am to typos of all kinds, and it's true: anyone can slip an apostrophe into most the inappropriate linguistic crevasse. Yet an increasingly large number of students and even professional journalists seem to make this error. I wish they'd stop.

I wonder about the most effective reminder to help folks avoid the its/it's dilemma. So far, the best I can discern is a simple reminder: "it's" always means "it is" or "it has" and any sentence with "it's" should be capable of being read that way. Otherwise, stick with "its."

Oh yeah. "Get over it. No one cares" won't work. Sorry. It's a passion of mine.

New Sanfrakota

Lately, AT&T has run an ad campaign that illustrates the notion of mobile enclave, an intersection of technology and performance that allows its practitioners to carry miniature version of the world with them. The mobile enclave is best illustrated by the iPod's (and, now, iPhone's) enablement of a portable bubble of sound whose impressive storage capacity allows users to disconnect from the outside world for increasingly long periods of time. Consider the contrast of radio that is static (in terms of motion, if not in terms of quality), limited to a narrow range of music, and innately public. With new personal data, navigation, and entertainment devices, we need not be tied to those old media-sites. AT&T illustrates a fascinating expansion of the mobile enclave concept with its "works in more places" spots.

Here's a typical example: "You live in New York. You work in San Francisco. You play in South Dakota. AT&T Works in more places like New Sanfrakota." The name is awkward and confusing at first, but it undoubtedly grabs your attention. Where is this place? Then you realize that the name is meaningful only to its author. The place is a conflation of nodes designed to further an individual ambition or corporate vision. New Sanfrakota - and other amalgams such as Philawarapragueacago - are precisely not places for you or for anyone else.

A number of critics have castigated this campaign as being confusing or, worse, kind of stupid. Bloggers have emphasized that AT&T, regardless of its ad budget, sells a lousy product. A reasonable critique. Yet I'm drawn to the ad campaign's proposal that we want to carry our own artificial worlds around, tying together personalized nodes that allow us a more perfect dislocation from the places through which we pass and the people by which we walk.

I wonder how this trend will end.

Shaking Hands

These days I'm conducting interviews - 72 of them - with potential peer mentors. Along with the way, I'm shaking lots of hands. Some of these introductions have helped develop rapport. Some, however, have not set things off quite so well. In that spirit, here's an interesting article I found on CNN about deadly handshakes.

The worst way to shake hands

Wood Family Halloween 2007 - Video

Here's a video from our Wood Family Halloween: Psycho Circus.



Difficulty seeing the video above? Click on the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78jNRX8oOVA

[Note: If you select the link rather than the embedded video, please click "Watch in High Quality" to get the best looking view.]

Wood Family Halloween 2007

Once again, the Wood Family created a haunted porch sensation for our Scotts Valley neighbors. This year's theme: Psycho Circus. Taking for granted the fact that many people think that clowns are creepy, we created a multimedia Halloween carnival this year. The highlight was a freak show with a two-headed baby (with cooing and gurgling sound effects), a crawling hand, and a man-spider hybrid. Jenny rigged the baby to wave and the spider to bounce when folks peered into the boxes. The carnival also included a gory "Corpsy the Clown" (absolutely earning our yearly "PG13" warnings to parents), a video display of scary movie clown scenes, hanging clowns in the upper windows (lit by strobe lights), and atmospheric music from Michael Hedstrom's "Midnight Circus" CD. Rounding out the spectacle, Jenny gave tours of the freak show as a bearded lady and I handed out candy as "Creepy the Clown," complete with dangling cigar. Psycho Circus, which ran from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., was a smash. Countless waves of kids waited in line to climb the porch and enjoy the show!

To see pictures of Psycho Circus, point your browser to: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/halloween2007.

In the next day or so I plan to upload a brief video from the show as well...