On that note, if you know of any companies in Vancouver currently looking for someone with a usability/human-computer interaction background, please let me know! I’ve got a few applications in and have had some good interviews, but nothing is finalized yet. I’ve updated my C.V. here on the website, and you can also find me on LinkedIn.

I attended my first Northern Voice this past Friday and Saturday and had a great time. While blogging and social media aren’t really related to my personal area of study in HCI (I study people collaborating in the same space, rather than online) they are definitely areas of personal interest to me. I met lots of cool local (and not-so-local) bloggers, and saw lots of great talks.

At the conference I also realized that many bloggers aren’t techies like me, and there is definitely a market for someone who could help install WordPress or Drupal, or tweak a blog template to look a bit more original. What’s a reasonable hourly price for a blog software consultant? Because some of the prices I see people being charged for this stuff are crazy! I occasionally help friends with their sites or do a one-off project for a group I am affiliated with, but I am not very good at putting a price on my time. I am also not always the greatest at time management and am worried that freelance work would eat into thesis time. But if I could make it work it might be a good way to share my tech knowledge with others and supplement my grad student income.

Speaking of time management, today I’m trying to get my head back into “thesis” mode, as I need to finish up the final draft of my thesis proposal and put the finishing touches on the ethics application for my upcoming user study. I’m feeling pretty tired and unmotivated, though. I’m still decompressing from the conference, and I’m on day 8 of the d-tox, which is probably contributing to my low energy level. Other than having slightly less energy I’m very happy with the d-tox so far. I’ve been sticking to the list of approved foods (with the exception of a couple vodka-sodas at the Northern Voice opening party) and am feeling pretty good. Only five more days to go!

K: So I decided to register for a blogging conference that’s happening in the forestry building at UBC next month.

T: Really?!

K: Yeah, i figure it’s good to see what’s going on outside my immediate research area, and I’m interested in that stuff anyhow.

T: Wow, I didn’t know you were interested in that.

K: Of course I am! Blogging, social media, all that stuff.

T: Wait a minute. Social media? What does that have to do with… – Oh. you said blogging! When you said it was in the forestry building I thought…

K: …that I was going to a logging conference?

T: Yeah.

I stayed up until the wee hours last night (5am this morning, really) working on a draft of my thesis proposal, which meant I only got 3 hours of sleep. So rather than blog anything interesting I’m going to go to bed early tonight. *yawn*

Although women comprise nearly half of all undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral scientists nationwide, after committing 10 to 15 years to scientific training, many leave academic research during the career transition to faculty or tenured positions. For example, at the NIH, only 29 percent of the tenure-track principal investigators (PI) and 19 percent of tenured PIs — the NIH equivalent of assistant and full professors, respectively — are women. These figures have hardly changed over the last decade and mirror the disparities at most academic research institutions. 

Where are all the women going? Are they choosing less stressful jobs?  Becoming stay-at-home moms? I am curious how this plays out in Computer Science, in particular. Unlike the natural sciences, the percentage of female graduate students in Computer Science is nowhere near 50%.

On the bright side, I got this fancy schmancy new monitor which has greatly increased my work productivity when I’m at home, I had a great weekend trip to Whistler a few weeks ago, and I feel like I have some direction as far as my PhD research is concerned. So, life could be worse!

Speaking of meaningless academic research… I’ve also been hard at work prepping my demo for the CSCW 2006 conference, which will be held in Banff next week. I’m excited to be returning to Banff for a visit and in addition to attending the conference I look forward to enjoying some beautiful hikes and possibly a dip in the hot springs.

In lighter news, Dan and I decided to display our geekiness this weekend when we went to two Halloween parties dressed as Battlestar Galactica Raptor pilots. (If you haven’t seen this show, I implore you to visit your nearest video rental store and pick up Season 1. It’s the best sci-fi show on TV today, and possibly the best sci-fi show ever!) Sadly, I didn’t bring my camera with me to the parties, so there is no photographic evidence. I plan to wear my costume again on Tuesday though, so I’ll try to remember to snap a picture then.

The fall semester is in full swing, and so is my half-marathon clinic. The past month and a half I’ve been splitting my time between puzzling over my algorithms course homework and running all over North Burnaby. Both activities are going reasonably well.
The algorithms course is turning out to be fairly manageable, though I’m using parts of my brain I haven’t used since my third year of undergrad (which further in the past than I care to admit!) and have had to relearn calculus. In other school-related activities, I am hoping to have a first draft of a research plan for my thesis sometime soon. I’ve got a workshop paper on my research topic at a conference in Banff next month and will hopefully be able to get lots of good feedback there.

Running is fun but has been taxing on my body. I’ve spent a small fortune on physio and massage therapy in the past month to deal with some IT band problems. Oh, and I also need orthotics, apparently. Luckily UBC’s student health plan is pretty darn awesome and covers almost 100% of the cost of my orthotics, and 50% of the physio and massage. I haven’t been able to do a lot of the longer runs with my half-marathon clinic group lately, which has been frustrating, but I am slowly recovering and increasing my mileage. It’s just a little over a month until the half-marathon now!