sacha chua :: living an awesome life » research

Spousonomics: Using economics to master love, marriage, and dirty dishes

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 16:20:01 +0000

I love research-backed books that help us understand why we do what we do. Paula Szuchman and Jenny Anderson’s Spousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage, and Dirty Dishes was no exception. The book takes a look at common marital conflicts and situations, showing the underlying economic principles that influence our actions. For example: Division [...]

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ACM Hypertext conference in Toronto this June; paper deadline Feb 14

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:09:43 +0000

My research supervisor is chairing the ACM Hypertext conference that will be held in Toronto from June 13 to 16, 2010. The conference focuses on linking and interconnectivity, and will have sessions on Web 2.0, social computing, and the semantic web. Tracks: Social computing Adaptive hypermedia and applications Hypertext in education and communications The deadline [...]

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Enterprise 2.0: The business value of social networks

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:39:50 +0000

Both our internal Social Networks Analysis community and Colleen Haikes (IBM External Relations) tipped me off to some absolutely fascinating research on the quantitative correlation between social networks and performance based on an analysis of IBM consultants. You can read the research summary and view the presentation, or read the research paper for all the [...]

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Much done

Sat, 12 May 2007 01:40:00 +0000

Also done with practically all of the data gathering for my thesis. It went surprisingly well! I don't know what I was so afraid of. I have maybe one or two more data points on Monday, but I already have enough data to make my research supervisor comfortable.

I will celebrate with a nice long bath and a good weekend. That's it... Besides, I need to decompress before all of my job-related interviews!

Random Emacs symbol: ido-enter-insert-buffer - Command: Drop into insert buffer from insert file.

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Big, hairy, audacious goal

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 02:14:00 +0000

My Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal for the next eight months is to help huge companies imagine how they can help people connect by prototyping my research idea, figuring out how it can be improved and made into a product, and writing up my thesis.

A thesis is a pretty big goal. Just ask all the people who finish everything but their thesis. Even really smart people. Even my friends.

And I'm pushing even further than that. I want my thesis to be practical *and* research-worthy. I want to take it into the business world.

I'm going to need help making this happen, and I'm going to need a lot of personal strength, too.

Random Emacs symbol: browse-url-epiphany-sentinel - Function: Handle a change to the process communicating with Epiphany.

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Progess report

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 15:10:00 +0000

I've been with the IBM Toronto Center for Advanced Studies since February, and it's time to make a progress report. What have I done in the past eight months to create value for them and work on my research?

My work seemed pretty random in the beginning. I spent a fair bit of time just getting the feel of IBM, learning about the different services on IBM's intranet and making sense of the blogosphere. I had to be told to concentrate several times! ;)

The funny thing is that this random casting-about is probably *just* what I needed to do. My blog helped me meet other people working in the space, and I learned about visualizations and resources that I wouldn't have come across on my own.

The prototype that I made for kicks might be an interesting tool. The researchers I talked to found it novel...

What's next?

I need to sit down and just build the darn tool. I think it'll take me two, three weeks for the search engine, maybe another week for the aggregator. I already have most of the code. November will be my intensive hacking month, so don't expect to hear much from me externally.

Then I need to test the tool with people so that I have data that I can write up during my vacation. Early December?

On Technorati: ibm, research

Random Emacs symbol: w3m-url-authinfo - Function: Return a user name and a password to authenticate URL.

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Buskerfest and other fun things

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 02:54:00 +0000

Catch amazing street performers at the Toronto BuskerFest, which runs from Aug 24 (Thursday) to Aug 27 (Friday). I went to the one last year and I was impressed by people's skill and flair.

I love watching street performers. Every time I watch one, I learn more about stage presence, drama and suspense, comedy and patter, even how to invite audience participation. I see many tricks again and again: juggling random dangerous objects, riding a unicycle, juggling random dangerous objects while riding a unicycle. Each performer brings a certain spin to things, though, and I enjoy their achievements just as much as the rest of the audience does.

The 2006 BuskerFest starts tomorrow—and the strange thing is, I feel more excited about going to IBM. I know that BuskerFest will delight and amaze me, but I don't want to just be delighted and amazed. I want to participate, to push the edge, to make things happen.

Somewhere in the sunlight, I know there will be kids laughing at the jugglers' demos and ooh-ing and aah-ing at the acrobats' antics. No one will miss me there; no one would even notice if I went. But in IBM, I can do something cool, learn tons of stuff, and be appreciated for it. Given a choice between watching a show and being part of one—you know what I'd choose.

I'll sleep early tonight. I don't want to feel tired tomorrow. I want to be wide awake and bursting with energy! There are so many cool things to do, so many people to reach out to. =)

What a terrific feeling!

On Technorati: ibm, research, buskerfest

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Research report: Met with Mark

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 02:28:00 +0000

Met with my research supervisor, Mark Chignell. Told him about the cool stuff I'd seen at IBM Cambridge's InternFest last week, and revised my research plan to include fewer interviews and more numbercrunching. Whee!

I like coding. I might as well play to that strength.

On Technorati: research

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Research report: Schedule

Thu, 03 Aug 2006 18:53:00 +0000

I like these one-on-one meetings. I find myself in the zone, asking questions and figuring things out. I had another good meeting with Mark Chignell, my research supervisor. This time, we worked on my research plan. I'm happy with the result, and I think IBM will be happy as well. We'll do a historical pseudo-experiment looking at factors that may have affected the adoption of social computing across subgroups within IBM. I'll see how I can visualize the data. Some considerations: Mark will be in Japan from January to mid-March, and again from April to June. Options for masteral exam: March I'll be able to make it to June convocation, and I might have a few months of vacation before real work. I'll be under stress because of the tight schedule, and I probably couldn't take spring classes. August Less stress from schedule, can take additional courses in spring, more time around tech scene here. Need to renew my visa, which is not a bad thing. I'll miss the June convocation, and will need to make it to November convocation instead. If I find myself working in Canada, then I can still probably graduate with pomp and circumstance. ;) My parents won't like winter, though, but hey... If I'm not working in Canada, then no pictures or ceremony. Oh well, s'okay. Must check fellowship. Here's the March schedule: August Resume my commute to IBM. (Waah!) Find as many sources of data as I can. September Data analysis. Start applying theoretical framework to IBM as a whole. October CASCON. Start on subpopulation analysis. November Analyze technology diffusion across subpopulations through interviews. December Write up research. January Vacation in the Philippines! February Write up research. March Possible date for exam because Mark will be in town? April Pass thesis just in time for June Convocation June Graduate July Vacation August Vacation September Work Here's the August schedule: August Resume my commute to IBM. (Waah!) Find as many sources of data as I can. September Data analysis. Start applying theoretical framework to IBM as a whole. October CASCON. Apply theoretical framework to IBM as a whole. November Analyze technology diffusion across subpopulations through interviews. December Analyze technology diffusion across subpopulations through interviews. January Vacation in the Philippines! February Write up research. March Write up research. Paper 1 (thesis). April Study #2: case study of Dogear June Study dogear adoption. July Write up research. August Write up research. Paper 2 (dogear case study). September Review papers. Exam. October Something happens. November Graduate December Work? Whichever schedule we choose, my next action is to hunt for as many data sources as I can and figure out how to mash them up. I need to decide which schedule to follow before I go on my Christmas vacation, because I'll probably renew my US visa then. (That is, unless I can renew my visa from Canada.) On Technorati: research, school Read the original or check out the comments on: Research report: Schedule (Sacha Chua's blog) [...]

Research report: The value of meetings

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 02:37:00 +0000

I had several very helpful meetings today. =)

The first was with Greg Wilson about a really interesting experiment in social bookmarking for software engineering. I wish I could have the brainspace to do it justice, but my research supervisor feels I should concentrate and get my primary research out the door first. Greg Wilson is way cool, though, and I should definitely share ideas with him. =)

I discussed my research plan with my supervisor, Mark Chignell. I described the waterfall-ish division of time that I blogged about yesterday, and was relieved when he suggested that instead of holing myself up in a library and reading everything that's ever been written about the topic, I should instead capitalize on my strength at prototyping things. I can build all these little systems and watch what people do with them. When I see something unusual, then that's the time for me to go and figure out a theoretical framework to use in order to explore and evaluate the situation. How nice it is to have a research supervisor who knows how much I like to hack—and how hard I sometimes find it to focus on something purely theoretical!

He also told me that he'd be happy if I could go for maybe one conference and one journal paper. That'll probably be CSCW, then. This means I don't have to worry too much about breaking my project into publishable things. Think simple master's thesis, not PhD dissertation.

My original plan was to be almost done by April of next year. He thinks that's doable but ambitious, and that we'd both be better off (read: less stressed) if I target June instead. From his experience, masters students generally take two months to finish writing - April and May. I need to have something reasonably promising by October in order to convince IBM to keep funding me. My nearest milestone is August 17, the intern day at the Cambridge lab: must have something cool to talk about then.

Mark also suggested that I take his statistics course ("Every educated person should know statistics"). Knowing my interest in business, he also suggested the course on the business of software. I wouldn't mind crossing over into Rotman for a business course, although it's also offered under CS.

The last meeting was with Steve Easterbrook, Greg Wilson and Mark Chignell. We talked about CASCON. I like Greg's suggestion of a Ruby on Rails + mashups hands-on session that leads naturally into a student-oriented Hack Night. That would be great! I'm excited again. =)

If all my meetings could be like the ones I had today... wow!

On Technorati: research, cascon

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Planning

Mon, 31 Jul 2006 22:04:00 +0000

Here's what I need to do:

I need to come up with a list of calls for papers for conferences related to my research area. This provides me with an incentive to write.

I need to sit down with Mark Chignell, my research supervisor, to review my research plan and the calls for papers and to break my plan down into smaller milestones. This gives me a concrete action plan. Then I can schedule next actions.

If I can break it down into really small milestones in the beginning, then I'll get a better sense of how much work I can accomplish. I would like to be done with my research before Christmas, so that I can relax without having to coordinate with IBM. Ideally I would also have it all practically written up, just waiting to be translated into "scholarly writing". I can use my internal blog and podcast to think things through.

So here's a coarse sketch of a potential schedule:

Ideally, I'd like to commit the equivalent of two to three days of focused work each week for the rest of August, which leaves me time to prepare for the future and build other competencies. I remember that a former roommate of mine concentrated on her research and studies, and ended up without job offers because she hadn't done enough networking or exploration. I'd like to finish my master's with a good background in research into social computing, but I also want to be ready to be useful to small or large businesses.

I'll take classes from September to December. I'm planning to take two courses and audit a few more to expand my mind. I need to take one more MIE course, and the CS course on requirements engineering has been highly recommended. October or November can be my main data gathering month.

So: August is for reading papers, gathering background information, and learning as much as I can about the theoretical framework and how to measure the effects of an intervention. September is for analyzing the collaboration technologies against the framework chosen, and selecting a factor to modify. I may need to code a fair bit—the actual intervention plus the instrumentation I need to measure the change, so I'll probably use October to set up the experiment. I'll run the experiment in November, and work on polishing my writing in December.

My Christmas break will be a *real* break. I don't want to do IBM-related things then, aside from perhaps an evangelism talk or two at IBM Philippines. ;) I want to reconnect with family and friends, make new friends, and develop business opportunities.

Then I can come back to Canada, finish writing up my paper, have my committee review it (although I hope they'll be involved at each step), and revise it as needed. Once I finish that, there might not be that much point in going for an internship instead of a proper job, so I'll probably start looking for leads in January and aim to finish in April. Although I'd like to be able to bridge worlds and that probably means finding a good place to work in North America, it won't be a huge tragedy if I don't manage to get a good job offer lined up. There's much for me to do in the Philippines, and I might come back and join Exist or QSR or something like that. Besides, the Philippines has its perks. ;)

Yes, I could've done this earlier, but it was also important for me to immerse myself in the culture and to form ties with people who can help me find out how to go about doing this. =)

Yup, definitely sounds like a plan.

On Technorati: research

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Focus

Mon, 31 Jul 2006 21:30:00 +0000

My research manager told me that I've been conditionally approved for VPN access, which would allow me to access IBM resources without having to go all the way up to Markham (1-1.5 hour commute one way). This access will be revoked if they feel that I'm getting distracted by all the cool things I can do within IBM, such as organizing CASCON 2006. They asked me to promise to use the VPN only for things that are directly related to my work. Sounds good to me. =) In fact, it sounds like exactly what I need. For the next few weeks—months, even—I'll be in heads-down single-tasking mode when it comes to IBM. I'll keep a research plan somewhere (possibly a password-protected page on this wiki) and post regular updates on my internal blog, and at all times my research managers will know what my next action is and what I'm waiting for. I might need to give up a few things as part of scaling back my involvement in IBM. I have a lot of opportunities to help define IBM 2.0 and move it forward, but the IBM Center for Advanced Studies pays for my graduate studies, and so they have dibs on my IBM mindshare. I can think of my research as almost a contract. If they're happy with my proposal, then I can scope it, schedule it, do it, and be done. I'm not too worried about missing out on opportunities. Evangelizing social software within IBM, supporting networking at CASCON, improving the experience of social computing: these all point to goals that I can achieve through other means at other times. When I'm ready to take advantage of these opportunities again, they'll reappear. In the meantime, focusing on my work and treating it as a time-sensitive contract allows me to separate it and free up brainspace for a few other things I'd like to do, like writing and establishing an external reputation. This is better for me in the long run, too. That way, I finish my graduate studies ready to take on problems at different scales: from 300k-person enterprises to smaller gigs. A minor downside is that I won't be able to claim a living allowance: it certainly adds up, particularly if you think about compounded interest over a long period of time. If I manage my time wisely, though, I might be able to make it worth it in the long run. For example, if I can convert three hours of sleepy commuting or relaxed RSS reading into three hours of focused writing time each day, that can lead to a lot of opportunities in the future. Getting rid of time constraints can also mean that I'll eat better (hello, breakfast!) and cheaper (hello, kitchen!). The opportunity to schedule coffee breaks with people here will also help me plug further into the local tech scene. I'm trading money for flexibility, and I think I can make it worth it. As for IBM networking: I can do that through the Greater IBM initiative. They're externally hosted, so I don't need to use the VPN for that. What about the internal networking, the real-time collaboration I enjoyed and occasionally found useful? I'll just have to trust that people have a good enough sense of what I'm interested in and that I'm discoverable by people who might be interested in my research. Personal referrals will probably do the trick. What might I miss out on? The IBM CAS experience, I suppose: chalk talks, lunches with random people, cups and cups of hot chocolate... I won't be one of their face-to-face Connectors, but that's okay; someone else can take that role. Most of the people I connect with are scattered around the world, so VPN won't make much of a difference. I can promise not to initiate conversations that aren't directly related to my research, and try to minimize unrelated conversations initiated by others. VPN access might also include the expectation of greater availability, the way man[...]

Productive week!

Sat, 08 Jul 2006 05:31:00 +0000

I've made a lot of progress on nailing down my research topic. Yes, yes, I know, I keep saying that, but this time my research supervisor and I actually have step-by-step plans for my study! Whee!

Happy girl.

On Technorati: research

Random Japanese sentence: 私は猫がその犬を追いかけているのをみた。 I saw a cat running after the dog.

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Blah

Mon, 05 Jun 2006 21:01:00 +0000

One of the things I need to learn is how to write when I don't feel like it. Today was a pretty blah day. I fixed the bug in my visualizations, took a couple of screenshots, and sent the results to my research supervisor. I met someone for lunch. I puttered around a bit with some drafts for an article that I've been meaning to write for a few months now. Argh. I can understand why the article's so important, but I'm gettig paralyzed by the thought of my words being in print! Uneditable! Gasp, gasp. I really should just whack myself over the head and tell myself that as long as I get _something_ in, that's better than nothing. This is not alwys true, of course, but it generally is. Life is about showing up. I need to break that article down into even smaller things. Lots of little blog posts on my internal blog, if I have to. As long as I get it done. The other trick I need to learn is keeping a whole bunch of ideas that I love writing about. I breezed through the ten speeches for the Competent Communicator certification because I had so many things I'd been wanting to talk about. If I have a file with all sorts of things I can write longer pieces on, then I can almost always write about something I'm passionate about - whatever that passion is at the moment. I know! Maybe I need to stop looking for interesting people and start surrounding myself with the most uninteresting people instead. ;) That way, I'll be sure to be the first person in the lab each morning and the last to leave it each night. Right. Must learn how to hack this. I need to be more in the mood to write, and I need to have the discipline to write even when I'm not quite in the mood to do so. On Technorati: writing, research, ibm Random Japanese sentence: Ａ ｓｐｏｔ ｏｆ ｓｈｕｔ−ｅｙｅ は、また猫のいねむりともいわれている。猫は１度に２〜３分しか寝ない癖があるからだ。 "A spot of shut-eye" is also called a cat nap because a cat is in the habit of sleeping only a few minutes at a time. Read the original or check out the comments on: Blah (Sacha Chua's blog) [...]

On the way home after a late night

Sat, 03 Jun 2006 02:56:00 +0000

I'm starving and my hands are a little bit weak. I've had nothing but hot chocolate since lunch, too pressed for time to even raid the vending machines near the cafeteria. The data I needed for my paper only came in today, and with deadlines for both the CASCON paper and my article on social bookmarking for the lab newspaper, today was... well... challenging. =) It didn't help that I spent most of the morning puttering about the blogosphere, welcoming people in and updating my blog. I knew I was supposed to work on the social bookmarking article and I had bits and pieces of what I wanted to say, but I couldn't quite sit down and do it. On Monday, I think I'll get that out of the way before I even start catching up with the blogosphere. Yes, yes, way too much hacking. Along the way, I'd installed a few more extensions for my browser, including one that made it easier for me to paste some boilerplate into textareas (good for blog newbie tutorials). I wanted to chat with other IBM student bloggers at lunch, so I wrote a quick and dirty Ruby script that generated an OPML file given a set of e-mail addresses so that I could import that OPML file into my blog reader. I turned up only three bloggers, though: me, Pranam, and Kevin. Oh well. We'll get there eventually... Even the fresh data I received distracted me. I couldn't wait to slice and dice it in interesting ways! It was a good thing that Mark scheduled a 3:00 phone call in order to check up on me. (Yay fantastic research supervisor!) He reminded me about the CASCON deadline, but also reassured me that it was doable and that he was around to help. =) David also called me up to talk about some complications in the data set. We figured out how to deal with some missing data, and I think the workaround we came up with was okay. Then I went back to 1panicking. Fortunately my editor moved the deadline for my social bookmarking article to Monday so I could concentrate on my research. So all I had to do was code the visualizations. I felt myself performing a bit more sluggishly than I'm comfortable with - too little sleep, not enough food - but I slogged through it anyway. Fortunately I knew enough Ruby to squish the data into a form I could easily work with, and I had learned enough about the Prefuse visualization library to add filters to the dataset, allowing me to get snapshots of the data. Yay. So that worked out. My timing was perfect, too. I dumped screeshots into (gasp) a Microsoft Word document, blogged a couple of interesting things on my internal blog, and ran to catch the bus. I waited around five minutes for the bus - ompletely anxious, of course, as those buses run only once an hour! So now I'm on a bus - the second on this trip - a little bit weak - I really should always bring emergency food in my backpack - but I'll be fine. The coding was almost fun, even, playing around with Ruby for text processing and Java for visualization... On Technorati: ibm, research Random Japanese sentence: この種の猫にはしっぽがない。 The tail is absent in this type of cat. Read the original or check out the comments on: On the way home after a late night (Sacha Chua's blog) [...]

Telecon

Wed, 31 May 2006 04:42:00 +0000

I was panicking all morning because I didn't have the teleconference details for something at noon, but fortunately I remembered that I could e-mail a friend in IBM and ask him to send a message to the teleconference organizer. I then used Skype to call in for free. Hooray for Skype! Voice quality is a bit variable, but it does the job, and it's saved me from getting another phone line...

I'm so excited about the tagging panel. It looks like such an interesting lineup!

On Technorati: tagging, ibm, research

Random Japanese sentence: 飼い猫の毛のつやが悪くなった。 Our cat's fur has lost its luster.

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Too hot, too cold, just right

Tue, 23 May 2006 18:19:00 +0000

I sent Mark a draft of my paper, summarizing a number of research papers on innovation diffusion and technology diffusion and reading them in the context of blogging and social bookmarking. He sent me back a polite but firm reminder that this is for a conference and I don't have to burden my paper with too much of a review of related literature. I should focus on my results. I was so worried about that because the paper was originally supposed to have been my reading course paper, and the objective for _that_ would have been to demonstrate that I'd actually read the stuff I'm supposed to have read. Mark says I should focus on discussing the results, though. I'm not sure how interesting the results are, but maybe it'll be clearer after a 20-minute nap...

Well, third version's the charm, and I'm lucky to have a supervisor who makes tons of helpful comments.

...

Okay, I need to head over to IBM tomorrow and get more data.

On Technorati: research

Random Japanese sentence: 私が出掛けている間、猫の面倒をみてください。 Please look after my cats while I'm away.

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Up early

Mon, 22 May 2006 10:18:00 +0000

I'm up at 6 on the last day of a long weekend, _and_ I'm reading research papers. =) I hope Mark's happy. You know, this waking up early thing is actually kinda fun...

On Technorati: research

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Bestest research lab evar

Fri, 19 May 2006 02:23:00 +0000

My research supervisor and my labmates are totally awesome. They listened to me freak out about impending doom and told me that I can figure things out somehow. =)

On Technorati: iml, research

Random Japanese sentence: 弟は猫を花子と名づけました。 My brother named his cat "Hanako".

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I am so dead

Thu, 18 May 2006 19:49:00 +0000

My mind's just blanking out. There's no way I'm going to finish a credible draft of this paper within the next 20 minutes. I've been thinking about it all day, but... this just isn't what I had done my initial reading for, and the lack of background is really biting me.

My technology diffusion visualizations were born out of an afternoon of play, a direction I took during a random walk. For some reason, Mark liked it. Now I find myself scrambling madly to learn about innovation diffusion theory. (Hooray, Everett Rogers!)

My reading notes are all about bookmarking and its personal and social benefits. Maybe I can still work that in somewhere, but bookmarking isn't the main focus of the paper, and I need to fill in a lot more back story.

Should I have skipped all the afterparties and focused on this? My sense is that in the long run, that networking will be of much use. (Although perhaps I could've skipped mush...) Now if only it didn't take me so long to get back on track.

If Mark was looking over my shoulder, he'd probably tell me to stop blogging and concentrate on writing my paper instead. Unless I manage to unblock my mind, though, it's going to be pretty hard for me to make sense of the papers and write a coherent submission.

My problem is that I've been giving him all of these half-papers: teams, personal benefits for social bookmarking, etc. - but we keep changing my topic after I pass them. I'm sure all of these paper fragments lying around the place will be useful someday, but it's incredibly frustrating having to keep branching out.

I feel like such a research failure...

On Technorati: :(, research

Random Japanese sentence: その猫は好かれている。 The cat is liked.

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