Here's a complete overview of the academic ("for homework") side of Meta Be Bold. To recap: Sumana Harihareswara let me document her awesomeness (the creation of a keynotefor Open Source Bridge) for a mini-research project for a qualitative methods class. The keynote is titled “Be Bold,” hence this mini-research project’s name: “Meta Be Bold.” This blog post and the things it links to serves as my second research journal.
This project started with the intent to look at the topic of Sumana's keynote, which is self-efficacy (or the lack thereof) in FOSS communities. I ended up having to spend most of my project time explaining the process by which we were doing this exploratory work, and the context within which we were doing it, and I'd like to turn the focus back to the keynote itself. (In other words, if this were the start of a larger research project, the content linked-to in this blog post would serve as the raw materials for an opening chapter called "Context.")
  1. I would first look at my first research journal, which contains a brief orientation to the project followed by the raw data (an interview, an observation, and a document) and brief memos about each of the three.
  2. I would then take some time to sift through the current etherpad document where the talk is being written and commented upon and form my own judgments before going on to blog posts that compose most of the second research journal.
  3. Having prepared in this way, I would read about the first-generation coding scheme used in this project, then the three themes that emerged: buddy boundary work, improvising multitasked physicality, and publicly performed symbiosis.
  4. The link for the last theme also contains thoughts about the past and future of the project; I might consider those separately from the themes themselves.
  5. Finally, I would go back to the keynote etherpad and start leaving suggestions and comments there that might be useful for Sumana's keynote.

Everything is licensed CC-BY-SA, so have fun exploring. It's a rough, freewheeling romp; we're still in the "play!" phase and never quite moved out of it (or needed to) during the 2.5 weeks of the project, so there are plenty of opportunities for future polish if people wish to pick them up. Let us know what you think!