Ok, well I’m back. Not that I was holidaying it up or anything. I feel like I’ve spent the whole of December lying on my back in bed. First that little GI thing I got from my daughter and then the nasty sinus head cold that I’ve had for the last 5 days. Imagine cooking Christmas dinner for a houseful of guests, and walking 3 households worth of dogs like that. I’m better today, thanks.

Now I’m starting to think about January and February, and all of the competing responsibilities I have for the next few months.  See, I think I’ve taken on a lot….rather, I KNOW I’ve taken on a lot. Writing and teaching are going to be especially heavy in the next couple of months, and I’m always asking myself how much I can logically take on in any given time period, and of those tasks- where my efforts need to be focused most and what can get less attention, at least in the short term. There is triage going on in my head, and the triage is based first on what needs to be done to get grants goals accomplished and get grants renewed, and second on everything else.

Anyway, as far as getting grant goals going and grants renewed. I know that in order to get these things to happen I have to get the new people that I have hired up to speed and working, and I have to push out papers. I have 3 papers that I want to turn out relatively quickly, for one I have a nearly complete manuscript, for a second I have to motivate my postdoc to give me some text, and for the third I need to put my head together with my collaborators and we have to turn out a manuscript quickly or we are going to get scooped on the story. I’m DELIGHTED to have all this writing to do, writing about actual data, that is. It is this, and getting the lab moving now that I have filled up the group, that I really want to be doing. The fact that I want to be doing the writing makes it easy to have this as my top priority.

There are also lots of tasks that are less fun, or let’s say that I get less personal satisfaction from, that also need to be done.  I’m teaching here and there in various courses in the spring, and for two of these courses it will be the first time I am delivering the material. For one of the courses, taught out of my home department, I am taking over some established course material and I am charged with updating the content. I don’t find this fun (I’m not sure anyone does), but I know it needs to be done. For the second course there was a bit of a crisis and I decided to be a good citizen and help out. Now, I know what you are all saying… (you… VOLUNTEERED?…WTF)… but I think these things need to be done from time to time, and this teaching is in a department where I have a joint appointment- so it is a bit of calculated pay-it-forward.

This all seems pretty straightforward when you look at it from the research intensive faculty perspective. Individual research program first, teaching second. Right? But the problem with this is that this is not how the institution seems these responsibilities- or it is, at least, not how they talk about them. I hear about a bazillion hours of stuff in meetings on curricular redesign, how and where lecture hours are to be delivered, and the needs of the professional/undergraduate students, and absolutely zero on developing a strong research program and managing and running a productive group. I spend countless hours fighting for small amounts of resources, mainly facilities type resources, that are necessary for me to get research done- it just doesn’t seem to be a priority of the institution. Sometimes it feels like their triage is the exact opposite of my triage… theirs is teaching first research second… and mine is research first… teaching second.

A couple days ago I met up with my friend Taly to do a quick photoshoot for my 12+1 project (project with my high school friends). We were originally going to shoot at Newport Beach on the beach where she lives but as it was freezing, we changed plans last minute and decided to shoot at The Lab in Costa Mesa. It was a fun shoot since we had nothing planned at all and we just kind of ran over all over the place. The Lab is a great place to shoot since it’s so artistic and whimsical.

Christmas greetings and thanks go out to Adrian Barker at the IDeA who, in his blog, pointed out the existence of “The Challenge of Co-production” from David Boyle and Michael Harris published by NESTA, in cooperation with The Lab and nef.

Co-production is no stranger to this blog with some nine mentions of it in the recent past and two particular posts about it from January 2009, the first of which was entitled Co-production.

It’s some 25 pages of tight small print but is  a useful introduction to what might be done, without offering any solutions, but it does clearly point out some of the existing issues:

P.6 – “The ‘choice’ agenda has been at the heart of policy towards public services for most of the past three decades, but there is increasing doubt about whether it has succeeded in delivering what people actually want.”

P.7 – “The increasing use of consumer language has encouraged people to behave towards public services as they would towards any commercial supplier. Equally, by focusing entirely on people’s needs – rather than what they can contribute – services have tended to dissempower their users and have  done little to prevent needs arising in the first place.

P.8 – Reproduces definition of co-production from: Parks, R. B., Baker, P.C., Kiser, L., Oakerson, R., Ostrom, E.,Ostrom, V., Percy, S.L.,Vandivort, M.B., Whitaker, G.P., Wilson, R., (1981). “CONSUMERS AS COPRODUCERS OF PUBLIC SERVICES: SOME ECONOMIC AND INSTITUTIONAL CONSIDERATIONS.” Policy Studies Journal 9(7): 1001-1011. which states – “process through which inputs used to produce a good or service are contributed by individuals who are not ‘in’ the same organisation.”

In general a useful addition to the literature on co-production.

[ 1 ] From the outside, S.E. Studios in North Austin, Texas, looks just like a motel.

[ 2 ] …like a motel somebody might wanna break into?

[ 3 ] This is the front room, home to A.C. and Street Educated Productions. Do not try and steal A.C.’s stuff, just trust me on that one.

[ 4 ] Here we have the second room, where I like to work with Wes Sanders, DJ Knowledge and Bozzno.

[ 5 ] Bozzno aka Igor Da Bosnian, sleeping giant producer who crafted the sound of “Grind Over Glory” feat Chalie Boy, for example… mostly sketching to himself on this day.

[ 6 ] Wes Sanders, DJ and Engineer who has perfected the duo/blend styled remix. If you don’t know what I mean, then we still have a lot to learn about each other don’t we?!

[ 7 ] D.O.S. came thru to work on “Casual City” and such.

[ BB ] Questions, anyone?!

Saw this guy doing his thing last night at the Lab (16th and Capp). WTF dude, why don’t you play an instrument that actually exists?

But seriously, Jozef Van Wissem is the best one-of-those-players I have ever seen. According to Jozef’s wikipedia, the instrument is a Renaissance lute and his current approach is to write out traditional Baroque pieces backwards and add his own themes and variations. If I had to describe the sound, it’s like God barfing a golden slip-n-slide into James Hetfield’s brain while he’s vacationing at his summer home south of Tajikistan. Check out this vid of him that I recorded on my fashion/social accessory informationPhone:

The Lab, that place you never think about (oh yeah, that place!) on 16th and Capp, is hosting two awesome events this weekend:

First, Friday night!  Mi Ami party!  Dudes are putting out a new 12″.  The evening will also feature bearded boy wonder Tristes Tropiques.  Flyer below, but don’t stare too long; Magic Eye don’t work if you’re not relaxed.

Second, Saturday night!  A live Tetris Tournament!  They’re gonna project that shit on a wall and name a winner by the end of the night.  Music by Microfiche, White Cloud, and Middle D.

Below, a classic Tetris conundrum.  I leave it to you, reader, to solve.  See if you can figure out what to do with that next piece (hint: Zepler doubling isn’t the answer).

Okay, talk to you guys later!

Last night when I was putting littleA to bed we had the following conversation:

LittleA: Mommy, all of my friends are big sisters.
Me: Oh?
LittleA: Could you have another baby so I could be a big sister?

Yikes. Hey I already said no to the puppy- I love you kid, but a baby sister is out of the question.

But that’s actually isn’t the population I was thinking about for this post. I was actually thinking about the population of my lab, and that population IS increasing. See, my challenge right now that I’m not hotly grant writing in every free moment is to shift gears a bit. The lab population increase comes with a whole new set of challenges that I’m managing.

First, I have had to quickly grow the population of the lab to do the projects we are funded for. Making this happen is a bit tricky because different types of personnel have different challenges for recruitment, and take different levels of training. I chose to recruit postdocs and experienced technicians first. These guys require little training (at least in theory), and can hit the ground running. Speed to data is key for me. Graduate students take longer to recruit and take A LOT more training, and so there is a longer time for them to ramp up to speed. I have several doctoral students in my group already, and both of them are sort of in the mid-stages of their schooling- so they are already up and running. More students may yet come, but just not as the first priority.

I’ve been working hard at this, and the population of the lab has just about doubled in the last two months. This brings some challenges. First, we have the challenge of fitting twice the people in the same amount of space. We will manage with this, but we have actually managed to commandeer a little bit of extra space temporarily- this helps A LOT. More lab space is being sought on our behalf, for which we are deeply grateful. Second, we have the challenge of having enough support staff- by this I mean the very important people that keep the lab running, aka student workers. This hasn’t been too difficult, but having continuity and getting them trained quickly to be totally RELIABLE isn’t as easy as you would think.

Third, we have the challenge of the changing personality of the group. Having a whole bunch of new people, and several established people- it is important to me to make sure I set a good tone for everyone to help/teach everyone else, and that I make expectation that we treat each other professionally and with courtesy very, very clear. So far so good one this one, we’ve had only one slight hiccup- but I think it is really too early to tell how the personalities will mesh with each other. I totally expect to manage this actively.

Fourth, I have the challenge of a hugely increased administrative/accounting/and just plain paperwork burden. This could seriously suck up all of my time if I let it. I have >3 AUPs, and just collecting signatures and keeping the personnel lists current on those things is a time sucking exercise. I’m not covering all of the biosafety and other training that I am responsible for…. For all the newbies. I am managing this by delegating some of these responsibilities to the very important technician who runs things. As time goes on and she becomes more and more familiar with things, she can take on some of the onerous paperwork that I get to do for every compliance issue under the sun. Halleluja.

Finally, and most importantly- managing all the projects we have going. Too early to tell whether I’m doing a good job at this. For now, I give lab meeting like everyone else- but for me this happens every couple of months. In these lab meetings I go up to the board and we list out all the projects we have going, what experiments (both specific and general directions) need to come next, and who is doing what. I think it is important that everyone has an idea what is coming down the pike and when, especially because we have to work together on some of our experiments that require lots of hands. Plus, we just need to keep ourselves on track individually AND as a group on everything going on in the lab. I expect that as time goes on, postdocs in charge of particular projects will start participating more and more in this particular little briefing. In addition to this I am in the lab every day of the week, and at least once per week I talk to everyone in depth about their progress for that particular week, and what they expect to have done the following week- with deadlines wherever possible. I think that sometimes for postdocs and students grant renewal time seems like it is somewhere off in the distant fog of the future. I want to swiftly dispel that impression- because grant renewal is always closer than we think it is, and we need to publish, publish and publish some more… if we expect the federal government to give us some more $$.

Anyway, I’m sure that there are a whole lot more challenges that we will deal with as they come along- and I invite any and all of you that have grown your labs and had to manage this transition to enlighten me on what worked for you, what didn’t work for you….….

Interested persons can contact
Email: mayflowermh@gmail.com

MKGK

The masculine and feminine sides of your personality should be working together quite well today, dear Taurus.
The key is to keep the energy moving.
Try not to stagnate on any one issue. Use your words and your instinctive nurturing abilities to soothe the worries of others.
Actively direct your energy outward with the tender sensitivity that you possess within.
Your inner strength is one of your most valuable resources.

* JS *

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Over the course of the semester I have been working on a project for Whitney Sherman’s class, the Lab. My project is a desk calendar which displays snowmen “found” throughout the seasons. It has been a long and bumpy road, but I am finally starting to make some finalized progress.

Sam Weber

Sold! On Friday the 13th at 8pm, synth pop band Adonisaurus will join Tom Russotti and guest judge Fauxnique (Monique Jenkinson) for a Drinking and Dancing Competition at The Lab. Contestants must coordinate their cocktails with their dance, their partner and the music. And get this – the stronger the drink, the better you score! Therefore, dancing AND drinking skills are equally necessary. The Lab will provide beer, wine, vodka, gin, orange and cranberry juice, and Izze sodas on hand for dancers. I really can’t think of a reason you would want to miss this!