Last week I submitted my master’s thesis on civic production in live-streaming mobile video. Very exciting! Now I need to edit my Peru documentary and work on a collaborative web/multimedia project with a team in New York and apply for some art/culture/media research grants in Germany. Two years ago, sitting behind a desk in my fluorescent office, I never thought I’d soon describe my life in those sentences. My gratitude is unbounded.

1. I had my thesis defense today! A total breeze. Not much to fix. Making changes and turning in the final copy next week. Then turning the 140-page document into a 6-page journal article and publishing it somewhere to get a bit of aca-traction. I love my committee! I love MIT! I don’t want to leave! Oh wait, I’m not leaving…
2. I’m not leaving MIT immediately. Will stick around the Center for Future Civic Media at least through the summer, possibly longer, as I hunt for really excellent jobs in the EU.
3. I still really want to leave the country. Even though God has graced us with Mr. Obama. I have not given up on international travel; I will never give up.
4. After next week, I will spend one intense month finishing my Peru documentary. I’ll post it when it’s done so you can watch and be super bored/intrigued/amazed.
5. I still miss Peru.
6. Last night Studio Crux (me & DD) won “Best Non-fiction” for our Living Room Monologues at the CMS Annual Media Spectacle. Woo!
7. Things to do after graduation: find lucrative job; take Italian and German lessons (at the same time); consider taking pottery again; start swimming and playing tennis again; regain the emotional & spiritual equilibrium I apparently lost sometime in February.

I haven’t finished writing my master’s thesis yet, but here’s the presentation I gave on it for my Comparative Media Studies department:

1. Rogue Wave (band) is playing Boston in a few days. I got a ticket as my Valentine’s Day present, which is sehr exciting.

2. I’m sorry I’ve been neglecting this blog, but it’s thesis crunch time (and will be, for the next six weeks, and especially the next three weeks), so my advance apologies if I don’t write that often.

If you’re wondering what I’m writing my thesis about, I’ll give you some example sentences from my introduction, which I plan on finishing in the next few hours:

My thesis explores the overall trends in production of live-streaming mobile videos from producers around the world, and focuses more narrowly on the motivations and practices surrounding the production of civic content. I document production by both general users as well as those who self-identify as activists, journalists, educators and community leaders.

# # #

I lean on Henry Jenkins’ interpretation of civic media as that which fosters civic engagement, and I am looking at its production through what Ito and Okabe (2005) have called a technosocial approach, which uses anthropological analysis to interpret the technologies which underlie social activity.

Oh, sorry, did you fall asleep? Wait til I’m done the charts and graphs summarizing the data from my quantitative analysis of civic content! You can’t even HANDLE it!!!

3. I’m also getting married. In a couture yellow dress. In a brief, private ceremony which you’re not invited to. Or your mother. Or my mother. I’m really sorry, but it has to be this way. Don’t complain. You can come to the potluck party, once we schedule it.

In the digital poetry class I TA’d this semester, one student made a “SoundStage” for his final project, inspired by his activity in an a cappella group. I’ve urged him to turn into an iPhone app. Pretty awesome.

Mr. President O. came to campus today. I watched as his motorcade pulled up and the presidential limo pulled backwards into the back entrance of Kresge Auditorium, and then some people rushed out of the motorcade, and that was it. I was not invited to hear the speech because, ostensibly, I don’t study climate stuff.

HOWEVER, just before O. arrived, some other climate students did do an action as part of the global >350 (ppm sustainable carbon emissions goal) campaign, and I took part. The laptops are for techy-affect. I’m the one in the alpaca hat, por supuesto.

This is a neat flash poem made by one of my students for our ‘video/visual poem’ class assignment.

I pre-ordered a class ring today. Totally not the wisest financial decision I’ve ever made, but I wanted one. A gold one. Like my great Aunt Mary’s 1933 West Philadelphia High School class ring, which, at 91, she still wears. I also think sometimes it’s good to be reminded of all the hard work you’ve done and all the hard work you still need to do — and that you can indeed do it. When that reminder is on your hand, it’s hard not to notice. Too bad the beaver on this ring is so scary-looking.

In aca news, I finished my thesis presentation, and now I just have to actually start doing thesis research (hahahahahaha) and editing/translating my Peru documentary (with help by gracious people from Colombia, Mexico, and Spain, respectively) and conduct an interview and write a paper in the next 24 hours for business class (have I mentioned I love Sloan School of Management? That’s my dirty little secret of 2009) and finish a grant application for conference travel funds by tomorrow (have I mentioned I’m going to Berlin in January to present at the International Conference on Technology, Knowledge and Society? Because I am!) and write my fellowship proposal in the next week. And we also have a German couchsurfer arriving this weekend as well.

Life goes on, life continues to be fun, school continues to be overwhelming and fun, etc. Also I watched POINT BREAK in a fond homage to Swayze, and it was ridiculous. Vaya con Dios, bro.

I am quoting an NP song with this title, but it applies to the way I feel about my thesis. First of all, am supremely grateful for the assistance of my classmates, professors, DD, industry people and old and new friends for trying to help me navigate the murky waters of a thesis topic selection.

I am teetering between something strategic/interesting/political that would likely enable me to pursue employment with the EU (a case study on a UK e-gov/m-gov cross-platform model that has increased engagement to digitally divided populations) and something fun that draws on my multimedia and activist background (ubiquitous video and the redefinition of the public realm, as RG has termed it), which would look at the political impact of user videos shot from mobile devices and distributed online (for activist purposes or political documentation or whatever else) but which would also potentially pigeon-hole me into a lifetime of further work with iNGOs. Turns out it’s a lot easier to come up with a cool name for your imaginary thesis than actual research questions and theoretical frameworks.

If I freak out, I can always return to my original idea of measuring user perception of new m-parking initiatives in San Francisco. But that might be, as Abhi says, “really boring.” Also I have to do a presentation on my final idea in two weeks. Which, in the grand scheme of my MIT life, is the equivalent of two hours. But I am still grateful for those two hours, and all the people who haven’t completely given up on my intellectual abilities. Yet.