Mike Oren.com

After much resistance, I finally started using Twitter a few weeks ago and now have about 150 'tweets'. Despite that, I'm still not quite ready to pass judgement on the service since I don't think I have enough (active/non-spam) followers to really be making proper use of the potential of the service. If anybody is interested in following me, my twitter page is http://twitter.com/mikeoren. I can see potential in the service, but only with an active group of followers and with limited use cases. Currently I am using it in probably a worthless way--mostly giving updates on what I'm up to, but part of that is just to get an active account going. Finding random 'local tweets' and replying to interesting ones has proven hit and miss as well. Following the CHI conference from a distance (to follow the progress of the student design competition--the Iowa State team got 3rd place, in case I forgot to mention that) proved to be semi-fruitful since through that I found somebody complimenting the Iowa State team on placing technology as secondary to actual user needs/desires--which was precisely the point we tried to hammer into people in 521 last semester (so it looks like that group got it, at least).

In other news, my abstract for the European Sociological Association annual meeting was accepted (but only as an oral presentation). I've also started prepping for the summer arrival of the research experience for undergraduates by looking into affinity research group literature and suggesting ways to improve the overall experience for the undergrads in ways that will help encourage their future research/graduate school pursuits. Not sure how many/if any of those suggestions will be incorporated into the program this summer, but I'm mostly pushing for the graduate student project mentors to play a more active role in serving as project managers and generally being more active than just providing technical support compared to the past efforts (at least what I'm aware of).