There was an interesting attempt at a discussion on the Anthrodesign mailing list recently as to what online ethnography actually entails. But the discussion never really seemed to get off the ground, and effectively had died by the time I posted my comment. So I thought I put it up here with a few adjustments:
Online [...]
Posts under ‘Thesis Fieldwork’
Online Ethnography
Opening the source
Now that I’ve officially finished my fieldwork, and with all the talk going on about Open Access Anthropology, I thought I’d try my own little Open Access experiment. I’ve decided to publish the question guide I’ve used for my fieldwork under the GPL. I’ve even indented and commented them in proper code fashion (or, at [...]
On Free Software Conferences
When I tell people that I do fieldwork among Free Software developers, I often try to relate it to more traditional anthropological ventures as a way to make it clearer to people what it is I do. Traditionally, anthropologists travelled to the part of the world that used to be colonized and lived among the [...]
What Bikeshed?
Mark Shuttleworth’s recent post on the new gaudy desktop prettiness of Ubuntu has received a good deal of interest and discussion (more than 130 comments and counting).
Pretty much all of that discussion was summed up in one of those comments:
# Murray Cumming Says:
October 25th, 2006 at 7:31 pm
The bikeshed is brown.
The bikeshed in [...]
Why we have anthropologists
Native speakers can rarely explain the grammatical rules of their own language. In the same way, those who are most ‘fluent’ in the rituals, customs and traditions of a particular culture generally lack the detachment necessary to explain the ‘grammar’ of these practices in an intelligible manner. This is why we have anthropologists.
– [...]
Ubuntu governance discussions
It didn’t take long for my specification on community governance best practices to be superseded by an avalanche of community and governance-related topics that are already approved for the upcoming Ubuntu Summit. Clearly, it is something the governing bodies have been meaning to put on the agenda for some time. And basically, it looks like [...]
Going to San Francisco!
After some deliberation, I decided to blow all of my remaining grant money plus a little extra to buy a ticket to the Ubuntu Developers’ Summit at the Google HQ in early November.
This is quite a big step, since I only just came back from three weeks of fieldwork in Ireland, England and Scotland and [...]
KDE signatures
One of the frustrations with being on the road doing my fieldwork is that I can’t be on-line often enough to keep a solid presence in the Ubuntu community or even on my blog.
The birthday consumption of my bottle of Danish herb snaps on my last night at the aKademy
resulted in seven KDE contributors signing [...]
Konference for Developers in Éire
I have arrived safely in Dublin’s fair city, and have found it harder than expected to find decent lodgings, due to the huge crowds drawn to some sporting event taking place outside of town. But I’ve found a modest hostel dorm bed, and are now waiting for the registration to begin for the aKademy conference [...]
Part of the tribe
Yesterday, I was approved for Ubuntu membership and am now an official member of the Ubuntu community. Becoming a member is just about the most formal procedure in the Ubuntu community, and it is still very, very relaxed.
New member candidates are approved at the Ubuntu Community Council meetings which are held every two weeks on [...]
I'm an anthropologist working as an 
