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CCCCs, Part 1: Prelude to a conference

Greetings from Chicago! A few pre-conference thoughts before I get back to grading:

  • We’re staying at the Congress Plaza Hotel for this thing. I would have preferred to stay at the Palmer House, which is the conference hotel for the CCCCs and STC (which is where my roommates Bill H-D and Steve B are right now), but when that filled up, we ended up here. We were warned by many a WPA-L writer not to stay here.
  • There are at least two problems with the Congress Plaza. First, the local hotel workers union has been on strike here for literally years. I don’t really know what the status of the strike is, but last night, I saw a picket sign propped up on a garbage can, and this morning I saw a few picketers. I don’t like crossing the line, but I also need a place to stay, so….
  • What I do know is that the Congress is a kind of run-down, older, city hotel, but other than that, it seems fine. The service so far has been good, we have a large room/quasi-suite, etc.
  • Internet access has been a problem, and it might continue to be so for the whole conference. The Congress Plaza charges $7.50 a day for wifi, and that’s only available in the lobby of the hotel. This morning, I did find a Panera’s just two blocks away, and but that’s kind of a mixed bag. I did get the wifi connection to work eventually, but it was a frustrating half-hour or so.
  • I think I forgot my microphone for my iPod, which really sucks. I had hoped to record some podcast kinds of comments from the conference tomorrow, but unless I left the microphone in my car (which is completely possible), it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. Oh well….
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Scott McCloud Rocks!

This is a belated post about the Scott McCloud presentation on campus on Monday night, late because I left for Chicago and the CCCCs first thing Tuesday. But in any event, McCloud’s spiel was great. I was hoping to link to some sort of news story about it, but I can’t find one at the Eastern Echo or the Ann Arbor paper; it might be too early for the Echo…

It was a huge crowd, pretty much a full house in the union ballroom, an interesting mix between typical EMU students/faculty and area comic geek/enthusiasts. And the crowd was part of the show, at least for me. One of my grad students (this was our “class” for the week) told me that a young person in front of him “would shoot his arms high in the air with the double devils-head ‘rock-n-roll’ hand sign every time he saw or heard something he liked.” Another grad student said something like “With all these people here, I bet it’d be tough to get a game of Dungeons and Dragons going in Ann Arbor tonight.”

McCloud’s presentation, which (of course!) involved hundreds of PowerPoint slides, was basically divided into three parts. The first was about a new book he has coming out in September, a book he’s clearly excited about, and one that sounds pretty interesting, too.

Then he talked about I guess what I would describe as his “philosophy� of comics, which is too complicated to try to explain here, but which involved (evolved out of?) a lot of his own background, which is quite interesting. McCloud’s father, who was literally a rocket scientist, was (is?) legally blind. And weirdly, McCloud lived in a neighborhood that seemed to be weirdly populated with kids who would group up to end up working as comic book artists, graphic novel writers, and children’s book illustrators.

Then he talked about his concept of the “infinite canvas� and comics, particularly about comics on the web. Essentially, McCloud talked about how the technology of print is responsible for the way that we have traditionally read comics and thought about things like panels. The cool thing with the web (not to mention high-speed access and software like flash) is that a lot of those rules can either go out the window entirely or at least be questioned in some interesting ways. And he had some super-cool examples to show too.

All in all, a great show and in interesting talk.

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Cool Comic Maker

Steve's comic

This isn’t quite how I feel (but close, I suppose). Anyway, the thing that’s really cool here is a page called stripcreator, which I found via a student in my online 328 class.

Oh, and this reminds me that Scott McCloud is speaking tonight; more on that later….

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Not 40 yet party a successful kick-off to my “birthday week”

One thing that I regret from my “not 40 yet” birthday party last night was I forgot to get out my digital camera and snap some picts. Just as well I suppose, since the crowd that was here last night, mostly fellow faculty members and teachers at EMU, isn’t exactly the kind of people who like to have pictures of themselves partying circulating out in the blog-o-sphere or in places like MySpace or Facebook.

Though as an aside, wouldn’t that be kind of funny? I’m telling ya, if parents out there scared of MySpace of Facebook or whatever really want to stop the kids from using those things, the smartest thing they could do is start posting stuff there themselves. Because once the “grown-ups” start using those things, it is so un-cool.

Anyway, we had a great time. A few memories/thoughts/recollections in no particular order:

  • My friends from way WAY back in the day, Troy and Lisa, were able to make it all the way from Chicago. Well, they were actually coming from Lansing, where they were visiting family, and we were kind of a convenient pit-stop. But it was fantastic that they were able to make it. I’ve known Troy since seventh grade, I’ve known Lisa since high school, I was the best man at their wedding, etc., etc. Good times, and it was great they could be here.
  • Lots and lots and LOTS of food, too much food, it turned out. Spinach pie, jalepeno poppers, onion fritters, cheeses, veggies, sushi, dips, chips, cookies, etc., etc., etc.
  • I got a few cool gifts, even though I wasn’t asking for any. Carol and Clayton gave me a lovely picture book/poetry book; Cheryl gave me a nice plant; a number of people gave me various alcoholic beverages (I’m not sure exactly what that’s supposed to say).
  • I got a few fun/funny/goofy gifts, too. Laura gave me this old inspirational/advice book from the 1930s called Life Begins at Forty. Oddly, there appears to have been a movie made of this book. Christine H. gave me some cards, which she informed me were a “re-gifting” item, and she also gave me some sort of Asian dried food product in a bag that she thought was attractive. The food product served as a fine party game at the end of the evening. Everyone left tried one in order to guess what it was; this morning, sober and in better light, it seems to me like they are some sort of date. I thought they tasted vaguely like petroleum.
  • Rachel brought a cake that she baked. It was quite yummy, and I was able to cut it up and distribute it and avoid the singing of “Happy Birthday.”
  • The kids, sent to their own “party” in the basement, broke into a stash of fruit roll-ups. Rather amusing.
  • I drank plenty and had lots of fun, but to tell the truth, I am more “tired” than hung-0ver from my excess. Which is good.
  • Without sounding all hokey about it all, nights like last night give me comfort in that Annette and Will and I have a lot of good friends.

Like I said, an excellent start to birthday week. I say “birthday week” because it seems to me that one day is not nearly enough time to celebrate a birthday. Frankly, I would prefer a “birthday month” (Lisa told me at brunch this morning that a friend of hers was trying to advance the concept of the “birthday year” celebration– that might be going too far), but Annette wasn’t going for that, so a week seems like a fair compromise.

And practically-speaking, it really is a “birthday week.” I’m going to be at a conference from Tuesday to Friday of next week, and much of that adventure will basically be a party, and I’m hoping to celebrate my “real” birthday on Saturday with the family here. That’s a week right there.

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Krause's Pre-CCCC Podcast

Here’s a brief podcast wherein I share a few thoughts about the upcoming CCCCs.

Three additional things:

  • The title of my talk is “Broadcast Composition: Using Audio Files and Podcasts to Build Community and Connections in Online Writing Classes.”
  • The software that I was talking about not getting to work is Profcast. Hopefully, it’s something I’ll be able to figure out later, but not before I am off to Chicago. Though I just figured out that the software developers are in Ann Arbor; maybe I can just stop by and ask.
  • I forgot to mention in my podcast that I really like the CCCCs quite a bit. Unlike MLA, where the general mode is formal and job-seeking, the CCCCs is casual and happy. Sure, a few schools interview there, but not many (and I hope it stays that way). And given that the job market in composition and rhetoric is considerably better than in most of the fields popular at MLA, I suppose there is a better vibe at the CCCCs based on professional and financial stability.

Anyway, I’m ready for the Chicago adventures…. almost….

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Stupid Hawkeyes

No time to write right now– I’m preparing for my pre-40 birthday party (details coming soon, I am sure)– but I just had to post something about the stupid Iowa Hawkeyes who are out of the NCAA tourney in the first round for the second time in as many years.

Stupid Hawkeyes.

Since they won the Big Ten championship and looked to be playing well, I figured, hey, what the hell, I’ll pick ’em to go all the way to the final four. Messes up my brackets good. Actually, the same kind of messing up appears to be the case with lots of brackets of big ten fans, what with MSU and Wisconsin losing, too. Still, I say:

Stupid Hawkeyes.

There’s rumors about that Alford is going to go to Indiana. That’d be okay with me. It might make the Hawkeyes less, uh, stupid.

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Blogging as a "career?"

One of my students in my Writing for the World Wide Web page tipped me off to this the other day:

The U.S. Department of Labor puts out what I believe is an annual report called the Occupational Outlook Handbook. I recall this being the sort of thing you looked at when you went to the high school guidance counselor’s office to get ideas about what you wanted to do when you grew up; it was on paper in those days, of course.

Anyway, if you look under the entry for “writers and editors,” you will eventually come to this passage:

Bloggers write for the Internet. Most bloggers write personal reflections on a subject of close personal or professional interest. Some blogs take the form of a personal diary; others read like reports from the field—first-hand, subjective accounts of an event or an activity. Most blogs are written for recreational reasons with little expectation of earning a fee; however, some blogs promote a business or support a cause and may generate interest or income through other activities.

Well, sort of. There usually isn’t money in blogging, but I’m not sure it’s recreational exactly.

Actually, a search on monster.com with the key-term “blog” does turn up a surprising number of jobs. The problem is that most of them are on the computer-geek side of things– design an interface, be the software engineer for, etc. No ads that say something like “Seeking the random thoughts– sometimes useful, often times not– of a middle-aged academic blogger. Low six figures. Pseudoanonymous identity bloggers will be considered.” And so forth.

I guess I’ll keep looking….

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A writing/exercise tally: not a bad idea for me, too….

On Clancy “CultureCat” Ratliff’s blog, I noticed this morning she’s keeping a tally of her writing and exercise patterns. Not a bad idea linking writing to working out, especially while working on the dissertation.

I remember when I was in the midst of that project— wow, I just realized, this was ten years ago to the month (I am getting old!)– I didn’t take this approach. I just ate and ate and wrote and wrote and generally did not take care of myself. I was in even much worse shape than I am right now, and that’s saying something; the workload this term has made the gym seem like a distant memory.

Sigh….

Well, maybe I’ll get some exercise walking to and from my hotel to the Palmer House in Chicago.

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Pray-Harrold: the web site

As I discovered today via this comment left on my blog by the president of EMU’s student government (Bobby– just send me an email!), student government has put together a web site called “Pray-Harrold Needs YOU!”

If you’re an EMU/Michigan local, it’s worth checking out because it more or less sums up the long and on-going saga of EMU getting the money for this project. I appreciate the effort, though to be honest, this is the sort of thing that should have been done (maybe by student government, certainly by the EMU-AAUP and/or just the EMU administration) a couple of years ago. After all, it is beginning to look now like we might actually get some of the funds in this year’s budget cycle.

It does remind me though of the importance of being careful what you ask for. Pray-Harrold construction is going to be, ah, “disruptive,” to say the least. And when all is said and done, they’re really only talking about significant remodeling of the first four floors, which means the extent to which this is going to impact my department (our offices are on the sixth floor, and we teach lots of classes up there too) is debatable.

In the meantime, check out the web site.