I’ve finally completed revisions on my prospectus! (Maybe later I’ll post about how hard it is for me to make and meet my own internal deadlines.) I’m pretty pleased with the general direction in which I’m heading, but of course there are myriad areas for improvement. I guess that’s why I have a committee - nothing like getting your hard-fought work ruthlessly critiqued by those who are older and wiser.

My working title is: How does being “always on” impact our experience at work?: Exploring continuous connectivity from an organizational communication perspective. Here’s a brief overview of my project (excerpted from the prospectus itself):

The list of significant information and communication technologies (ICTs) gets longer every year. As of right now, this list includes well-established technologies such as cell phones and email, as well as more recent innovations like Blackberries and the iPhone, instant messaging (IM), and increasingly ubiquitous wireless internet access. Together, these technologies form a nearly seamless web of connectivity, a state of perpetual contact, where an individual is “always on.”

With my dissertation, I seek to understand the implications of being always connected to the world via these technologies, with the ultimate goal of developing a model of being always on. We are quickly approaching the point of perpetual contact, where we can be reached at any time in any place, anywhere in the world. Cascio and Shurygailo (2003) refer to this as the “new paradigm of work—anytime, anywhere, in real space or in cyberspace” (p. 362). How does this state of being always on impact communication?

Technology use tends to fall along a continuum; some people cannot seem to ever turn their cell phones off, even when they are at home or on vacation, yet others refuse to buy a cell phone at all. Some people are required to keep phones or pagers on at all times because of their jobs, and others are constantly using their phones to project an image of status or importance. By talking to individuals at all points in the continuum of perpetual contact, from the non-users to the super-users, I will get a more comprehensive and complete view of the important issues of being always on. I want to learn how individuals make sense of being always on (or being always off). I want to learn about the positive and the negative effects. I want to know how this shapes their experiences at work, as well as how this affects their home lives. My ultimate goal is to develop a comprehensive model of being always on, from antecedents to processes to consequences.

This research has real implications to our everyday lives, both as members of organizations and as people living in contemporary society. These implications range from learning more about how to be productive at work to how to effectively communicate across physical and temporal distances, from how to manage a multitude of communicate technologies and an increasing amount of information to how to balance work and life concerns. These are issues all of us deal with every day, even when we are not at work. Understanding these issues can help us be more productive and more healthy.

Just because I like the feeling of accomplishment when I finish something, I figured I’d share this exciting news. I turned in a draft of my prospectus to my advisor today. It feels great to get that out of the way before I take a break for the holidays.

I’ll write more about the specifics when I get feedback from my advisor, but basically, I’m proposing a qualitative project exploring what it means to be always on. I’m going to do a ton of interviews, some observation and then a questionnaire. I’m pretty excited about it!

Wow, I need to post more than once a week! I’m working on it, really.

Anyway, as I get into my dissertation, I am both searching for and noticing a number of articles and resources on how to efficiently complete a dissertation. I’m using the del.icio.us tag “dissertation tips” to keep track of these resources and am happy to share them with you. Let me know if you have any good suggestions to add to my list!

I will also be sharing things that work for me throughout this process. In an Information Architecture course I took last spring, we spent a full semester strategizing about our own productivity. One thing I took from that discussion was the dissertation log. Every day, I will make some notes in this log that keep me on track, thinking about my project daily and most importantly, create a paper trail for me to reference later.

This is my first version of that log. Each day, I will write notes for myself on this page. I will start with hard copies that I keep in a notebook, but this may move to a dissertation wiki as the project continues.

So a year or two ago, I started an org comm literature wiki. Over the life of this wiki, it has gone from a personal experiment to a collaborative space where a colleague and I shared interesting and relevant articles for our research to my most useful citation management tool. I spent a great deal of time on the wiki this summer in preparation for my comprehensive exams. I am coming back to the wiki now to manage my prospectus and dissertation sources.

So I’m back from the annual meeting of the National Communication Association (in Chicago this year - one of my favorite cities, but so very cold in November that my thin Texas skin can’t take it). I tend to get easily worn out by these huge conferences and I never attend as many panels I as I tell myself I should. This year was no exception. I was pretty disappointed by some of the panels I attended, and that really wore down my resolve to attend more. I did hear some interesting papers about work/life balance, but some of the org comm technology papers were surprisingly boring or outdated. I am hoping that might motivate me to write a really awesome dissertation.

So now that Thanksgiving is winding down, I guess it’s time for me to get to work. I’ve set a deadline for myself that I’ll have a draft of my prospectus written by Christmas. That gives me one month. And this blog is going to be my public(ish) commitment to that deadline. I’m going to post frequent updates on my process and my progress in an effort to get and keep going. So here I go - I will deliver a prospectus draft in 26 days.

So, here’s my blog. It’s about time. This will be my space for ruminations on my research and teaching, the dissertation process and basically whatever piques my interest. Enjoy reading!