from Denver

This post comes from Denver where I am currently attending the annual AERA conference. I'm sitting up in my hotel room - it's pretty cold and from the window of this room I can see mountains that have snow on them (although they are in the distance).

I always find AERA a pretty demanding conference although try to make the best of the opportunities that being here affords. This arvo I attended a very good presentation on Doctoral Research. I am a new member of the SIG and so will try to attend as many presentations as possible. There seem to be a few Australians who are members and so attending the presentations and the SIG business meeting allows me (perhaps to meet some of those folk). More broadly, I am interested in the experiences of other academics whose teaching (and research) is focused on the doctoral experience.

More mundane things that being at AERA presents? It always has to be coping with jet lag. My first evening was fine because I was so sleep deprived that I slept like a log. Last night (and the second night in the US) was a different story. At 4 am I was still awake. It's an awful feeling and certainly doesn't help concentration during the day. I expect another bout of sleeplessness tonight and then I will be okay.

Denver seems like a pretty nice place. It reminds me a bit of San Diego but that is probably because of the trams and the fewer numbers of highrise buildings. I hadn't realised that it is a mile-high place so some of us have experienced a little shortness of breath. I was glad to find out that cos having a heart attack was my first thought when I experienced it!

on the move

Today sees me back in Brisbane. I'm heading towards AERA. This conference has become somewhat of an annual event for me. This will be my fifth year in a row and because of the conference I've experienced something of San Francisco (2006), Chicago (2007), New York (2008) and San Diego (2009). The cycle that AERA attendance generates has been a very useful one for me -so far I'm managed to publish something each year as a follow up to the conference.

This year I'm presenting two co-authored papers on transcription. One is with Robyn Brandenburg and is for the self-study SIG and the second is with Teresa Moore and is for the Qualitative Research SIG. I'm looking forward to getting those presentations done, catching up with some folk and seeing a bit of Denver.

I left Wagga early this morning and it took two flights to get to Brisbane. I'm staying at the Royal Albert, an old favourite. I've just had a glass of wine and a vegetarian moussaka in the restaurant that sits under the hotel. it's a warm evening here and it was very pleasant.

Tomorrow I will meet up with Teresa and we will make out way to Denver via LA. on the way we hope to work on our powerpoint presentation. We have only 10 minutes for our talk and then 20 minutes of questions. It's going to be interesting. our paper examined transcription in PhD theses informed by grounded theory, phenomenography, critical discourse analysis and conversation analysis. it was only a pilot study but threw up some interesting findings in relation to how researchers address transcription. I hope others will find it interesting when we present in Denver.