West Portal Reflections #5, August 24, 1997
West Portal Director of the MSU Communication Technology Laboratory
West Portal Reflections document my experiences as I try to open a portal to Northern California for Michigan State University. They are targetted to my teams in the Comm Tech Lab and Virtual University, to my close colleagues and bosses throughout Michigan State University, and to close friends and family. These pages serve as ethnographic documentation of my participant-observation research on TeleRelating ("using technology to sustain and enhance close personal relationships"). The contents mix professional and personal life because I am reaching out 2500 miles to people I care about and work with. I hope my reflections help you to keep me in your hearts and make San Francisco a place that is yours. Thanks for journeying with me as I think, learn and experiment.
A surprise rainstorm this week made the front page of the newspaper. Apparently it NEVER rains here in August, even though most August days begin with fog. The headline read "Freak storm shocks residents." I did not know enough to be shocked! It rained for part of one day.
In the morning leaving West Portal, it is foggy. Get on the Muni and ride 10 minutes to downtown San Francisco, and there are blue skies with Windows '95 type little white clouds flying by. I prefer the fog.
Last week I switched to an index system and added graphics to the West Portal Reports. I finished the Children's Garden pages and helped VU get ready for fall semester. I hired two people remotely. I also did a lot of waiting by the phone/email for about 9 people to return my messages. There was only one day last week I really felt like crying, wondering if anyone would call back, and wondering if I could do it.
Then suddenly it seemed easy and I felt ready to meet with people. I knew some of what I wanted to say, and the rest I was ready to go in not knowing and solicit people's help in figuring it out. Phones and email returns began to show up.
On Monday I will be taking the Bart under the Bay to Berkeley to meet with the TeleEmbodiment blimp computer science lab. I read the book they suggested, America Calling, by their Berkeley collaborator/sociologist, in preparation for tomorrow's meeting.
Tuesday I meet with Charlie Holiday. Wednesday I plan to got to SFSU and then meet Richard Grove and Allison for dinner. Thursday and Friday still getting formalized. I heard back from Jamie Dinkelacker, now a Learning Architect for Netscape. We'll get together late next week.
I searched many web pages and made progress developing a conceptual framework for telerelating research. Sun Microsystems was the most encouraging of all, describing why they want to work with universities. Xerox Park also has formal visiting scientist and internship programs. HP is encouraging in their relatively new focus on innovation. IBM is overwhelming in the extent of their work.
The graphics below will be merged into one animated GIF changing into an IS-MAP off a West Portal link from the CTL home page:
In contrast to the Berkeley work on Teleembodiment, recreating as exactly as possible the human size and movement, on Friday I enjoyed teleDisembodiment at the Comm Tech Lab potluck. We used Timbuktu to connect me to the lab so that I could eavesdrop visually on the Virtual Carrie station screen. They were running CU See Me, in the self view mode, which allowed me to watch them watching themselves. When I wanted to, I could switch to the WebCam over on the other side of the room. I could speak into the speakerphone, and I could type in text that would be spoken by a computer voice from across the room. Had I chosen to, I could also have typed in text into the IChat Pager to engage in text conversations with any station in the room.
Susanna Tellschow again responded with a report of her own (http://commtechlab.msu.edu/humans/tellschow/report/report8-20.html).
I am beginning to define the scope of areas that touch on telerelating, and to collect research and popular press articles as I encounter them. I will be building a growing reference and notes page, but will also include things as I find them in the weekly reflections.
TELECOMMUTING. One obvious area that touches on issues of telerelating is telecommuting. The NYTimes had a telecommuting article last weekend (Speed Bumps on the Road to Telecommute") talking about characteristics of the work and worker that facilitate telecommuting.
CONVERSATION.Four different articles have come out recently in the NYTimes and SFChronicle about the importance of informal conversations in the workplace. These include the importance of small talk in general, the importance of impromput meetings, and the nature of where Americans hold meaningful conversations (home or work). A related interesting SFChronicle article showed a gender difference in the style of starting a conversation.
SPEECH INTERFACES. Research at Sun finds using natural conversational patterns improves speech user interfaces.
SHARED GRIEVING. I would not have thought of this had the article not appeared in NYTimes Cybertimes about Mourning the Dead in Cyberspace, but apparently grieving and funeral-related telerelating is quite successful.
SHARED MEMORIES AND EXPERIENCES. I discovered on Kodak's web site that they have two formal programs relevant to telerelating. One is called PhotoChat and the other is called Photo Post Cards and Albums. PhotoChat is to encourage digital camera owners to shoot lots of pictures and post them in a form much like these reflections. Other photography enthusiasts share the experience. Once a week, a guest photographer visits the site for a live chat and PhotoChat at 9pm eastern time on their web site. These are special instances of telerelating. Then the next day, I found a NYTimes article identifying several other online photo album companies.
John Canny at Berkeley wrote a concept paper about the X factor -- computing, communication and XXX (what do you call it?-- I call it telerelating...)
VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS. Michael was extensively quoted in a
New
Media article about the future of virtual reality. 
Here is our own branch of the public library, right beside the West Portal muni stop. How convenient! In the SF library web pages, they list 7 different online San Francisco Web resources. Each of which lists at least 10 more. My experiences here are much different than they would have been without the Web. I have and use tremendous information resources here.
The Castro Muni stop is 4 minutes from West Portal, making Tom's Peasant Pies just about as close a carryout stop as the shops rught on West Portal.
Also at the Castro exit is the Castro Theater --built by the same architect as the Paramount Theater in Oakland. Huge and outrageously ornate. On our way back from seeing "Contempt" starring Brigit Bardot, Sheldon and I passed a police officer, in uniform, sitting in the doorway of a shop with his head pressed against a padded bar. On closer look, he was being massaged while on duty...
Later in the week I showed Michael how to take the Muni, and we found The Patio in Castro to have lunch. Brought back a cherry-banana-chocolate pie to share with Sheldon. It's hardly fair to show Castro at noon when it is sleepy and quiet, rather than at night when it is bustling and wild.
Tonight was my first time walking through ChinaTown, despite my many visits to San Francisco. Shown here is the entryway, and a closeup of a stone lion guarding the gate. ChinaTown extends for blocks and blocks in multiple directions. Learn more about it from the IAH CD-ROM!
We went with 2 Russian mathematicians and a Russian family. Sheldon looked up Chinese restaurants in the Best of the Bay special issue of the SF Guardian. We followed where he led, walking almost to the end of Chinatown. At last we came upon the restaurant we sought. It was the only restaurant in Chinatown with a line to get in, and the line was at least 20 people deep . Oddly, no one in line appeared to be Asian. We sought the second best restaurant in Chinatown instead, and there was no line.
