[Themaintainers] Doodle poll for a Maintainers reading group

[Ensmenger, Nathan]

Enough of you have expressed enthusiasm about participating in a virtual #Maintainers reading group to justify an experiment.

For our first reading we will discuss Julian Orr's 1996 classic *Talking About Machines: an Ethnography of a Modern Job* (ILR Press Ithaca, NY, 1996).  This is not only a classic ethnographic study of maintenance work and workers, but was an important influence on the later work of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger on communities of practice.

With our first reading selected, the questions remain: 1)  how best to conduct a virtual meeting, and 2) when?

Since it is fairly easy for me to use Indiana University resources to set up an Adobe Connect meeting space, and since Adobe Connect, although by no means perfect, is widely accessible (via a browser or an app) we will go with that option.  Once we settle on a date, I will set up the meeting space and send out the details.

As for a schedule:  I set up a Doodle poll to gauge availability on three potential dates (and four different times) in early-to-mid October.   I chose 7pm as a compromise between various US time zones, but also set up one 4pm possibility (on 10/13) just to test the waters for an earlier option

Here is the link to the Doodle poll: 

http://doodle.com/poll/fury9uckrst8i5kt

Hopefully we can come up with a reasonable compromise and get our technology in order to have a fun and fruitful conversation about the maintenance of Xerox machines!

-Nathan 

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Nathan Ensmenger 
Associate Professor of Informatics 
School of Informatics and Computing 
Indiana University, Bloomington 
homes.soic.indiana.edu/nensmeng/