Dear all, this might be a somewhat unusual mail/request, but I thought I'd give it a try: I'm a PostDoc researcher from Bamberg (Germany), focussing on social software / Web 2.0 from the perspective of communication sociology. Most of my contributions are in german (having an fairly sized academic community which is closed due to the language can be both a curse and a blessing.. ;-)), but I have also a couple of english ressources which describe my activities compiled on my blog (http://www.bamberg-gewinnt.de/wordpress/english-content/). Some of you might know me as the co-organizer (with Thomas N. Burg from Austria) of the "BlogTalk reloaded" conference in Vienna last fall (of which, by the way, the proceedings have now been published; see the above link). I'm planning to attend the Internet Research 8.0 conference this october (actually my first AOIR-conference; I'm really looking forward to it), and will make my travel arrangements (i.e. booking a flight) within the next weeks. Since Vancouver is quite a distance from Germany, I'm going to spend not only the conference week, but some more time in the area. I was wondering (and that's the point of this mail) if anyone with similar research fields would be interested in meeting in the week before or after the conference. More precisely, I'm planning to travel (by rental car) around the Pacific northwest (British Columbia, Washington State, Oregon, maybe even Northern California) for about two to three weeks around the conference. I'd be more than happy to arrange my trip accordingly to come to your university or organization, either for an informal exchange of ideas, or for a guest lecture, or for any other cool events that might come to your mind. :) Based on my research interests, I could (for example) talk about the state of Web 2.0 & Social Software in Germany / the german speaking countries; about results from my (then finished) current research project on online-based networking (which focussed mainly on Blogs and Social Networking Sites), or on similar topics (suggestions are of course open to modification/specification). This might even lead to interesting research initiatives - I find there is a lack of thorough internationally comparative studies in this field. Feel free to contact me (off-list) for any suggestions or questions - I'm looking forward to seeing where this request will take me... :-) Best, Jan -- Dr. Jan Schmidt Research Centre "New Communication Media" An der Universität 9 / 501 D - 96049 Bamberg +49 (951) 863 2213 +49 (177) 520 5199 jan.schmidt@split.uni-bamberg.de http://www.fonk-bamberg.de/ http://www.bamberg-gewinnt.de/wordpress [including english content]