Uptown

We're back from our trip to Switzerland, Austria, and Spain. I took Ele with me to a conference in Vienna, made possible by the incredible Kitzmantel-Banhidi clan, who provided room, board, transportation, and childcare! Of course we went to see Bisnonna several times. From there we headed to the Costa Brava, where we met up with Fabian and stayed in a beautiful villa with Nonna, Nonno, and Renata's family. Then on to Olot for another 4 glorious days in the heart of Catalonia. Switzerland was just a stop-over on both ways, but we managed to squeeze in a visit with Grossi and Grossaetti.

Ele was a real trooper, tagging along as we took 6 planes, were delayed 6 times, slept in 5 different beds, rented and returned 2 cars, made innumerable lengthy trips in them, and partied until 3am at Joerg and Marta's unforgettable wedding. She even learned a little Spanish (hola, adios, salud - gets you pretty far...), and the names of most of our numerous family members. Exhausting trip, but great fun!

Diese Woche waren Dolma und ich bei Ele's Kinderaerztin, die uns gefragt hat, wieviele Worte Ele schon sagt. Nach etwas brainstorming hier die Liste (nach Sprachen und Haeufigkeit geordnet):

No (as in: no-no-no-no-no)
Bye-bye
Blivia (Olivia, und als Platzhalter)
Shoes
Jeans
Ball
Baby
Bottle
Apple
Peas
Store

Papa'
Mamma
Nonno
Acqua
Ciuccio
Pappa (Essen)

Druuueee (as in eis, zwoi, drue)

Mehr faellt mir gerade nicht ein...Also am Deutsch muessen wir noch arbeiten.

Ansonsten ist unsere Maus immer noch im 90. Perzentil, sowohl Gewicht (82cm) als auch Groesse (12.8kg).

(Originally posted at Complexity and Social Networks Blog)

Thanks to those who participated in my quick survey on individual search strategies. Here's an attempt to distill your answers into a few sentences.

As expected, the main questions that arise on your jobs can be classified as knowledge-intensive, and you most likely cannot find one correct answer to them. Some examples: Trying to establish what "the best" system, or practice, is (I suspect that we all have subjective criteria in deciding what's best), what do we know about xyz (rather open-ended, I'd say), finding out about a certain procedure, event, etc.

As for your search heuristics, Google comes in first place, and second, and third, and...Several plug-ins and other tricks render those Google searches more sophisticated (thanks for the pointers, Allan and David!), and most of you tend to find what you're looking for by using search engines. Which means, most of you do not actually need the interaction with other individuals to answer most of your questions. Gosh, I'm trying to remember what life (and work) was like before Google! Obviously, I have a biased (and non-representative) sample of individuals here, but still, what an interesting result.

My final question was whether your search behavior varies according to the questions you have, and the consensus was, yes, it does, but turning to "offline methods" or other people really came off as a last resort. Again, probably - at least in part - due to the still rather geeky nature of the blogosphere, but while I'm typing this I'm thinking of something else: Since I asked people to assess their search behavior, they could have made the implicit assumption that search is mainly done using search engines, therefore a priori excluding the dialogue with other individuals as a possibility to search for answers. Was that the case? Or are our search engines getting so good that they can replace human interaction? I'd be curious to find out. Maybe I should google it.

(Originally posted at Complexity and Social Networks Blog)

Many of us spend a considerable amount of time every day on searching for various kinds of information required to do our job. I find it quite fascinating to observe how individuals go about this task in different ways. In some professions (or organizations?) there seems to be a set of unwritten norms guiding search behavior. Then, of course, how we search depends on our personal traits and preferences. If you generally are not the person who picks up the phone and calls somebody as soon as a question arises, you will probably use alternative ways to retrieve the answer you are looking for - such as sending a request to a listserv, or googling a term. Furthermore, we often use a combination of sources and media for a single query, sometimes without even realizing this "sequencing behavior". Finally, our search patterns most likely vary according to the type of knowledge we are looking for, as well as other parameters. These are some of the trends that emerge from an NSF-sponsored research project I'm conducting with David Lazer and Ines Mergel, and more about this will be posted here soon. But let me now turn to you, my fellow bloggers (and whoever else feels like answering, of course!), and ask you to respond to this quick survey about your own search behavior:

1. What are the three types of questions that come up most frequently on your job?
2. How do you generally start off your search for information on these questions (in terms of source and medium)?
3. Does your search behavior vary according to the type of questions you have? How and why?

You might find that you engage in much more complex search behaviors than you realize. Or not. Be humorous about your answer, if you wish. Thanks for playing along!

Last night Ele crawled into the cabinet where we keep Olivia's litterbox. She fished out a box of catnip, then proudly carried her prey around the apartment. I went about some household chores, as usual a bit distracted after quite an exhausting day of teaching. It's actually better now that Ele plays by herself for 10 minutes or so - gives me some freedom of movement. After I put Ele to bed I opened the fridge to look for something to eat, and what did I find? The box of catnip.