I’ve posted the tentative schedule of the 2008 SfAA Podcasts.  I say it’s tentative because timely publication of the blog posts and audio is dependent on the speakers to an extent- I need them to submit their bio info for the post as well as electronic versions of the papers and PowerPoints (this is optional, but I encourage it).   It’s also tentative because I may publish podcasts early if I have extra time to work on the editing.  I chose the order based on the ease of coordinating with speakers and the amount of editing involved with the audio files.

Here is the (very) tentative schedule of podcasts for the 68th Annual Meeting of the Society of Applied Anthropology (SfAA).

14 April 2008 Presidential Plenary Session in Honor of John van Willigen: The Art and Science of
Applied Anthropology in the 21st Century

17 April 2008 Preparing Applied Anthropologists for the 21st Century, Part I

21 April 2008 Preparing Applied Anthropologists for the 21st Century, Part II

24 April 2008 Working with Governmental Agencies, Part I

28 April 2008 Working with Governmental Agencies, Part II

5 May 2008 The Scholar-Practitioner in Organizational Settings

8 May 2008 For Love and Money: Employment Opportunities in Medical Anthropology (SMA)

12 May 2008 COPAA International Invited Speaker

15 May 2008 Embodied Danger: The Health Costs of War and Political Violence (SMA)

22 May 2008 Mobile Work, Mobile Lives: Cultural Accounts of Lived Experiences

26 May 2008 Practitioners Rise to the Challenge: A Discussion of Methods in Business
Ethnography

29 May 2008 The Flawed Economics of Resettlement and Its Impoverishing Effects: What Can Social Scientists Do?

2 June 2008 Visualizing Change: Emergent Technologies in Social Justice Inquiry and Action,
Part I: Digital Storytelling and PhotoVoice

5 June 2008 Visualizing Change: Emergent Technologies in Social Justice Inquiry and Action,
Part II: Participatory Mapping and Visual Arts

12 June 2008 SMA Plenary Session: The Political Construction of Global Infectious Disease
Crises

16 June 2008 Anthropology Engages Immigration Reform

19 June 2008 Anthropology of the Consumer

Last week the SfAA Office began to contact each speaker in the 18 selected sessions to request their permission to be recorded for the podcasts. Each speaker received an email explaining what the project is, what will happen the day of, and asking them to sign and return a consent form to me before February 25, 2008.

I’ve already received a lot of ‘yes’ responses but we’ll wait until we receive permission from each session before we release the preliminary schedule.

For those of you that are in a session and have been contacted by the SfAA Office to participate in the podcast project, I’d like to remind you that we’re encouraging speakers to submit contact information (e-mail, phone number), personal website, a picture, recent/relevant publication titles and/or a PDF of your paper or PowerPoint to compliment the blog post that will be associated with the recording of the session. We found that additional information about speakers was very useful to listeners in 2007. If you’re interested in providing this information please email me before (or very shortly after) the Memphis meeting. (email:jencardew[at]gmail[dot]com)

(Here’s a great example of a blog post from last year when the speakers submitted extra information.)

Our very own Diana Harrelson has created a new logo for the project and it looks great! It’s a redesign of last year’s logo and is really a great improvement (I did last years, so I can say that )

Thanks Diana!

That’s right, we’ve extended the deadline until Friday. We’re looking for a few more people to join our team and we’ve expanded our search to include recent graduates (graduated from grad or undergrad in 2007).

Here’s the original post about the team member application:

The Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) Podcast team announces six openings for team members to participate in an ongoing podcasting project at the 2008 SfAA Annual Meeting, March 24 - 29, 2008, in Memphis, TN. The primary responsibility will be to audio record sessions and publicize the SfAA podcasts at the SfAA Annual Meeting. Interested individuals will be asked to dedicate 15 hours to the project between February 15 and April 30, 2008. All team member positions have identical duties and are open to any student, undergraduate or graduate, who will be attending the 2008 Annual Meeting of the SfAA in Memphis, TN March 24 - 29, 2008. Previous experience in audio recording or podcasting is not necessary as there will be training involved.

The SfAA Podcasts project began at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the SfAA in Tampa, Florida, managed by Jen Cardew. This year the project will be co-managed by Jen Cardew and Diana Harrelson. The goal of the 2008 SfAA Podcast team is to record 15 selected sessions, to be published to the web as free podcasts, making the meeting accessible to students who cannot travel as well as to members of other disciplines. Please visit this page for more information.

The deadline for applications is January 28, 2008 February 1, 2008. The application process is described in this PDF document:Team Member Application

Please help us spread the word about the available team member positions and link back to this page!

We’re looking forward to hearing from you!!

Earlier today I re-published 3 sessions from the 2007 SfAA podcasts.  The feed for the podcasts isn’t working yet and I’m having trouble uploading files to our blog.  I should have it fixed tomorrow, but I wanted to let you all know that I know the feed isn’t working and that some of the links are broken :(  Thanks for your patience!

As you may recall, the SfAA Podcast project began at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the SfAA. As part of the pilot project it was decided that the podcasts from the meeting would be hosted for just a few months.

The project was a great success and was well received by many people. This site has had almost 5,000 visitors since April 2007! After careful consideration it was decided that the 2007 podcasts should be re-hosted on the website so that we all may continue to enjoy them!

Emails were sent out to the 2007 speakers this morning asking their permission to re-host the podcasts. I’ve already received many responses and I believe that we may be able to re-host every 2007 session! Stay tuned for updates- I’m hoping that the 2007 podcasts will begin to be re-posted sometime next week!!

And, just in case you’re wondering- the 2008 podcasts will not be taken down after a few months

The Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) Podcast team announces six openings for team members to participate in an ongoing podcasting project at the 2008 SfAA Annual Meeting, March 24 - 29, 2008, in Memphis, TN. The primary responsibility will be to audio record sessions and publicize the SfAA podcasts at the SfAA Annual Meeting. Interested individuals will be asked to dedicate 15 hours to the project between February 15 and April 30, 2008. All team member positions have identical duties and are open to any student, undergraduate or graduate, who will be attending the 2008 Annual Meeting of the SfAA in Memphis, TN March 24 - 29, 2008. Previous experience in audio recording or podcasting is not necessary as there will be training involved.

The SfAA Podcasts project began at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the SfAA in Tampa, Florida, managed by Jen Cardew. This year the project will be co-managed by Jen Cardew and Diana Harrelson. The goal of the 2008 SfAA Podcast team is to record 15 selected sessions, to be published to the web as free podcasts, making the meeting accessible to students who cannot travel as well as to members of other disciplines. Please visit this page for more information.

The deadline for applications is January 28, 2008. The application process is described in this PDF document:Team Member Application

Please help us spread the word about the available team member positions and link back to this page!

We’re looking forward to hearing from you!!

The podcast project will be continued at the 2008 Meeting of the SfAA in Memphis, TN and planning is well underway! There are a few editions this year. I’ve asked Diana Harrelson to co-manage the project with me this year. My hope is that Diana will take over the project in 2009 and that she will find someone to co-manage it with her. We’ll also be hiring additional team members to help with the project, right now it seems like we’ll be adding six more positions. Details about the team member positions are forthcoming but I can say that there will be an application process, there will be a small payment for the position, and team members will receive free registration to the Meeting (thank you SfAA!!). We’ll be posting additional information about these positions along with the applications in the upcoming month.

The focus for the project this year is to create a sustainable project that can become a part of the SfAA for many years to come (although we may have to update our technology With this said, we’ll be recording 15 sessions in Memphis- this is 5 more sessions than last year. Instead of expanding the project we are going to focus the majority of our efforts on creating training manuals, developing the website, and documenting the entire process so that future SfAA podcasters can use it as a reference. We’re coordinating our efforts using Basecamp.

More updates will come soon. Please see our article in the November SfAA newsletter.

The podcasts were taken down from this site on August 1, 2007. The corresponding blog posts for each session will remain on the website though. As you may, or may not, know this project was the first time that podcasts had been made available for sessions at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA). Some participants had expressed a desire to have the recordings made available for only a few months, to this end it was decided that the podcasts would be taken down. I’d like to see the podcasts remain on the website next year so this is something that I’ll be looking into changing.

At the time that I’m writing this post there have been 3,216 visitors to this website! This number greatly exceeded my expectations and I think it really speaks for the value and interest in these podcasts. Additionally there have been 88 search engine searches that included the words “anthropology” (or a sub-discipline) & “podcast” that led visitors to our site. Twenty one websites, not all “anthropological”, have linked to this site and referred 1042 visitors to this site!

The podcasts will be continued at the 2008 Annual Meeting in Memphis, TN. I am beginning to work on the project for next year, my focus now is on figuring out what “worked” and didn’t “work” this year i.e., that should be improved upon. I have received a fair amount of emails from site visitors offering their suggestions and it’s been super helpful to have this feedback. I’d still like to hear from people- what did you like or dislike about this year’s project? Did the blog posts have enough or too much information about the participants? Did you hate the layout or colors of the website? Do you want more podcasts next year? Etc. etc. Feel free to email me at jencardew at gmail dot com OR leave a comment on this post.

Please continue to check this site throughout the rest of the year for updates, etc. You can get automatic notifications of new posts to the site also (via RSS and email notifications).

updates about the project and a re-cap will be posted on Friday August 3, 2007.

I wanted to remind everyone that the SfAA podcasts from the 67th Annual Meeting of the SfAA will be taken down from this website on August 1, 2007. To this end, make sure you download the podcasts that you want before then. Also, if you know someone that might be interested in any of the recordings- make sure you tell them about the website soon so that they will have the opportunity to download the podcasts before then too. After August 1 there will be more frequent updates, calls for help, and calls for participation on this site, so please continue to subscribe to this site’s RSS feed or email updates of new posts so that you don’t miss out! If you’ve had thoughts/comments/complaints/etc. that you haven’t submitted, now would be a great time to do that too so that they can be considered when we plan for next year!

Why are the podcasts being taken down you ask?

What an excellent question! The decision to make the files available for a few months was mainly based on two factors. Tom May and I picked a date to remove the files after hearing some participants concerns of having the files available long-term. Also, we are storing the files on a file server at the University of North Texas this year. The Center for Distributed Learning at UNT was not able to guarantee free server space past the date.

Going forward, I believe that we (still looking for volunteers!) will keep the files up either permanently or for a longer period of time. This will all depend on how much feedback and communication we receive from participants on the matter. The server space for next year has been taken care of, so that will no longer be a factor.

There have been 3,088 visitors to this site since April 9, 2007!

All of the podcasts from the 2007 Annual Meeting of the SfAA have been published (see left hand side of the screen for shortcuts to the podcasts). The site will be rather quiet for the next few weeks, but postings will pick back up in July as we begin to plan for next year. There will be postings asking for opinions/suggestions for improvement, things you’d like to see happen, for volunteer applications, and for general announcements. I encourage you to subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed so that you don’t miss any of the posts, you can do so here (RSS reader) or by email here. Don’t forget that you can leave comments and feedback on this page and you can email me (don’t be shy!).

As of this morning, this site has had 2,292 visitors since April 9! Thanks everyone!!

I have updated the schedule for the last three podcasts from the SfAA, if you are interested please visit it here.

Also, I am going to be working on the podcasts project for next year over the summer. So far, I have received some helpful comments and feedback. I’d like to invite you to share your comments, feedback and suggestions also if you have them. Feedback about what you liked this year (website, layout, timing, recordings) and what could be improved upon (I take criticism well, you won’t hurt my feelings) would be most helpful. You can leave such comments on the comments/feedback page or you can email them to me.

As a reminder, I will be looking for volunteers for next year (pre-conference, at conference, and post-conference) so if you are interested, email me or keep checking this site for updates.

The SfAA sent out a short email yesterday to announce the passing of Robert Hackenberg.

In this email, there was also an announcement for the SfAA podcasts. Traffic to the site has dramatically increased in the last two days, and I believe it is because of the SfAA email.

For those of you that are visiting the site for the first time, I’d like to suggest a place to start. The “About Podcasts & Blogs” page (upper left hand corner) has information about what a “blog” is, what a “podcast” is, and how to get automatic notifications of new podcasts and blog posts (via email or RSS). There is also a link to an excellent video that explains what “RSS” is.

Links to the podcasts and blog posts that have already been published are available on the left hand side of the screen.

Also, feel free to leave comments/suggestions/feedback on the “comments/feedback” page!

When I moved this blog and podcast site from the Google hosting over to the WordPress hosting, the site visit count started over (we had about 250 pre-conference). Since this site was launched on April 9, 2007 we’ve had over 1,200 visitors (and that does not count my visits~ which has probably been about 1000). You can view a map of the site visitors here. I’m not exactly sure why this is the case, but the number of site visitors on the map do not match the number of site visitors reported by WordPress; it could be in part because the “days” are not the same, the map’s starts at midnight and WordPress’ starts around 7 pm EST. With a little research, I’ve decided that WordPress is the more accurate reporting.

As you can see, site visits drop off during the weekend. I can also see the sites that are referring traffic to our site, so far the link on the SfAA website (Thanks Neil!), Savage Minds, Anthropologi.info, are sending a lot of traffic, but the most traffic is being sent from emails. So thank you to ALL of the bloggers and the folks that have helped to spread the word via email!

Also, don’t forget to check out the Buzz Around the Web page to see what folks are saying about the project. Feel free to leave a comment too.