AoIR Conference Wrap Up, Or how the cyborgs took over Milwaukee

No doubt most of us associate Milwaukee with beer and bikes. As the proud home of Harley Davidson and Miller Brewing Company, the largest metropolis in Wisconsin was taken over this weekend by the technoarchy of the 10th Annual Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) Conference in Milwaukee. To be honest, I was somewhat unprepared for my first AoIR. Although I have been to a number of academic conferences, even organizing the very one Amber and I met at and fell in love, the field of internet research is relatively new and definitively liquid. Each year of the conference has brought a wide array of disciplines together with the sole premise of internet research.

After attending my first panel on social networking sites (SNS), I wrote of my excitement to meet other "nerds like me." Honestly, that was a thrill. The AoIR group is a diverse group of people; that no one batted an eye when I introduced myself as a sports management major was of great relief. Preceding the conference, I thought I would be an outsider, not ostracized by any means, but generally outside the normal convention of researchers AoIR membership contained. But if you are interested in a single question, "how do people use the Internet?" you were welcome.

A popular notion among AoIR attendees is that today's tech-savvy citizen is so wholly integrated with technology via SNS, our mobiles, the Internet, and all the technology we have ingested into our daily lives (who doesn't use a GPS to drive anymore?) the definition of human has been corrupted; we're now all cyborgs. As fully vested members of this cultural and biological shift, Ambi and I are fascinated by this idea, and would argue the Ultimate Thailand Explorers competition is for cyborgs of the highest degree.

If you've never been to an academic conference, they are usually organized with panels of 3-4 researchers with similarly themed topics (but not always). Each researcher is allotted a certain amount of time with a questions and answer session at completion of presentations.

Friday morning's panel titled "Friendship Online," had two presentations about Twitter and two about Facebook, but all talked about how relationships online are formed and maintained in very different ways. Dr. Erika Pearson from New Zealand spoke of the importance of knowing the audience for effective online communication. Much of her research showed how the fluidity of online communication sometimes led to miscommunication and misunderstanding through audience misidentification.

Amber and I have been very conscience of our audience which includes friends and relatives, the judges for Tourism Authority of Thailand, other competitors, and the world at large. To that end, we've sought not only to gain the widest audience using our expertise in SNS and blogging, but also in what we write in these communique.

As we showed in our cooking video, we want the viewers to not just be able to make the green curry, but to smell, taste, and participate in making it. We'll never forget to include the audience in our updates, blogs, vlogs, and tweets because we want them there with us, and eventually, to come Thailand on their own. Amber and I are the perfect couple to do this, and we look forward to having you experience Chiang Mai with us.