Friday, November 19, 2010
Behavior Analysis Poll
We are so close to getting the email list from Jehnifer (she accidently sent an email w/o the list today, so we're counting on her sending the list soon). This poll asks questions regarding Behavior Intention, Subjective Norms, Values, and Barriers. Hope its gold!
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Poll
Status update on the Poll:
We wrote the poll questions 2 and 1/2 weeks ago. We've always intended to get a broad sample of campus students and faculty. We followed avenues to send out a campus wide email. We knew it was a long shot, but we wanted to try. This is how that went:
1. We sent an email to the Email help desk asking about the possibility.
2. A few days go by with no response. We call the help desk and get a response: they would be happy to help us send out a global email if we get permission form the provost.
3. We call the operator and ask for the Provost (i figured a call would be more direct and save time since the time hang up with the help desk). The office of the president picks up; she gives me specific instructions to email Carol Peplow in the Provost's office. Tough luck on talking in person; I email her.
4. A week goes by. I gave her too much time, but I figured she was busy being the Provost's office and all.
5. I call her at the beginning of this week - Monday - asking about the status of my note. She didn't recall the note and asked me to resend the email (which i did while on the phone with her). She explained it would be hard to get permission for that type of email but that she would ask the Provost anyway. I explained the value of the subject to the University and she agreed with seeming sincerity. I asked her - since I had her on the phone - what plan B would be (the help desk explained getting approval from each department separately would be a possibility, but obviously time consuming). She said that she would be happy to help me with that if plan A falls thru and she told me she would get back to me by the end of the day. And so I left it with her like that. The email that I sent her while on the phone had a sentence at the beginning reading "please confirm receipt..."
6. No confirmation and no call back. And now Tuesday's over. We're frustrated with the University and its abuse of its self-proclaimed power. (I'm paying you - and you, Provost, are paid to represent me!!!)
7. Alas, we're moving on. For the sake of time we will send our poll out to AIAS students. It is a list of 200 students and although they are all design students (bad) they range in all years of study (good). It will be a decently sized, slightly skewed sample of students. But its a start. It goes out tonight.
8. We'll keep going down the path with Provost.
We wrote the poll questions 2 and 1/2 weeks ago. We've always intended to get a broad sample of campus students and faculty. We followed avenues to send out a campus wide email. We knew it was a long shot, but we wanted to try. This is how that went:
1. We sent an email to the Email help desk asking about the possibility.
2. A few days go by with no response. We call the help desk and get a response: they would be happy to help us send out a global email if we get permission form the provost.
3. We call the operator and ask for the Provost (i figured a call would be more direct and save time since the time hang up with the help desk). The office of the president picks up; she gives me specific instructions to email Carol Peplow in the Provost's office. Tough luck on talking in person; I email her.
4. A week goes by. I gave her too much time, but I figured she was busy being the Provost's office and all.
5. I call her at the beginning of this week - Monday - asking about the status of my note. She didn't recall the note and asked me to resend the email (which i did while on the phone with her). She explained it would be hard to get permission for that type of email but that she would ask the Provost anyway. I explained the value of the subject to the University and she agreed with seeming sincerity. I asked her - since I had her on the phone - what plan B would be (the help desk explained getting approval from each department separately would be a possibility, but obviously time consuming). She said that she would be happy to help me with that if plan A falls thru and she told me she would get back to me by the end of the day. And so I left it with her like that. The email that I sent her while on the phone had a sentence at the beginning reading "please confirm receipt..."
6. No confirmation and no call back. And now Tuesday's over. We're frustrated with the University and its abuse of its self-proclaimed power. (I'm paying you - and you, Provost, are paid to represent me!!!)
7. Alas, we're moving on. For the sake of time we will send our poll out to AIAS students. It is a list of 200 students and although they are all design students (bad) they range in all years of study (good). It will be a decently sized, slightly skewed sample of students. But its a start. It goes out tonight.
8. We'll keep going down the path with Provost.
Meeting with Jehnifer Niklas
Just met with Jehnifer. Smart girl doing some similar research!!!
Good news/bad news.
Bad news first: Jehnifer is a grad student/asu employee who is running the poly tech garden and having a hard time fostering community. A community garden - even out in the open as hers is - doesn't necessary equal community. She says that many people are interested and she has good showings at her events, but there are still many people who participate in the garden on an individual level. There are community tasks that some folks just ignore.
Creating community, she says, is easier said then done. She says that she's organized many activities to get people together, but they only go so far. She also explained from experience that she thought if she could get the energy started, it would motivate itself - that the community would influence its own sustainability. However, in reality, when she puts less into as the leader she notices the same slowing effect in her gardeners. Slowly the community garden has had to shift to a hierarchical system to make sure people are held accountable. I got her to agree that with roles and a hierarchy, in many ways the community has become a business. Not so exciting to hear. The project has had "peaks and valleys" and its certainly challenging she says.
Good news: In the hypothetical situation where we can get President Crow to agree that a visible Tempe community garden is a marketable, viable project, she would agree to take a full time position running the Tempe garden. Hmmm.... I've got some infrastructure for my argument.
Other good news: She has an email list of 60 people that are a part of her garden. 15 or so she says actually participate in the garden, the others are some that show interest or involved themselves at some point and just stopped. She has agreed to let me reach out to these people. It seems like the perfect sample to test barriers!!! I just wish we could get a psychologist (Susan still hasn't emailed - even after Aleks sent her an email personally....ek.)
Other interesting info: She asked to keep it off the record, but the housing department at the poly tech campus she says has been the most disagreeable entity. This is unfortunate for a few reasons: 1, the garden is on housing property, 2 the garden is surrounded by housing, and 3, there is a great opportunity to piggyback off the community that a dorm creates...each could reinforce the other. But alas, she says thats unlikely.
Also, she suggested I get in touch with Bo Dromiack - an ASU Alum and an architect at RSP Architects. She says he's an activist on campus for similar goals.
Good news/bad news.
Bad news first: Jehnifer is a grad student/asu employee who is running the poly tech garden and having a hard time fostering community. A community garden - even out in the open as hers is - doesn't necessary equal community. She says that many people are interested and she has good showings at her events, but there are still many people who participate in the garden on an individual level. There are community tasks that some folks just ignore.
Creating community, she says, is easier said then done. She says that she's organized many activities to get people together, but they only go so far. She also explained from experience that she thought if she could get the energy started, it would motivate itself - that the community would influence its own sustainability. However, in reality, when she puts less into as the leader she notices the same slowing effect in her gardeners. Slowly the community garden has had to shift to a hierarchical system to make sure people are held accountable. I got her to agree that with roles and a hierarchy, in many ways the community has become a business. Not so exciting to hear. The project has had "peaks and valleys" and its certainly challenging she says.
Good news: In the hypothetical situation where we can get President Crow to agree that a visible Tempe community garden is a marketable, viable project, she would agree to take a full time position running the Tempe garden. Hmmm.... I've got some infrastructure for my argument.
Other good news: She has an email list of 60 people that are a part of her garden. 15 or so she says actually participate in the garden, the others are some that show interest or involved themselves at some point and just stopped. She has agreed to let me reach out to these people. It seems like the perfect sample to test barriers!!! I just wish we could get a psychologist (Susan still hasn't emailed - even after Aleks sent her an email personally....ek.)
Other interesting info: She asked to keep it off the record, but the housing department at the poly tech campus she says has been the most disagreeable entity. This is unfortunate for a few reasons: 1, the garden is on housing property, 2 the garden is surrounded by housing, and 3, there is a great opportunity to piggyback off the community that a dorm creates...each could reinforce the other. But alas, she says thats unlikely.
Also, she suggested I get in touch with Bo Dromiack - an ASU Alum and an architect at RSP Architects. She says he's an activist on campus for similar goals.
More Aggravation
Jehnifer blew me off. I sent her a nice reminder email yesterday...no response and no show. I'm hoping we just missed each other. Details to follow.
Monday, November 15, 2010
ASU Land Ownership
Ellen helped us with siting. Since we now know acquiring land will be a huge up-hill battle, Ellen and I worked out some realistic potential sites. She explained that our campus is extremely small and dense compared to most urban campuses; most of the landscape is already multi-programed. There were 3 major suggestions she had though:
1. NW corner of site - its currently lot 16, where I park my car everyday. In the master plan, see the post below, that is to be a new build project. I can say too, from experience, that this will be an extremely important project...its the last major open space available for construction in the inner campus. Also, it marks as the gateway to the campus from Mill and University - arguable the most populous entry (circled in green).
2. There is small plot along University at the NE side of campus. She explained that the University is trying to revision all of University ave and that one of the lots in question is a collection basin - a good spot for growing (circled in green).
3. The last suggestion she had was across University in general. She said there isn't a lot of land there, but they are planning to revision the whole area directly across University - to the North. This seems the hardest to control and its not on the main campus, so at first glance its our last option.
Survey
I called Carol Peplow at the Provost's office today to follow up on the email I sent her last week. (I hadn't heard from her). She didnt' recall my email, so she had me send it again.
She explained that mass emails are unusal (was sort of expecting that), but that she would certainly run it by the provost. I tried to convince her that the poll is easy and it regards sustainability - a subject the university is trying to market. She agree that that might give us a chance.
I asked her too, though, since she sounded negative about the whole thing what the alternatives were...she told me she would help me with that if this first pass by the Provost fails. She hopes to get back to me by the end of the day.
Kiesha and I are holding in our back pocket access to send the poll out to all graduate students. We're hopeing to get a bigger sample that that, but if its not obvious, K and I DID NOT want to have not sent this poll out this late. We jsut keep getting closer to getting it to large audience that we keep holding out. This will be our last attempt though. If I can't get a yes today or tomorrow, we'll send it out to the graduate student list.
Sigh. Real is hard.
She explained that mass emails are unusal (was sort of expecting that), but that she would certainly run it by the provost. I tried to convince her that the poll is easy and it regards sustainability - a subject the university is trying to market. She agree that that might give us a chance.
I asked her too, though, since she sounded negative about the whole thing what the alternatives were...she told me she would help me with that if this first pass by the Provost fails. She hopes to get back to me by the end of the day.
Kiesha and I are holding in our back pocket access to send the poll out to all graduate students. We're hopeing to get a bigger sample that that, but if its not obvious, K and I DID NOT want to have not sent this poll out this late. We jsut keep getting closer to getting it to large audience that we keep holding out. This will be our last attempt though. If I can't get a yes today or tomorrow, we'll send it out to the graduate student list.
Sigh. Real is hard.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
ASU Masterplan
ASU Masterplan There is, you'll see, a proposed plan of the Northwest corner of campus. Bleh. Doesn't look like a garden is in the masterplan. Let's see what we can do here....
Friday, November 12, 2010
Week Four: Calendar Snap Shot
Last week we met with Lara, really good. Today I met with Ellen and we have a meeting with Jehnifer next week. Grabbed the ASU ownership plan this morning.
Similarities between Ellen and Lara
Both women agreed and seems to intimately connect with our teams argument that community is at the core sustainability. Both seems to understand more than I expected that my greatest feeling of community that I've ever experienced was at a farm.
Interestingly, both of them mentioned (in slightly different terms) that there is something rewarding and therapeutic about getting your hands dirty. Ellen suggested that if you could get people to feel that reward, then you'd have gardener on board for life. And while Ellen said she had been gardening since she was a girl, Lara admitted she only started 3 years ago when she abruptly started a green house in her back yard. Lara explained the experience of touching the earth as a "clean, untouched" moment. She attributes dirt as the earth's purest form (my words, not hers). Ellen explained that when she had rough days at work, she goes straight home to her garden.
Its an interesting observations: the feelings of connecting with the earth. How can we incorporate those?!
Another intestesting connection between the two women: Ellen aruged that our major challenge in getting a garden on the main Tempe campus was convincing the upper management that its a marketable benefit to the "business". Lara explained that the whole reason she started her garden was because she knew it was something that would bring more poeple to downtown Tempe. In other words, her whole motivation for starting a garden was because she thought it was marketable. Maybe the Tempe garden is the perfect case study to president to president Crow. I believe a follow up email with Lara is in the works!
Interestingly, both of them mentioned (in slightly different terms) that there is something rewarding and therapeutic about getting your hands dirty. Ellen suggested that if you could get people to feel that reward, then you'd have gardener on board for life. And while Ellen said she had been gardening since she was a girl, Lara admitted she only started 3 years ago when she abruptly started a green house in her back yard. Lara explained the experience of touching the earth as a "clean, untouched" moment. She attributes dirt as the earth's purest form (my words, not hers). Ellen explained that when she had rough days at work, she goes straight home to her garden.
Its an interesting observations: the feelings of connecting with the earth. How can we incorporate those?!
Another intestesting connection between the two women: Ellen aruged that our major challenge in getting a garden on the main Tempe campus was convincing the upper management that its a marketable benefit to the "business". Lara explained that the whole reason she started her garden was because she knew it was something that would bring more poeple to downtown Tempe. In other words, her whole motivation for starting a garden was because she thought it was marketable. Maybe the Tempe garden is the perfect case study to president to president Crow. I believe a follow up email with Lara is in the works!
Meeting with Lara Skutt
This happened last Friday, so I'm little off with the blog post, but alas...here's the info....
Lara is a great human being. Put our project aside, she seems like an all around good person. By the end she was suggesting we get drinks sometime - the three of us - cause she liked us too!
Lara is not the activist though that we thought she was. She is a business woman. She is the deputy director of the Downtown Tempe Community, Inc. - a non profit organization designed to get people to downtown Tempe. Foot traffic for her is the major goal! She is funded by the city, but is not employed by the city (sweet gig).
Lara exposed for us the real tangable challenges associated with starting a "community" garden. On the list of things you need, she recalls, the biggest priority is time. Ek. It took her 10 months to get that garden going and the first three of those months were without construction. She remembers having begun to advertise the future garden and then months later getting questions like "where is this thing?" Next is funding; it many not look like that garden was expensive but she believes the invested value right now is over $60,000. None of that by the way, did she have. She had a budget of $2,000 (so not none - just not 58,000 of it). She was shocked though by the donations people would give - soil, tools, lumber, time. She recounted a story about going to home depot to get the supplies to build the beds. She hand't done it before and begun consulting with the HD employees. They told her she had it all wrong, and by the end of the conversation she got the store manager to donate the PAID time of three of his on staff employees to go to the site for the afternoon and help build the beds. Next: invested folks. She recounted that many of her volunteers started out gung-hoe about starting helping in the garden but then after the first few hours of help, walked away - indefinitely. Good support is at the core of her success - one woman has with any thanks essentially taken over the garden.
(These are all things Kiesha and I DON"T have. Yet...? Yikes.)
Lara completely believed in our argument about community. She says that her team at the garden is her "little family." They yell at each other sometimes - some need more acknowledgement then others. But they also hang out together at each others' houses. They've taught children in the garden together, built the garden from scratch together, organized garden dinners together....
Barriers: She explained that financing is the biggest issue. She suggested we read The $64 Tomato which at its core explains her issue: when the garden costs over $60000 to start, the average cost of a tomato is ridiculously high when trying to get your money back - in the $60 range...? Another issue she's faced is the issue of ownership in her team. One ASU SOS student on board was responsible for a lot of the gardens' design and he brought this up a few times to suggest that he should have a larger role in the decision making process. She had to remind him that its a group project - not his project.
Lara was an inspiration, but an intimidating inspiration. She isn't some hippy student trying to make the world a better place; she has a financial goal to make downtown Tempe more approachable. The amount of work that she explained went into her project is daunting.
At least we know....
Lara is a great human being. Put our project aside, she seems like an all around good person. By the end she was suggesting we get drinks sometime - the three of us - cause she liked us too!
Lara is not the activist though that we thought she was. She is a business woman. She is the deputy director of the Downtown Tempe Community, Inc. - a non profit organization designed to get people to downtown Tempe. Foot traffic for her is the major goal! She is funded by the city, but is not employed by the city (sweet gig).
Lara exposed for us the real tangable challenges associated with starting a "community" garden. On the list of things you need, she recalls, the biggest priority is time. Ek. It took her 10 months to get that garden going and the first three of those months were without construction. She remembers having begun to advertise the future garden and then months later getting questions like "where is this thing?" Next is funding; it many not look like that garden was expensive but she believes the invested value right now is over $60,000. None of that by the way, did she have. She had a budget of $2,000 (so not none - just not 58,000 of it). She was shocked though by the donations people would give - soil, tools, lumber, time. She recounted a story about going to home depot to get the supplies to build the beds. She hand't done it before and begun consulting with the HD employees. They told her she had it all wrong, and by the end of the conversation she got the store manager to donate the PAID time of three of his on staff employees to go to the site for the afternoon and help build the beds. Next: invested folks. She recounted that many of her volunteers started out gung-hoe about starting helping in the garden but then after the first few hours of help, walked away - indefinitely. Good support is at the core of her success - one woman has with any thanks essentially taken over the garden.
(These are all things Kiesha and I DON"T have. Yet...? Yikes.)
Lara completely believed in our argument about community. She says that her team at the garden is her "little family." They yell at each other sometimes - some need more acknowledgement then others. But they also hang out together at each others' houses. They've taught children in the garden together, built the garden from scratch together, organized garden dinners together....
Barriers: She explained that financing is the biggest issue. She suggested we read The $64 Tomato which at its core explains her issue: when the garden costs over $60000 to start, the average cost of a tomato is ridiculously high when trying to get your money back - in the $60 range...? Another issue she's faced is the issue of ownership in her team. One ASU SOS student on board was responsible for a lot of the gardens' design and he brought this up a few times to suggest that he should have a larger role in the decision making process. She had to remind him that its a group project - not his project.
Lara was an inspiration, but an intimidating inspiration. She isn't some hippy student trying to make the world a better place; she has a financial goal to make downtown Tempe more approachable. The amount of work that she explained went into her project is daunting.
At least we know....
Communication and Psychology Update
If there is one thing that we've learned from project thus far, its that communication is not an easy task. To this point, we've successfully reached out to many of the parties that we hoped to connect with, but we've also failed to get a response from many!
Our go to Psychology consultant hasn't responded to two seperate emails. One was lengthy, one was short and sweet asking her to point us to someone else. No go with either. Also, I've emailed the pychology department's general email address asking for some advice on with who I should talk to. No word back.
The CAD department also ignored my correspondence. I had to go to the office in person to get the material I was looking for.
In another instance, the woman in charge of the Tempe Campus garden and the garden club ignored my request to meet, but instead sent me a link to her website. (Let's keep this blog off the record: Ellen explained to me that she hasn't been seeing the success from said party that she has been expecting).
Some of the seemingly necessary stepping stones of correspondence have been big duds! Because of this, we've had to change our strategy some. We were hoping to do a behavior analysis with guidance from a psychology consultant, but we may not get that opportunity. So instead, we might try to set up a round table with the current poly tech garden folks. In the article I've attached, Psychologist, McKenzie suggests there are a few ways to determine behavioral barriers: "Foucs Groups, observations studies, and surveys." We did intend to do survey (we still may), but a focus group with the current Poly Tech kids might be more fruitful without the help of a psychologist on board. We're hoping to gauge the possiblity of that group with Jehnifer on Tuesday. McKenzie also suggests determining the differences between those people who participate in an activity and those who don't to understand barries. We believe we can accomplish this in such a focus group.
Be beyond bad communication and changing plans on the fly, much of our correspondence has been extremely successful. My conversation with Bonny Bentzin led me to Jehnifer and Ellen. Ellen today really gave us some new direction. Talking to Harvey led us to Lara Skutt who really helped us last week with a two hour convo (blog post to follow). And although we never got a response, talking with Aleks started us down our Psychology path.
McKenzie article (pg 5 is barriers...)
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B51oOLaUD-ScOTIzN2ZkOTgtNTU2Mi00ZmNkLWEwMTEtYTZmOGQ5M2ZhMmQ5&hl=en
Our go to Psychology consultant hasn't responded to two seperate emails. One was lengthy, one was short and sweet asking her to point us to someone else. No go with either. Also, I've emailed the pychology department's general email address asking for some advice on with who I should talk to. No word back.
The CAD department also ignored my correspondence. I had to go to the office in person to get the material I was looking for.
In another instance, the woman in charge of the Tempe Campus garden and the garden club ignored my request to meet, but instead sent me a link to her website. (Let's keep this blog off the record: Ellen explained to me that she hasn't been seeing the success from said party that she has been expecting).
Some of the seemingly necessary stepping stones of correspondence have been big duds! Because of this, we've had to change our strategy some. We were hoping to do a behavior analysis with guidance from a psychology consultant, but we may not get that opportunity. So instead, we might try to set up a round table with the current poly tech garden folks. In the article I've attached, Psychologist, McKenzie suggests there are a few ways to determine behavioral barriers: "Foucs Groups, observations studies, and surveys." We did intend to do survey (we still may), but a focus group with the current Poly Tech kids might be more fruitful without the help of a psychologist on board. We're hoping to gauge the possiblity of that group with Jehnifer on Tuesday. McKenzie also suggests determining the differences between those people who participate in an activity and those who don't to understand barries. We believe we can accomplish this in such a focus group.
Be beyond bad communication and changing plans on the fly, much of our correspondence has been extremely successful. My conversation with Bonny Bentzin led me to Jehnifer and Ellen. Ellen today really gave us some new direction. Talking to Harvey led us to Lara Skutt who really helped us last week with a two hour convo (blog post to follow). And although we never got a response, talking with Aleks started us down our Psychology path.
McKenzie article (pg 5 is barriers...)
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B51oOLaUD-ScOTIzN2ZkOTgtNTU2Mi00ZmNkLWEwMTEtYTZmOGQ5M2ZhMmQ5&hl=en
Meeting with Ellen Newell
Ellen is the Associate Director of Facilities Management. I met with her today for an hour or so (K is still under the weather) and she exposed some new developments....
1. I knew before walking into this meeting that the current Tempe Campus garden was hidden behind a wall. Ellen explained to me that this was because the campus needs to have a certain marketable appearance and gardens don't fit into that image. Not only that, but the current club isn't helping its own cause - the current garden is looking a little disorganized...not a good way to get the administration on board with a more public version.
2. The Poly Tech campus has a larger more appealing garden. There, Ellen explained, there is a paid position to upkeep the garden. She believes the campus' satilitte nature and Jehnifer's (the caretaker of sorts) success is the reason why that garden is out in the open.
3. Kiesha and I agree that the garden needs to be in the major part of campus. Our argument don't forget is about community - the garden is the forefront of our motivations. To successfully get the garden in that major piece of campus (and not on a plot more isolated like across University for ex.) we will need to confront the President and Provost. Its not a cutsie little student activity we'd be asking for space for, Ellen explained. She pointed out our up hill challenge: we need to prove to the managing administration that an on campus garden won't be an eye sore but will be a marketing tool. MARKETING TOOL!! This is a totally new challenge.
4. Because the campus garden would have to be carefully maintained, I suggested and Ellen agreed, that there would have to be a paid position on campus to keep an eye on the garden. It can't fall into disrepair like the current garden has. This blows the scale of our project way up. We have to prove with some data that a community is not only possible, but marketable. EK!
5. We've got a meeting this coming Tuesday with Jehnifer - the person in charge of the Poly Tech garden. I'm interested to see in what she has to say.
1. I knew before walking into this meeting that the current Tempe Campus garden was hidden behind a wall. Ellen explained to me that this was because the campus needs to have a certain marketable appearance and gardens don't fit into that image. Not only that, but the current club isn't helping its own cause - the current garden is looking a little disorganized...not a good way to get the administration on board with a more public version.
2. The Poly Tech campus has a larger more appealing garden. There, Ellen explained, there is a paid position to upkeep the garden. She believes the campus' satilitte nature and Jehnifer's (the caretaker of sorts) success is the reason why that garden is out in the open.
3. Kiesha and I agree that the garden needs to be in the major part of campus. Our argument don't forget is about community - the garden is the forefront of our motivations. To successfully get the garden in that major piece of campus (and not on a plot more isolated like across University for ex.) we will need to confront the President and Provost. Its not a cutsie little student activity we'd be asking for space for, Ellen explained. She pointed out our up hill challenge: we need to prove to the managing administration that an on campus garden won't be an eye sore but will be a marketing tool. MARKETING TOOL!! This is a totally new challenge.
4. Because the campus garden would have to be carefully maintained, I suggested and Ellen agreed, that there would have to be a paid position on campus to keep an eye on the garden. It can't fall into disrepair like the current garden has. This blows the scale of our project way up. We have to prove with some data that a community is not only possible, but marketable. EK!
5. We've got a meeting this coming Tuesday with Jehnifer - the person in charge of the Poly Tech garden. I'm interested to see in what she has to say.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Reflecting on Week One
K and I spent a great deal of time this past Friday figuring out the poll questions that we intend to ask; it was far more difficult then we intended. It's hard to ask questions that don't have prescribed answers. Also, we're realizing the power that other people have on our project. On the one token, one person can suggest we speak to the person that will get our project some legs. On the other token, if those important people decide not to help out, we're stuck pretty fast. I'm counting on Susan emailing me back, but I'm nervous that I won't know what to do next if she doesn't!
I also started to reflect on the value of our roles. We each have unique skills to bring to the table. For example, I couldn't have gotten the technologies together with the success that K has. The blog is really nice; simple, and the filter in which it organizes itself behind the scenes is brilliant: it essentially automatically categorizes the responses in a spread sheet. We don't have to deal with 40000 email responses.
K and I started a conversation about farming vs. gardening and found it interesting that although we are speaking about something we see more as a farm where people from all over participate in a mass of vegetation, we will have to speak of it with others as a garden which has more hobby-like and fun connotations. Choosing our words with care...
I'm starting to panic to be honest with you (diary) about the project; I'm not sure how prepared K and I are to really make an on campus garden happen. We have a meeting with Lara this week who has built a community garden and I don't know the first thing about it. Interesting side of picking a long-term "realistic" project is that you have to take "real" responsibilities. I hoping this doesn't back fire on us.
I also started to reflect on the value of our roles. We each have unique skills to bring to the table. For example, I couldn't have gotten the technologies together with the success that K has. The blog is really nice; simple, and the filter in which it organizes itself behind the scenes is brilliant: it essentially automatically categorizes the responses in a spread sheet. We don't have to deal with 40000 email responses.
K and I started a conversation about farming vs. gardening and found it interesting that although we are speaking about something we see more as a farm where people from all over participate in a mass of vegetation, we will have to speak of it with others as a garden which has more hobby-like and fun connotations. Choosing our words with care...
I'm starting to panic to be honest with you (diary) about the project; I'm not sure how prepared K and I are to really make an on campus garden happen. We have a meeting with Lara this week who has built a community garden and I don't know the first thing about it. Interesting side of picking a long-term "realistic" project is that you have to take "real" responsibilities. I hoping this doesn't back fire on us.
Week Two!
This week was a good week for us. We started conversations with three parties on Friday afternoon: Lara Skutt from the Tempe Transportaion Center Public Garden, Bonny Bentzin from ASU's Global Institute of Sustainability, and Susan Ledlow in the Psychology Dept.
Lara's assistant called me and we've set up a meeting for this coming Friday afternoon.
Bonny refered us to three women on campus: Jehnifer Niklas in charge of the Poly Tech Campus Garden, Deborah Thirkhill in charge of the Tempe Campus Garden, and Ellen Newell in charge of the Tempe Campus grounds. I've requested that the 5 of us get together for a meeting. Hopefully, we can get a tour of the gardens.
I have yet to hear back from Susan Ledlow.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Survey!
Here's my first stab at our survey! We are probably going to test out the survey on a few people in studio first to see how it functions before we email it out.
Check it out:
Meeting Notes
Last week was one heck of a week. We definitely were a bit busy with studio work. Now that time is on our side we can catch up on tasks a bit. Above is an account of our meeting last week. As you can see, we are trying to let the process happen very organically. However, we always try to organize everything at the end of the meetings. The process has been pretty fruitful so far and now that we have more time to devote to this, it will only get better.My next task is to complete the survey that we will be emailing out. Survey to follow later tonight!
To be continued...
Saturday, October 23, 2010
New Leads!
I emailed Harvey about our project; he gave me two leads: (1) He mentioned that Bonny Bentzin - who is ASU's Sustainable Coordinator - has some thoughts about on campus gardening, so we'll have to get in touch with her, and (2) the town of Tempe has don a community garden on the corners of 5th St and Forrest. With some quick research I've found a woman named Lara Skutt who is leading up the Tempe project; it seems her mission is very similar to ours. If we can get in touch with her, then we have have found a friend for life!
Click to jump to a College Times interview with Lara Skutt.
Click to jump to a College Times interview with Lara Skutt.
Tempe Community Garden. Photo Credit: Ryan Ruiz
Friday, October 22, 2010
Week One: Calendar Snap Shot
This snap shot of our calendar for week one shows the tasks and meetings that we currently have scheduled; it does not show the meetings we intend to schedule or the potential tasks we foresee for the future. We intend to take weekly snapshots and post them to the blog to record how our schedule fluctuates with the tide of our progress.
A Blog is Born
So, we had the first of our twice-a-week production meetings today regarding our sustainability project. It was extremely productive. Andrew is a rockstar, and I am really excited about the current trajectory of our project.
We have a sort of general project outline involving proving the argument community = sustainability and recording the process behind proving that argument. The rest of the project will materialize as we progress in the next week or two and I look forward to seeing what form it ultimately takes.
The meeting was the kickoff of our project and dealt with the administrative/technical/logistical aspects of completing the project. One of which involved me setting up this very blog. It will serve as a recording device for our process. This took a lot longer than I anticipated, but I am extremely happy with the results.
It will be a lot of work, but I am looking forward to this journey.
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