countdown:

Book 1: Mirel and Spilka, "Reshaping tech comm: New directions for the 21st century".

The almost Ramist split between content management and information architecture fragments the practice of tech comm.

The focus is on "nontraditional" ideas for moving forward, w/ an academic - industry balance in contributions. Most contributors have done both academic and industrial research.

Part 1: Revising industry and academia / cultures and relationships

Chapter 1 (Dicks) : an interesting comp / contrast of academic and industrial culture, incl. language, power structure and perceptions of time.

Chapter 2 (Bosley) "Jumping off the ivory tower: changing the academic perspective": Shocking claim, academics set up the barriers to academic-industry partnerships by focusing on differences, exclusion, and underestimaging the value of their own work for practitioners. Article focuses on cultural similarities and common ground. Makes the radical suggestion that the university is a normal organization that needs tech comm.

Chapter 3 (Blakeslee) Researching a common ground: Exploring the space where academic and workplace cultures meet. Focuses on underestimated overlapping spaces and boundary work.

Chapter 4 (Pare) Keeping Writing in its Place -- a participatory action approach to workplace comm. Focuses on strategies for overcoming cultural differences. Interested in bidirectional failures to influence. Extreme embeddedness of nonacademic writing, which it's hard for classroom to simulate. The inuit social worker thing.

Chapter 5(Bernhardt) Active-practice: Creating Productive Tension between Academia and industry. Academia in industry need a shared sphere of activity (an active-practice).

I'm going home. It's a beautiful night.

Update: HAR! I read 150 pages, but I'm not taking notes.