Curio Research Quarterly Vol. 11

Happy autumn! Depending on where you are, I hope you're enjoying the pleasant changes in weather and color while prepping your domiciles for a long and lonely self-isolating winter. (Bummer, I know.)

Business

Work

While the summer was slow, business has picked up considerably in the fall. In September, a colleague recommended me to do a project for Airtable, and suddenly I was fielding availability requests from a bunch of other clients and contacts. It felt so good to turn on my time tracker and send out invoices again.

Now I'm working on exciting projects for Macadamian and Blink. Both present unique challenges I'm looking forward to resolving.

If you have projects you're planning on starting in November and think you may need my help, reach out sooner rather than later. I'd love to help you in any way I can.

Leadership

While I was honored to be nominated to the Qualitative Research Consultants Association's board of directors, I wasn't one of the people elected. I'm a relatively new member compared to the other nominees, so it stands to reason I didn't make the cut. 

I'm still a co-chair for the QRCA's Pacific Northwest chapter, and we're working with the Insights Association on their fall and winter programming. We just co-hosted a casual event featuring research practitioners talking about their triumphs and challenges in suddenly transitioning from in-person to remote methodologies. 

We are also co-organizing a diversity, equity, and inclusion event for Insights Association's Future of Insights event. The panel we are organizing will feature agency and in-house research leaders who are also members of visible minority communities. They will be discussing what they see going right and wrong when it comes to DEI in research. The audience will then break out into smaller groups to discuss how they can improve upon past projects and promote a more equitable profession and practice. I'll be one of the facilitators managing the breakout rooms.

I'm also diligently working with the QRCA's annual conference organizers on creating a great virtual experience for sponsors and attendees. It's my favorite conference, and it's fast approaching (the week of February 4th, 2021, to be exact).

Public Speaking

I'm delivered my talk on making research inclusive to people with disabilities at the User-Centered Design Gathering based in the UK from the comfort of my home in Vancouver. It went well, and the audience asked a lot of smart questions. While I miss traveling and being at conferences in-person, the convenience of presenting from home is hard to beat.

Now I have to think about what I'm going to speak about next to pitch to 2021 conferences. Is there anything you would be interested to hear about? I'm all ears.

Personal

Travel

We made another trip while the weather was warm to BC's wine and orchard country. We enjoyed time by the lake, went hiking, and visited wineries, cideries, and cheesemakers. We would often get takeout from some of Penticton's finer winery restaurants to dine on the beach. It was lovely to get away and enjoy the desert sun one last time before the winter.

Home

OMG, we're selling our beloved heritage loft. When we were ready to buy our first home, this was the first place we looked at, and it was love at first sight. We never looked at any other properties. We've spent seven happy years here, and it's also been my home office for four. But with the pandemic, my husband is working here too, and his company has announced that remote work will be permanent. Both of us working from home means that an open concept loft is no longer ideal for us. We now need defined rooms with walls and doors. So we're moving.

We're going to miss this place. We will miss our community of neighbors in the building. But we're looking forward to the excitement of change we have a say in.

Media

I did it. I finally watched HBO's Watchmen series. What a fantastic show. Each episode is engaging from start to finish, and the way they address systemic racism and buried historic tragedies from a Black hero's point of view is unique and overdue. I highly recommended it.

Right now, I'm reading Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan on the unpredictability of disruptive events, which seems descriptive of COVID-19 and the rise of Trump. It's a good read for researchers as a reminder that not all evidence is apparent. Sometimes evidence is silent. We find ourselves talking to survivors about surviving and ignore the tales of the fallen to our detriment.

Giving Back

Business bouncing back meant I could donate to the Sierra Club of Canada to help with their ongoing campaign to maintain Canadian wilderness, including BC's old-growth forests.

Other than that, if you're in the US, I hope you're registered to vote and have submitted your absentee ballot. If you're in BC, I hope you did the same for the provincial election.

Stay safe, participate in your democracy, and I hope we work together soon.

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