During the COVID-19 pandemic, many U.S. small towns and secondary cities started offering cash and in-kind incentives to attract remote workers eager to escape overcrowded coastal cities. These new incentive schemes, known in economic literature as Remote Work Attraction Incentives Programs (see Strauss … Read More
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Hustle harder? My ICA 2022 virtual presentation
After two virtual editions (2020 and 2021), the International Communication Association annual conference is back in a hybrid format. I admit that the idea of traveling to Paris to present my work was enticing. However, due to scheduling conflicts, I … Read More
The impact of remote work on US rural regions and secondary cities
On Thursday, March 24 I had the pleasure to present my latest research on the impact of remote work on US rural regions and secondary cities at the Communicative Cities Research Network Symposium 2022, organized by the European Communication Research … Read More
ISA Forum of Sociology
Last month I had the pleasure of presenting at the IV ISA Forum of Sociology. The conference was supposed to take place in 2020 in Porto Alegre, Brasil. Because of Covid, ISA decided to push the forum to 2021 and … Read More
Some shots from my research photo album
In this post, I decided to open my archive and publish some of the pictures I have taken throughout my journey into the Vancouver startup scene. The quality of my shots is…what it is. I am not a photographer and … Read More
It’s an ongoing bromance
What do Silicon Valley and the countercultural movements of the 1960s have in common? The answer is…a lot. At least this is what Fred Turner argues in his highly influential book From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth … Read More
Lines of Work: an interview with Jill Anholt
The Oxford English Dictionary defines serendipity as the “faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident”. Serendipitous was, indeed, my encounter with Jill Anholt‘s art installation Lines of Work. Jill Anholt is a visual artist based in Vancouver and … Read More
ICA 2020 – My first virtual conference ever
The 70th edition of the International Communication Association conference was supposed to take place in these days in wonderful Gold Coast, Australia. By the time you’ll be reading this post, you’d probably already know that the organizers decided to cancel … Read More
On API and digital methods
Just a couple months ago I was celebrating the release of the Meetup Archiver on Github. A little piece of software sending requests to Meetup.com and retrieving data via their official APIs. A software that, I wish, could be useful … Read More
Labora @ 4s 2019 New Orleans
My video for 4s 2019: Innovations, Interruptions, Regenerations, panel on “Disrupting Algorithms: Innovating Work and Life in the Digital Economy” organized by Yujie Chen and Alessandro Delfanti. Video recorded at the Vancouver Public Library Inspiration Lab.
Meetup Archiver: now available on GitHub
After months of work, I am very happy to announce that the Meetup Archiver is now public and available on GitHub. The Meetup Archiver is a sweet piece of software retrieving data from Meetup API and storing the results in … Read More
2019 Conference season
In the past few weeks I had the opportunity to present my research at two conferences. The first was the SFU School of Communication Graduate Students conference. In this presentation I shared my research results and I focused in particular … Read More
Where are we from?
The Vancouver tech industry relies heavily on immigrant workers. According to the 2016 BC Tech TechTalentBC report, nearly one in three job vacancies at BC’s tech companies is filled by an immigrant worker. Immigrant tech workers are a fundamental asset … Read More
My November/December reading list
Part of my research involves a content analysis of recent and current managerial literature. The inspiration for this study came from Nigel Thrift’s book “Knowing Capitalism” (2005). Thrift argues that the coming into existence of modern capitalism (or soft capitalism … Read More
Labora @ Civic Tech YVR
Just a quick post to announce that I will be presenting Labora at Civic Tech YVR #14: Culture, the Digital Economy and Political Campaigning. Civic Tech YVR is an interesting group of socially oriented tech-folks in Vancouver “interested in examining … Read More
Vancouver Startup Week 2018
Yesterday has officially started the 2018 edition of the Vancouver Startup Week. Over the next seven days the city will host a plethora of events dedicated to startups, from educational workshops to “startup crawls”. For me this is a particular … Read More
Presenting Labora at XIX World Congress of Sociology
July was a month full of events. Besides conducting my on field research, I also had the chance to present some of the outcomes at the XIX World Congress of Sociology which took place in Toronto. The theme of the … Read More
Research log #2 – Moving deeper into the field (and Dashboard v0.2 released)
The past three weeks have been filled with events and interviews. The more I move into the Vancouver startup ecosystem, the more I learn about the different organizations active in town. So far, I had the chance to immerse myself … Read More
Research log #1 – Dashboard live and Brainstation DemoDay
Hello everyone, and welcome to my first research update since the launch of the website. This week I’ve been working on setting up my Tableau Public account. Tableau is one of the leading data visualization software available, and I am … Read More