Well… it won’t. Unless we make it do so.
The fact that other students have turned this white paper project -directly- into full time positions should be perking everyone’s attention. This project really hammers home the fact that we aren’t just doing homework here, we’re establishing a body of work which is well grounded in scholarly research and demonstrating that we can take theory and apply it to current business-affecting systems.

If done well, this will open academic and business doors for each of us and help us launch our future. One of the reasons I’m abandoning my preliminary topic of the ad agency workflow impact that the Net has had is because I’m a little tired of working in advertising. If I do the white paper on advertising, I’m continuing the pigeonholing.

Basically, my advice for everyone is to ask what you want to be when you grow up and write the white paper about how the internet is messing with -that- field. Even if you change your mind later on in the Master’s, you’ll have established that topic as a core competency. If you can’t be an expert in one subject on the internet, the next best thing is to be an expert in some other internet subject, and convince everyone that your expertise, while not ‘directly’ applicable, gives you certain theoretical insights into internet problem solving which -do- apply to (insert subject here).

However, in all fairness, collaborative processes are the norm in the workplace, and it’s extremely rare that we’ll ever get to put something like this together on our own … unless we’re gluttons for punishment and decide to start writing white papers for fun. Always a possibility.

I’m looking forward to it. I’m working with Willow and we’re investigating the realm of Electronic Civil Disobedience. We’re not sure which angle or sub-topic we’ll focus on yet, but I think by starting with reading what’s out there first, we’ll quickly pick a direction to settle down with.