Current Interests
I am currently leading a research project supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation to investigate the socio-technical processes, work practices, communities, and policy issues emerging in development of open source software systems. This focuses on a comparative empirical examination of four different communities including that centered on Internet infrastructure, X-ray astronomy and deep space imaging, academic software design research, and networked computer games (NCG). In the NCG world, I am particularly interested in the development and deployment of open source game "mods", career contingencies of game mod'ers, grrl gaming, and how the processes and practices of the NCG world are similar to and different from the other communities in the study. I have been focusing attention to particular game worlds associated with Unreal (including Half-Life, Dr. Action, and Unreal Tournament), Quake Arena, Neverwinter Nights, Everquest, and The Sims. I have also recently submitted a proposal to NSF for a new study that seeks to investigate how NCG systems can be opened, modified, or extended to serve as a "work practices simulator". A WPS is a NCG system that supports the modeling and situated interaction of complex technical work activities (e.g., conducting astrophysical observations using a national virtual observatory, setting up a LAN party, or conducting an internet-based chat meeting), based on data, socio-technical actions, and hyperlinked artifacts collected in my open source project.

Emerging Interest in Persistent Game Worlds and New Media Arts: Game Grids
I have an interest in participating in the design, prototyping, use, and community evolution of game grids. A grid (e.g. Access Grid) can be a network/cluster of possibly heterogeneous NCG systems that collectively enable the (re)composition of geographically dispersed groups of game/NMA participants into virtual organizations that can share infrastructure and exchange resources for collective interests. Game grids should enable a group of interested artists/others to rapidly form persistent, NGC worlds using open source and peer-to-peer resource sharing techniques for diverse cultural expressions. Game grids may be mobile, decentralized, and potentially anonymous. Game grids may also represent an approach that accommodates the collective development of persistent game worlds of extraordinary scale and scope (ESS). ESS is meant to point to future scenarios where hundreds of thousands of participants might join a given grid (e.g., for a QuakeCon tournament, a real-time visual art performance, or a community anijam). Yet, to achieve Game Grids fostering ESS will require interdisciplinary research into matters like how to achieve extraordinary ease of development for content, system, and virtual organization, and how to rapidly create high performance users and usage scenarios. Advances in techniques such as these would enable collateral advances in other realms of scientific, engineering, and artistic practice and collaboration. I believe that the CalIT(2) project can expand its agenda and resources, as well as engage industry/government sponsors, around an emerging interdisciplinary focus on game grids.