Happy to announce that I’ll be speaking in Banff at the Rundle Summit in February. It’s a communications conference co-hosted by the University of Alberta’s Communications and Technology Program and the University of Calgary, Communication, Media and Film Program. Full details of the conference can be found here.

I’ll be discussing the research I did as a graduate student at the U of A, which was around online hockey fans and how they use blogs to develop and share new information.

You can access my final research paper here: SuperFan 2.0 : Exploring the produsage qualities of hockey fans

This was done between 2009 and 2012, so there’s a lot that’s happened since then.

Personally, I was able to apply what I learned from the program to my own day job, but also used a lot of the concepts to start my own hockey blog. I’ve been a life-long fan  and like using stats to dig into things, so it’s been fun providing commentary and learning about the different ways to evaluate teams and players. I’ve been very fortunate getting opportunities to write for other web sites, and being on TV and radio. It’s been a fun side-gig, as I’ve been able to do something I really care about and  meet some very good people along the way.

Older post worth reading: Finding the SuperFan – (2014, July 23)

I’ve also got a pretty good perspective on how the media’s role has changed because of the new communication tools available to fans, and will share some of my experiences. The most interesting aspect for me has been the development and growth of hockey analytics and how it’s played out in the public sphere. It’s been largely fan-driven, and it’s impacted how the league and major media networks provide coverage.

I’ll post a few updates as I put my presentation together, and will publish my final work here as well.