The goal of this project encompasses better understanding the community goal of the activities included in the week of the Round Up event. This includes attempting to determine if the cattle ranching community (or at least of the ranches selected to participate) wish to share their “love” of their lifestyle, or attempt to limit enjoyment of the event only to those who share it. Without being able to participate in the event before the end of the semester, observation will be limited to interviews and informal queries of community members – in an attempt to obtain unprepared and potentially more unbiased responses to questions.
As potentials for interviews, I would like to layer the interviews through participation status – rancher, volunteer, guest speaker, and crowd. I am hoping to contact one guest entertainer for an interview. She has performed at the Cowboy Church service several times and is scheduled again for this year’s event. I am hoping that she can provide insight into the idea of a full religious service at a community event. This appeals to me as a unique experience for an event not associated with a religious holiday or celebration.
The website may be rather basic as my abilities with the WordPress structure are limited. I do plan to create a timeline of event winners and showing when new events were added to the Round Up over the years. I would like to show a map, probably using Google Maps, to show the locations and sizes of the ranches involved. Since this is a well reported event each year, I am hoping to include videos from You Tube or local news stations on the website. I also hope to include samples of items from the various surrounding events, such as artwork, poetry, and pictures of food from the chuck wagon. I’m not certain how best to display these, but will seek an interesting format to prevent merely another drop down menu. I would love to learn how to have the images flow through the main page.
My biggest difficulty may be finding people to interview. The official committee communication person appears to be hesitant to respond to my request for contacts. Understandably, the committee may be concerned about my academic treatment of the Round Up’s ideals. I am seeking points of contacts through other channels, but my interviews may be later in coming. While I am working on finding candidates to interview, I will be researching the archives for perspectives on the event from previous decades. A big question will be to the claim that this event helped launch similar events across the nation. If this event was the first of its kind, how did the idea catch on to become popular in other cities?
I will not be able to attend this event before the end of the semester as it takes place in August. I am currently working through connections to the community to find interviewees. I am also looking at the websites of participating ranches to find points of contact. I will also be looking at contacting people who work for and with the organizations that sponsor, benefit from and report on the event. As this event is a big news item every year, I hope to talk to reporters who have covered it in the past.
Timeline
March 10: Send invitation to Ms. McIntyre for interview. Have names for other potential interviewees. Have list of winning ranches for timeline. Have questions to the IRB.
March 15: Begin creating timeline of winners and new events.
March 17: Gather videos and news stories on events.
March 22: Begin interviews. Begin building menu drop downs.
March 24: Interviews continued. Begin transcribing.
March 29: Continue Interviews and transcribing.
March 31: Begin website build, hopefully with improved graphics.
April 5: Continue Interviews and transcribing. Website Building.
April 7: Continue Interviews and transcribing. Website Building.
April 12: Continue Interviews and transcribing. Website Building.
April 14: Continue Interviews and transcribing. Website Building.
April 21: Project Draft Completed.
April 23: Update website from feedback
April 28: Work on improvements to project. Begin work on final project blog.
April 30: Work on improvements to project.
May 3: Work on improvements to project and presentation
May 5: Final project Due.
May 10: Presentation on final project.
May 12: Peer Review Due.
May 14: MSU Graduation
Hi Leanne! I’m kind of nervous about soliciting interviews. I’m doing three festivals right now and hoping to get some “officials” involved, although I do have a festival-goer to fall back on. I just got my IRB approvals so now the search begins! Good luck on yours.
Hi Tanya,
Thanks for letting me know I’m not the only one nervous about contacting people for interviews. I finally got a few leads, but I’m nearly paralyzed about making contact. I don’t want to come across all academic, but I don’t want to appear like an idiot either. I worked up an e-mail of introduction, but haven’t decided if it’s quite right.
Good to hear you have IRB approval, I don’t know if I’ll get mine before the semester ends. Good luck on you interviews!
Not being able to participate in the festival this year was a major concern for me as well (particularly regarding field notes) but Drs. Kroll and Snow assured us that we can take some pretty great notes by conducting our interviews as ethnographers and peeling back the layers of our participants! Good luck! I hope all is well!
Not being able to participate in the festival this year was a major concern for me as well (particularly regarding field notes) but Drs. Kroll and Snow assured us that we can take some pretty great notes by conducting our interviews as ethnographers and peeling back the layers of our participants! Good luck! I hope all is well!