LinkedIn / LinkedOut: A media field study of LinkedIn in a practice theory pe...Mathias Haugaard Jørgensen
From a user perspective and from the theoretical perspective of Medium Theory and Practice Theory, this master thesis clarifies new aspects regarding the use of LinkedIn in different domains of social life. This is done with a qualitative case-study of 14 career-minded LinkedIn users in relation to their diploma programme in process consultancy (PKU). More specifically, multiple ethnographic methods are combined including offline participatory observations, netnography, focus group interview, and individual interviews, following the participants from May until December 2014 in order get the deepest and fullest insight possible on their LinkedIn experience.
On a general level, the master thesis discovers a tension field between the new professional possibilities and potentials for communities and individuals on the one hand, and several social ambivalences and grey areas on the other.
First and foremost, the common use of a closed LinkedIn group makes LinkedIn productive, and strengthens the community of practice on the PKU with regard to knowledge sharing and shared repertoire. Besides the PKU, the participants sporadically use LinkedIn in their jobs in their own as well as their employers’ interests – seemingly, a win-win situation. Moreover, the participants continually earn career capital in terms of network and of keeping themselves informed on specific subjects or the industry and job market in general. Career capital is earned to invest when pursuing new career goals, or at least to get a good feeling that these things are possible. In total, the potentials explain LinkedIn’s growth in a Danish context as well as the dominating business perspectives in the literature. Also, the values can be seen and explained through the light of late modern social theories like the ones of Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt Baumann and Richard Sennett.
However, the very same theories might as well explain the downsides of LinkedIn use. Namely, this thesis finds that LinkedIn takes part in an information overload in everyday media practices and of the partially undesirable blending of private and professional life domains. Furthermore, the participants are restraining their LinkedIn activities due to its demanding participation and several uncertainties about how LinkedIn’s technical and social mechanisms are working – and consequently uncertainties about the effect on their professional ethos.
In this way, the thesis also offers an explanation for the low level of LinkedIn activities in comparison to the activity on other social media – and simultaneously, an explanation for the high level of lurkers and passive users on LinkedIn. In this way, it also explains why quantitative studies of the visible activities online fail to gain these insights.
In the end, possibilities of learning and especially of transformative learning are put into perspective.
Building microservices with Vert.x - Bert Jan Schrijver - Codemotion Amsterda...Codemotion
Vert.x is a toolkit for building reactive applications on the JVM. It's event driven, non blocking and polyglot, which makes it an excellent platform for building microservices. In this talk, I'll share experiences and from a Dutch company that started building reactive web applications with Vert.x about 3 years ago. You'll learn the concepts behind Vert.x, why we chose Vert.x, how we're using it and the challenges we faced. Topics include the anatomy of our projects, (micro)services architecture, deployment model and DevOps, scalability and the upgrade from Vert.x 2 to Vert.x 3.
Event Sourcing (and CQRS) has become a hot topic. But what does it really means, why should we care and which new possibilities it opens for us? In this session we will introduce you to the main principles of CQRS and Event Sourcing. You will learn how to model your domain in terms of Commands and Events and how to build a reactive applications in Scala using Fun.CQRS and its reactive Akka backend.
LinkedIn / LinkedOut: A media field study of LinkedIn in a practice theory pe...Mathias Haugaard Jørgensen
From a user perspective and from the theoretical perspective of Medium Theory and Practice Theory, this master thesis clarifies new aspects regarding the use of LinkedIn in different domains of social life. This is done with a qualitative case-study of 14 career-minded LinkedIn users in relation to their diploma programme in process consultancy (PKU). More specifically, multiple ethnographic methods are combined including offline participatory observations, netnography, focus group interview, and individual interviews, following the participants from May until December 2014 in order get the deepest and fullest insight possible on their LinkedIn experience.
On a general level, the master thesis discovers a tension field between the new professional possibilities and potentials for communities and individuals on the one hand, and several social ambivalences and grey areas on the other.
First and foremost, the common use of a closed LinkedIn group makes LinkedIn productive, and strengthens the community of practice on the PKU with regard to knowledge sharing and shared repertoire. Besides the PKU, the participants sporadically use LinkedIn in their jobs in their own as well as their employers’ interests – seemingly, a win-win situation. Moreover, the participants continually earn career capital in terms of network and of keeping themselves informed on specific subjects or the industry and job market in general. Career capital is earned to invest when pursuing new career goals, or at least to get a good feeling that these things are possible. In total, the potentials explain LinkedIn’s growth in a Danish context as well as the dominating business perspectives in the literature. Also, the values can be seen and explained through the light of late modern social theories like the ones of Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt Baumann and Richard Sennett.
However, the very same theories might as well explain the downsides of LinkedIn use. Namely, this thesis finds that LinkedIn takes part in an information overload in everyday media practices and of the partially undesirable blending of private and professional life domains. Furthermore, the participants are restraining their LinkedIn activities due to its demanding participation and several uncertainties about how LinkedIn’s technical and social mechanisms are working – and consequently uncertainties about the effect on their professional ethos.
In this way, the thesis also offers an explanation for the low level of LinkedIn activities in comparison to the activity on other social media – and simultaneously, an explanation for the high level of lurkers and passive users on LinkedIn. In this way, it also explains why quantitative studies of the visible activities online fail to gain these insights.
In the end, possibilities of learning and especially of transformative learning are put into perspective.
Building microservices with Vert.x - Bert Jan Schrijver - Codemotion Amsterda...Codemotion
Vert.x is a toolkit for building reactive applications on the JVM. It's event driven, non blocking and polyglot, which makes it an excellent platform for building microservices. In this talk, I'll share experiences and from a Dutch company that started building reactive web applications with Vert.x about 3 years ago. You'll learn the concepts behind Vert.x, why we chose Vert.x, how we're using it and the challenges we faced. Topics include the anatomy of our projects, (micro)services architecture, deployment model and DevOps, scalability and the upgrade from Vert.x 2 to Vert.x 3.
Event Sourcing (and CQRS) has become a hot topic. But what does it really means, why should we care and which new possibilities it opens for us? In this session we will introduce you to the main principles of CQRS and Event Sourcing. You will learn how to model your domain in terms of Commands and Events and how to build a reactive applications in Scala using Fun.CQRS and its reactive Akka backend.