Difference between revisions of "Recruiting Jim"

Jim is a college student, and dressed as one. Just not Wayne State. But he knocks at the door to Alma's office and steps in. Looking around, he nods "Howdy," with a clear Texas accent, when he sees her.

Alma looks up from her notebook, "Hi. What do you need?"

Jim holds up a little ticket from her flyer and takes it up to her. "Pardon me, ma'am, I saw your flyer about Corvid interdisciplinary research. I'm an Engineering extension student at West Texas A&M, and I thought maybe we could work out a cross-credit effort. And I like corvids."

"Oh! Cool cool cool, have a seat. ... Texas A&M? in Detroit?"

Alma looks confused

Jim nods and lowers himself down. Hands on his knees. "Thank you ma'am. That's right. I'm here in Detroit working with a local youth center, while finishing my degree." He flashes her his Aggie ring. "Corvids, drones, tracking, I reckon all sorts of this stuff interests me."

"Awesome. I have this grant and it gives me some latitude on the approaches based on the skills of students I can recruit. first, for a background. I'm interested in how the changing urban environment here in Detroit has affected the corvid population... to start small, I want to do a bird census using traditional techniques to compare with more technologically advanced ones"

Jim rubs his ring a moment, then grips his knees again. "That's great. I'm sure we can work out some sort of credit program with A&M." Her words make him pause a moment. "The environment in Detroit is pretty weird. Very dangerous, but also with some wierdly open spaces. I'm sure they can adapt, but you're right, how they're adapting is good to look at. Teach some folks about how smart they really are."

"oh my goodness you would not beleive how smart they are!"

Alma pauses, "but you said you like corvids so maybe you already know! look look look!!!" she pulls over her laptop and starts to tap tap tap

Jim can't help but laugh and grin at her comments. Rubbing the back of his neck a bit, as he lenas over to look at her screen.

"Here is the University of Aukland page for my lab and have you seen the work on New Caledonian Crows? they are so cool, they...." settling down a little, "I don't mean to go on and on. I want to get down to business with the grant work"

"There have been studies of social feeding behavior of Ravens in Maine, and of crows in Seattle. We don't have this information for Detroit or Baltimore" both cities are in an economic decline and Detroit in particular has vast areas of the city with fewer humans"

Jim blinks, and looks. "My interest has mostly been in the uh, in the corvus corax corax, and cousins. But they're all interesting in their own ways. Are you going to limit to one species here?"

You say, "uh no, I don't want to be too specific here. I get kind of focused on New Caledonian Crows because I was doing research on them up until last year. We published a few papers, and I have some stuff in progress. That's too specific for this environment. I'm not even sure you'd find the same type of tool use here"

Jim leans over, and smiles. "I guarantee you, ma'am, that you will find local ravens and crows are up to the task of using tools, just like the ones in New Zealand. I'd even bet on it. Welcome back to America."

"oh sure! definitely. they might not fish the same way woodpeckers mostly fill the niche of getting at grubs from trees here"

Alma pauses for a sigh

"I miss New Zealand"

"what was I saying?"

Jim grins. "This is an urban environment. Cracking nuts with cars. Pulling up trash bags. Different needs in different places." He looks at her screen a bit more. "Why don't we talk about the kind of help you need? With tracking and such. Since that's what you need me for, ma'am. Oh I beg your pardon. Name's Jim Gomez."

"oh hi! I should have introduced myself. I'm Alma Hunter. Nice to meet you"

Jim offers a hand. "Miss Alma. Likewise. I reckon we'll get work done. We might could start with safe electronic tracking."

"ok, so, here's an example of what you can get when you have a lot of money to throw at stuff like this" Alma shows Jim a page for a company that sells/leases equipment You say, "but this type of equipment is often too expensive for academics as well as people doing wetland preservation, or monitoring jungles, and so on. see?

Jim looks at it a bit, reaching out to scroll it. "We can build things like this ourselves, miss Alma. Cheaper for your budget."

"so before you get involved, I'm hoping you understand that anythign I do is going to follow the principles of free/libre open source software AND open hardware, whatever we can do. it means that the work will be accessible to people without a lot of money and without a lot of access to expensive equipment. so, no patents. is that ok?"

Jim nods. "That's fine, miss Alma. If it's government funded at all, in my opinion that's fine. And this is a public university, so... Alright."

"so, tell me a little about your background? engineering? what are some projects you've done?"

Jim sits up and nods. "Well I'm still an undergrad, so, I can only do so much in terms of projects. I've been undecided between electrical engineering and chemical engineering. Some of my recent experiments have been with using infrared light to disrupt night vision recording."

"woa! that's so cool."

Jim laughs. "Though for this I need the opposite. I need to have safe tracking that isn't so easily disrupted."

"speaking of that! I'm interested in monitoring urban noise pollution... and seeing if we can do bird censuses based on calls but I am worried the recordings could be confiscated... I don't know about all this and was wondering if it is easy to make things safe from that?"

Jim smiles. "Oh calls, you mean like this?" He then tilts his head, and does a DEAD ON imitation of a raven clicking out a call to other ravens.

You say, "oh gosh, that's adorable. can you do the adorable churr thing?"

Jim sits up, and grins. "If you twist my wing." He winks, and then does a few more sounds. He does that churr, then finishes up with a CAW.

"wow, that's really good mimicry. so are you more interested in doing audio analysis? you mentioned drones too. depending on your strengths, we could try to capture visuals too"

Alma looks at her coffee cup

Jim smiles. "Thank you ma'am. And I could do audio analysis. I have an ear for that sort of thing. I could help with your census first, if that's your highest priority."

You say, "please pardon me"

Jim sits back. "Take your time ma'am."

Alma has a wary look on her face as she checks her coffee. her coffee is 1/3rd full

Jim coughs. "Something wrong ma'am?"

"uh, I'm running low on coffee. maybe we could pick up this conversation in the lounge?"

Jim slowly stands. "Alright, no problem miss Alma." He looks at the open window, then at her. "Anything I can help with?"

"no... I'm okay. I just need more coffee"

"it's luke warm"

"shall we?"

Alma motions you out the door.

Jim laughs, and goes on out, holding the door open for her. "Let's get your coffee."

"no, after you"

Jim nods, and goes on ahead. "Alright." he shrugs, and goes out into the hall to wait. Since he doesn't know where the coffee is.

Alma refills her coffee and brings it to the lounge to sit with you

Alma stirs in a few dots of creamer, and watches it settle a little before taking a sip

Alma sipps, then sets her coffee cup on the table

Alma 'accidentally' spills some coffee

"oops"

Alma looks embarassed

Jim follows her into the lounge, and when she spills, he rushes to get her a napkin. "Here you go ma'am."

"thanks! I hate it when that happens"

Alma mops up the coffee then pulls out a pen to take notes

Alma diagrams a really messy sketch of blocks

Jim trise to help if she lets him, otherwise he just gets himself a paper cup of black coffee and sits. "So census is the first priority? We can probably come up with a recording tool that will study the specific voices of each animal, and look for repeats."

Alma tears napkin

Alma ughs

Alma pulls out notebook to start over

You say, "we can get specific voices? I thought maybe we'd just enough information to identify a crow vs say, a pigeon"

Alma takes another sip of coffee. smiles and relaxes

Jim smiles. "You seem to be calming down. I guess the fresh coffee helps." He sips himself.

Alma agrees

Alma sketches out places where it could be nice to have some listening devices

Jim leans forward, hand on his knee, the other holding his cup. Sipping, reading. "Yeah, the biggest question is how big an area do you want to cover?"

"let's start a little small at first. my advisor keeps telling me to slow down"

Jim laughs. "Maybe just cover the campus. And yes, It hink we could pick up voices of individual birds. Each one makes similar calls, but not identical. Just like people."

"I've seen flocks go here and here and I want to do some monitoring in this more vacant area but also in Mexicantown"

"oh, campus makes sense. actually, they do that a lot at u dub"

"we know some people there that do work on crows"

"maybe we could do a field trial on campus, then try it again in one of the more quieter abandoned places"

"noise popullation in cities really affects the ability of birds to recognize each other and communicate things"

Jim nods. "Yes, do a census here. Do a census in the excluded area. Compare the two. Then do you.. auditory analysis."

"it can be pretty bad for song birds, and for corvids we know that there is some social recruitment going on for feeding but it hasn't been studied well for how noise pollution affects that"

"cool, I like this idea. I don't know how to do audio analysis, that might be something you know how to do? I'm also trying to recruit people who are good with data"

"where are you from in Texas? say A&M is in College Station?"

Alma gathers up coffee cup, napkin, notebook

"let me get you some paperwork and exchange contact information. if you have a professor or someone who would like to handle the credits for an idependent study I could get in touch with her and we could work things out. or him"

Jim gets out his phone, and grabs another napkin to sketch out his phone number and name. He then hands it to her, and gets ready to accept hers. "Thank you ma'am. When you get your grants all settled we can get right to work. And I'll contact A&M to find out what they need."

Alma writes down contact info along with email "here's my information. It's easist to get my attention with email or txts."

Jim nods. 'Texting is fine miss Alma. Good luck."

"I can send you some references for a brief overview of field methods"

Jim nods. "Thanks. I can have my transcript sent if you want."

Alma nods

"ok, and if you can introduce me to one of your professors that would help"

Jim nods. "Sure thing ma'am. I'll get you that email. EVerythong in the extension program is over the Internet, but I know folks back in College Station too."