First year of graduate school ended Monday, and so my summer begins. In the spirit of working in public, I want to share with you my plans for the summer. Last week, I’ve proposed two ideas for my thesis project next year, both of which revolve around the idea of a networked and social approach towards information distribution problems. This summer I plan to interview lots of people, conduct experiments to validate hunches, and build networks around these ideas.

The first idea is around education and career planning. My hypothesis is that young adults crave a more authentic picture of careers and work to help them choose how they educate and equip themselves. What might career counseling in the 21st century look like, if we leveraged the networked technologies of our world today? In my initial, blurry vision, we might bring together people telling stories of their messy career paths, giving their audience a sense of where they came from, and how they go there.

My second idea is around legislation and democracy. My hypothesis is that the average citizen is too far removed from the legislation being passed in their name to effectively stand up for their rights and interests. How might we use networked technology to bring a larger subset to the public to the legislative process? I am inspired by the open source software movement, and social news sites like Reddit. I wonder if we can make the “source” of the bills more accessible to the public, and build social hooks around the bills to making sharing and commenting on bills more commonplace.

Still with me? Would spare a couple minutes and help me out?  After reading about these two ideas:

• Who is the first person that comes to mind that I should talk to?
• What is the first book that comes to mind that I ought to read?
• What is a project I simply must see?

So far, my research/talk-to list for the education idea:

• Carol Dweck, Stanford Researcher and author of Mindset
• Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why
• The Story Pirates
• The Story Collider
• Jonathan Harris and the Cowbird project
• Dan Savage and “It Gets Better”
• Brooklyn Free School
• Thiel Fellowship

And my research/talk-to list for the legislation idea:

• Lawrence Lessig, Harvard Law professor and founder of Creative Commons
• Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody
• Anil Dash, Co-founder of Think-up and Activate
• Alexis Ohanian, Co-founder of Reddit
• THOMAS, the Library of Congress online legislative information website
• Votizen
• The Brooklyn Law School
• Columbia Graduate School of Journalism

Who else should I know about? Suggestions or comments on the thesis ideas? I’d love to here it!