The One with the Big Announcement

Most of you who know me in a day to day way have heard my big news already, but word is trickling out in a semi-random fashion to the rest of the world.

No, we’re not having another baby.

I’m starting a Ph.D. program this fall!

The University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee has a terrific School of Information Studies, and the school’s doctoral program offers a concentration in Information Policy. Those of you who know me professionally know that information policy is exactly what I am most interested in, especially as it relates to issues of privacy, security, and social media.

The prospect of teaching Information Policy means that eventually, hopefully, I will have a job where I think and write about the things I find most interesting, without the problem of needing to find clients to address their problems or confusion in this area.

In the shorter term, I’ll be working as a research assistant to Dr. Sandra Braman, analyzing how privacy was (and was not) designed into the architecture of the Internet, at least insofar as those choices were documented in the official design standards documents known as The RFCs. (The project looks at all law and public policy issues that arise in the standards process; my focus is privacy.)

We’ve been working on the first 10 years of the process so far, but there are thousands of additional documents as the RFC process continues to be the way that Internet design decisions are made. Rumor has it that I will also be working for other faculty, but I have yet to hear anything concrete; I’ve been working with Sandra since February.

My law practice will continue. It has never quite made it to the status of a full time job, although I have had the good fortune to work with some terrific clients, and I will continue to work on appropriate projects as they come up. But I will no longer be “beating the bushes” trying to turn it into a full-time practice.