I am heading to Moscow today to start another two weeks of fieldwork in Moscow and then in St. Petersburg. I am not treating these trips as intended to actually collect a lot of user data, but as set up trips for more contacts for the future. I am meeting more with academics and IT professionals than doing interviews, because the bulk of interviews, I am hoping to get in Novosibirsk and Tumen' in July. Moscow and St. Pete are not Russia, they are beasts onto themselves that are completely different experiences of Russianness than anywhere else. Nevertheless, these are important because they are central both for money and for education.
Russia greeted me with the usual collection of issues of getting in - the visa was ridiculously expensive and the organization that apparently is inviting me to do business happens to be the Olympic committee of Russia (which incidentally issues lots of invitations to a wide range of people and is the most common invite source). I am guessing this is how someone in the Olympic committee makes money while they do not need to invite lots of athletes - the down-times activity. Russia is a place where everything can be solved with money and I occasionally catch myself for starting to think that this is a normal way of doing things in the world... At least I will feel right at home in China then later on in the year...
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