Arctic Penguin

D. Yvette Wohn is a journalist and new media researcher. Her life is mainly spent toggling between digital and analog. She spends most of her time on her ice floe, observing polar bears. Her hobbies range from writing, painting and photography to cake decorating and shopping.

She likes: Painting, playing computer games, decorating cakes,  going to museums, noting technological developments, thinking of weird business ideas, writing reality stories, singing along to musicals, haute couture, using scissors and glue, driving opentop in places with nice scenery, traveling, people with a lot of self-confidence, shopping (all kinds), arranging things by color, rolling around between crisp cotton sheets, ironing, scrubbing mildew, net surfing, giving gifts

She hates: injustice, doing laundry, schmoozing, going to the gym, people who speak loudly in confined public places, lying, criticism regarding physical appearance, fluorescent lights, wires, people who badmouth other religions and cultures, highly educated people who are ignorant about all subjects except their own field of study, making the bed, people who use foul language, being spied on, listening to lousy speeches/lectures/sermons, waiting (for someone or something to respond)

The longer version…

You really don’t want to read this; there is much more detail than you need to know. But for those people (web stalkers!) who would rather read about me then get to really know me, here is my side of the story, updated whenever I feel like adding more.

Childhood
I was born in Seoul, South Korea, and almost immediately moved to Daejeon, where my father was completing his mandatory military service at a government research agency.

Before I turned one, my parents and I crossed the Pacific to Wisconsin, where my father received his master’s degree in computer science. We then moved to Maryland, where my sister was born and my father finished up his Ph.D. The only memories I have of this time are digging for spring onions in the playground and playing on the computer at preschool.

I attended kindergarten and first grade at Pierce Elementary School in Arlington, MA while my father was a postdoctorate fellow at Harvard University. I loved this phase of my life- school, the reservoir next to our apartment complex, the library (I was a voracious reader), the dollar store (where products were sometimes more than a dollar), and my friends Gemma, Alfredo, and Karen.

I was involved in a bulk of extra-curricular activities such as ballet, ice-skating, gymnastics, and piano lessons. I played the part of an ice-cream cone for the winter performance of our ballet studio (Raymond’s Studio), received first place for a handstand contest (by sheer luck- I was never able to do a perfect handstand again) and enjoyed walking up the winding staircase at the Longy School of Music.

When my father accepted a professorship at the Univ. of Pennsylvania, our family moved to the suburbian town of Cherry Hill, NJ. After living in condos and apartments, Cherry Hill was the first “house” I lived in and I loved it. It had a huge three-quarter acre backyard.

From second to sixth grade, I went to Kingston Elementary School, which was a period of realization on how it was to be a minority. It wasn’t cool to get all A’s unless you were blond and wearing the appropriate clothes. It was better to be athletic than musical or artistic. I took swimming lessons at the Y and even participated in swimming competitions, but I was terrible at track and field, making me a loser.

I always felt like an outsider, although sometimes the popular girls would include me in their circle. They were never mean to me, but never anything more than neutral. I spent my lunchtime working as an art aide to avoid the playground. My closest friends were Jewish, Indian, and Filipino.

Although this time was not a great one socially, I did well academically and played the piano with hopes of becoming a professional player some day. My first performance with an orchestra was at Mozart on the Square in Philadelphia for the final round of a Young Artist’s Competition. Violinist Hilary Hahn won grand prize and I won first prize. She went on to be a world-famous violinist, which shows that no one remembers second place.

Teens

My family moved to Korea when I was 12, and I found myself in Science Town, a nerdy neighborhood in Daejeon where most of the kids were super-smart and had competitive parents with advanced degrees. I was not the best student and had to study super hard to catch up. Dreaded subjects were Chinese character class, social studies, and National Ethics. The three years of junior high were perhaps the hardest I’ve ever studied, but they paid off and I was able to escape by moving to Seoul to attend Ewha Girls’ Foreign Language High School, a private school that requires tests for admissions. There were a few other of these prestigious private high schools in Seoul, but my parents thought a girls’ school would be “safer,” since I would be living away from home. Thanks to them (and myself for being an obedient child), I have no male acquaintances from high school.

I boarded with two other friends from Daejeon for two years then found a run-down apartment across the street from school in my senior year. The apartment was built right next to a train crossing and the bell would clang every time a train passed by– that sound and the rumble of steel wheels on tracks– shook the apartment deep in the night.

When I look back, my six years of junior and high school weren’t that bad and peppered with fun happenings, but I was very unhappy at the time and made a huge effort to erase most of those memories when I went to college.

College Years

I had a phenomenal four years at Ewha Women’s University (one of the top five universities in Korea– admissions had no relation to my high school), where I was a broadcasting and journalism major, a very trendy department at the time.

[journalism] I was involved in a multitude of projects, mostly those that I initiated. One of my main dedications was the Ewha Voice, the campus English paper. There, I self-taught myself web design and with the help of a design student, created the first online website for our paper.

A translating job (I started freelance translating at the age of 18 to earn money) led to a reporter position at The World’s Seoul, a trilingual in-flight magazine offered only to passengers in the first and business classes. I happened to be at the right place at the right time when the editor quit, and was promoted to editor-in-chief, where I had the joy of learning how to put together a magazine. Duties ranged from working with fashion stylists and photographers to writing my own articles, and going to the printer’s.

While at the office of The World’s Seoul, I also wrote two tourism brochures for the Seoul Metropolitan City and Gangnam District Office. They involved writing, taking pictures, and working with illogical politicians.

In November, 2001, I used the experience I had with The World’s Seoul to launch Yvette, a magazine targeting young, intellectual women. The magazine didn’t last a year because Korea had just exited the Asian Financial Crisis of 1999 and advertisers didn’t think that young women would spend money. They were later proven wrong, but by then I had already moved on to a new project.

[music] Just before I entered college, I got to know the popular musician Shin Hae-chul and over the course of two years, helped him write English lyrics for two of his albums. I also helped film a music video for the underground rock band LaC. Both experiences were wonderful insights- being able to learn about the Korean music industry from both ends.

During my junior year, I staged an adaption of the musical Jekyll and Hyde in English with amateur actors- mainly students from a number of different schools. It was a huge project because we were a project group with no sponsor. As producer, I created a project group called DN Muse. (Named after my friend Naccy and myself) The staff members worked on finances, costumes, and so forth, while I focused more on the creative aspects of the show. I orchestrated the music for a live orchestra (not many musical productions in Korea had live orchestras at the time) and directed the acting and singing. We had an amazing cast and a tremendously successful show- we were even invited to Daejeon to perform at KAIST.

[multimedia] I double majored in television and film (the more correct translation of the latter department would be “visual media”) and became familiar with the production of multimedia. I was more interested in the web than in traditional film (we were still using huge 32mm film cameras and expensive editing machines to convert data to digital format) and worked on a number of multimedia projects to publish on the Internet.

One of those projects was a video for the website of National Assembly member Kim Geun-tae. He was one of the first politicians whose camp was web-savvy (this was only 1999 and not many politicians had an interactive website). Working with two close friends Janny and Ye-jin, we came up with an idea for a video clip as part of a bigger political strategy; Kim liked the idea and eventually put it up on his website.

Another project was making an educational flash-animated game for young children. Flash animation games are now a common thing, but not so in 2000. I worked with Ju-yeon, an child education major, and Naccy, my best friend, to create a game about a worm who has to find certain objects in several different settings to get to his mother.

In early 2001, my friend Hyekyung came to me with a great idea of creating a social networking site. Her boyfriend (now husband) had written an amazing program and she had a concept, but needed someone to conceptualize it. We broadened the target users from Hyekyung’s early idea of making an online community for English literature majors to creating an extensive portal for all students at Ewha. We also brought Naccy on board as our promotion expert.

The site, Ewhaian.com, was launched in May and was immediately popular. There were so many concurrent users that if one posted something on a message board, a reply would immediately appear. We used this site to initiate a number of online and offline networking events, and created a non-profit organization that is handed down year after year.

In 2002, Naccy and I did yet another project together and co-wrote a screenplay for SK Telecom’s first Mobile Film Festival, a competition for cell phone content. SK had just started 2.5 generation mobile film services in which people could subscribe to a premium service and download “packets” of short video clips (a year or two later, improved technology was supporting mobile TV or downloads of entire movies). The competition was to create a screenplay for 10 to 12 clips that had to be downloaded in 2-minute segments.

We figured out that creating a movie in the conventional format wouldn’t work because people may not want to download all of the segments if they were not amused. What motivation could we give viewers to watch the entire movie with content other than porn? We came up with a murder mystery scenario in which one has to download all the clips to solve the mystery. We won the competition and was given (a tight budget of) $10,000 to film the movie, which was then made available exclusively for cell phones. Unfortunately, not many people (including ourselves) subscribed to the expensive cell phone premium service at the time.

Mid to late Twenties

After graduating from college, I continued running my company, Wohn Media, which I had founded in my senior year. Besides the magazine Yvette, I also did brochure design for the Federation of International Robots Association (FIRA), made a newsletter for an opthamalogy clinic, and published a friend’s travel memoir.

On the side, I expanded my hobby in making jewelry with Swarovski pearls and Murano beads and launched an online shopping mall. Business wasn’t huge, but it kept me happy.

In November of 2003, I decided to leave self-employment and my home office behind and join the JoongAng Daily, a local partner of the International Herald Tribune, as a staff reporter. I mostly covered a science and technology beat, and later created a “digital” page in our culture section. Some of the major issues I covered was the Hwang Woo-suk stem cell fraud, the development of the Incheon Free Economic Trade Zone, and professional game players. I also began freelancing for Science, mostly on stem cell issues.

I loved working at the JoongAng because of my wonderful co-workers, although I was frustrated and somewhat disappointed at management for not seeing the importance of website management and developing online content. I was very attached to the organization and frequently submitted business plans (ranging from adding a daily news podcast service to taking over a debt-ridden computer game team) though few were accepted.

In September of 2007 I quit my job as a reporter to work on a master’s degree in journalism at Harvard University.I had been taking distance education courses through the Harvard Extension School, which had just created a master’s degree program in journalism. It was this program and a course with Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson that encouraged me to come to Harvard. Nesson’s course was the first Harvard course to take place in Second Life and I was excited to be participating in what I believed to be a major step in using virtual worlds for educational purposes.

I spent two years at Harvard doing my master’s degree, which has been an amazing experience largely in part to my involvement at the Berkman Center of Internet and Society. During my first year at Berkman, I was an intern for the communications office where I interviewed guest speakers and helped organize and run the Berkman@10 Conference, an event celebrating the 10th anniversary of the center. I was also a research assistant for Media Re:public, a MacArthur-funded project reviewing the status and impact of participatory journalism. I wrote case studies of news sites based on statistics reports and interviews. During the second year, I was a research assistant for law professor Jonathan Zittrain and writing for his blog, “The Future of the Internet” on issues pertaining to net neutrality and generativity. Zittrain’s worries were about certain technologies deterring innovation, but my own worries were focused more on social environments, not architecture– which kept me on the social science track and to a Ph.D.

I am currently a Ph.D candidate at Michigan State University’s Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media Program.I am studying how new media impacts society, with a specific interest in games, virtual worlds, and social networks (the three are not mutually exclusive). I’m working on an NSF-funded project with professors Nicole Ellison and Cliff Lampe, looking at how people collaborate within social network sites. I’m also doing a couple individual projects that deal with social network games and sociable TV.