Initial Guide

Identify someone who can guide your inquiries in their initial unformed stage by providing leads to key people to read and contact. What you want to avoid finding out late in the project that there was a key person or article that you should have known about weeks ago.

You may notice a tendency to procrastinate on making this contact related perhaps to the feeling that other people's work threatens yours. This is not helpful to you; as part of developing your own approach, it is important to connect with others in your area.

Make contact with possible initial guides and make an appointment for a meeting early on in the project, preferably before session 4. Prepare a brief verbal report on the conversation to give to your peers. (Making contact with an initial guide is different from interviewing someone. Interviewing makes sense later, under phase F.)

(see PhaseB)