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Mariya Stoilova has provided a Bulgarian case for the 5-day BNIM training intensive to replace 'Janette' who can be thought of as feeling that shas a right to retire. In our use of this, we've realised how easy it is not to notice that you haven't got enouigh knowledge or haven't a clue about a period,a society, a locality, a sub-culture.... on which you are about to hold a panel. Any by "you" in the above sentence, I mean "me" and most English or west European people trying to think a'Bulgarian' (or any) non-English (e.g. Scottish, or Finnish, etc) case. It coincided with an interesting conference at Birbeck where Jane Elliot spoke about the costruction of a 'timeline' of recorded data for individuals in one of the four cohoert studies initiated in the UK after the Second world War at different moments.Her diagram of a 'timeline for a hypothetical person' (though her's ran from left to right, and the BDC line runs from up to down) could easily be a BDC line in BNIM. Jane Elliott, Tom Schuller and myself are planning a 3-day 'workshop' on longitudinal studies of individuals and cohorts over time (mostly along the objective chronological data - BDC line), and how these could be related to the 'length of a life or more studies' that BNIM lends itself to, with an emphasis on the significance of how, at a given moment, a particular telling of the told story of those objective data gives added insight into the subjective moment of action and the subjective worlds of individual and collective actors (end 2011, start 2012). We hope to have reports by research teams (even a team of one) who have struggled to integrate large-N objective data about life-courses and transitions with small-N biographical studies of the same. Any offers? write to me. Among the 300+ BNIM-sympathisers on this email list, I am sure that there are some people who have struggled with this multi-mode research goal, and come up with interesting solutions and valuable part-failures from which everybody can learn. Next time, fail differently to fail better! Half-succeed differently to partly-succeed more!! Anyway. Enough context. I've therefore modified the start of section 3 of the February 2011 edition of the BNIM Short Guide and Detailed manual, and attach it (with wrong numbers attached) for those interested in strengthening their understanding of the need for contextual knowledge. The diagram in this 3-page or so extract is a conceptual map: it's not constructed with any expectation that it would be actually filled in. Obviously, if you want a new edition of the 2011 update as a whole, please just drop me a line. best wishes Tom