Recently in Seminars Category

Today I was asked if I would be acting as a discussant at the next PhD conference. I'd see the emails about the conference and had already decided that I wasn't going to put a paper forward and that I wasn't going to act as discussant.

Why?

Although I glibly said "It's not my core business", what I really meant is that I had asked the question Does it make the boat go faster?¹, and the answer was no.

Having spent sometime thinking about what I do here, there are only three things that make up my "boat" here :

1. Teaching well
2. Publishing two good articles per year
3. Finishing my PhD

So, when I'm asked to do something, if I can't see an immediate and direct connection to making the boat go faster, then I'm probably not going to do it.

"So", I can hear someone saying, "what about your blog?"

Good question. I regard self-reflection as fundamental process in becoming a better manager, teacher, and researcher. This blog provides a semi-structured forum for me to engage in self-reflection, so I'll keep on doing it (as much as ever, and possibly a bit more).

¹ Attributed to Peter Blake

I have seen the future and it's name is "Team based learning"

Today, I went to Larry Michaelsen's seminar on Team Based Learning

He was impressive. Next year I will redesign one course around Team Based Learning (yes, it was that good).

I've been using a range of elements in my own teaching, that are compatible with Team Based Learning. However, it is clear to me that Larry has spent much more time thinking about his teaching than I have (he is, after all, an emeritus professor and has been using this approach for 25 years). So, I think he has a much more robust way of connect the elements together.

A few notes:

He has written a few books many of which are about Team Based Learning.

Apart from the main "Team Based Learning web-site", information can also be found here

As part of Spark, we had a brief seminar from Tony Seba today. He was presenting his research (that turned into his book Winners take all: The 9 fundamental rules of high tech strategy. He is a very suave and compelling speaker.

Here's a summary of the his main points

• Rule 1: Feel The Pain. Then Develop Your Product
• Rule 2: Focus, Win, Grow, Repeat
• Rule 3: Add Value Not Features
• Rule 4: Have a Story. Communicate Clearly
• Rule 5: It's a Risky World. Sell Confidence!
• Rule 6: Convert Champions Not Deals
• Rule 7: Choose The Right Partners. Manage Them with Clarity
• Rule 8: Design Products and Services That Are Easy to Adopt
• Rule 9: You're Doing Well. Congratulations. Now Change or Die.

Even in this rather terse format, there are a lot of lessons to be learnt (especially with number 3 for Chinataka).

Today, I gave a department seminar on my PhD topic Strategising in professional service firms. I've posted a copy of the slides in case anyone in interested.

If found it strangely nerve wracking. As I said at the start of the presentation "How do I know what I think until I've said it". With such a view, I suppose it is unsurprising that I was nervous.

On a technical note, I had a few problems with the presentation. I decided to use a tree-like structure for the slides, i.e. a main trunk, of about four slides, branching of to many supporting slides. This was all done using hyperlinks. Alas, I found the hard way that you can't hyperlink (in PowerPoint) to a slide whose title contains an apostrophe. E.g. A title such as The people's choice. This made some of the slide titles clunky, to say the least. Secondly, I set up a transparent block as a hyperlink on each of the branches, that should have returned me to the main 'trunk'. Oddly, sometimes it is really easy to 'select' the block (i.e. to click on it), but on some slides it only works if you click on the edge of the block. This is most frustrating and I haven't gotten to the bottom of the problem yet.

But overall, I was please with the mechanics of the presentation.

The general feedback I had (from the small, but select audience) was that it was a solid presentation. I found the discussion we had at the end very useful. Special thanks need to go to Brigid and Rachel for their helpful comments.

I suppose I should have completed the plug for the seminar by saying it is on the 25 March 2004, from 3:00 p.m until 7:00. If you're interested in attending, and you're a postgrad, PhD student, or staff then you should contact Judith McMorland. Places are limited.

I was supposed to meet with Pete Mazany first thing this morning to talk about my PhD. Alas, I think we both ran out of time and had to abandon it.

Went to a great seminar by Kavin Scholes of Johnson and Scholes - Exploring corporate strategy fame. It is nice to meet someone who is so passionate about their teaching. He is also a great story-teller.

Had a chat with Biljana in marketing about Mike's Bikes. It was good to talk about a subject that really interests us both.

I've noticed that that the battery in my old Palm Pilot is pretty low. In fact I really should et around to backing it up. Alas, when I upgraded to Windows XP I found the the Palm desktop software would no longer install and work correctly. Having said that, a search of the Palm site indicates that an updated desktop (4.10) is available. I'll have to try that later.

Added a couple of more tools on the footer. Now it is possible to view the page in a format that is more printer friendly. It is also possible to view the source code for any particular page - just click on the ? (if you can see it). All I need to do now is to get the email working ...

At last I've managed to set up everything so I can update this remotely. It's amazing what technology can do.

Oy Vey. Well I installed the new Pilot desktop when I got home to night. Alas, my little Pilot well and truly crashed during the Hot Sink. Even resetting it wouldn't work. So, I took the option to clear the data. So, I have a working, but very empty Palm Pilot.

Oh, and I didn't have a back up. Doh!