Recently in PhD Category

I've been a big fan and user of Remember the milk. I found it a great way to manage my task, and so on, in a GTD like manner. As a bit of an aside, the GTD methodology really works for me ... and every time I find work getting a bit out of control its because I've not been ruthlessly applying the principles of GTD.

Anyway, I've switched to using org-mode (aka orgmode). I don't recall how I stumbled across Org-Mode: Your Life in Plain Text. No before I go any further, let me say that I don't think orgmode it for everyone. Its an extension to the emacs text editor, and in this WYSIWYG world a texted based programme may be 'a bridge to far'. But, as an old hand a unix (albeit a a vi/vim user) the transition to emacs hasn't been too hard.

But why change? Is this just part of the ongoing search for the perfect tool [Andrew might comment here]? Is it just displacement behaviour (avoiding doing PhD work)?

As I said at the beginning of this post, when I find things spinning a little out of control (or what I've come to regard as control) it's because my GTD system isn't out of date/wack. So, moving to a new central store (orgmode) is a mechanism for me to get things back in order (and on track). So, today I've finished the migration from Remember the Milk to orgmode. No doubt I'll have some ongoing tweaking of orgmode ... but I have deleted my Remember the Milk account.

There are lots of useful resources on using orgmode in a GTD way. For example, this one, this one or this one. Most of the articles assume you have emacs up an runnign already (which isn't hard), and that you know how to configure emacs (which is harder). Fortunately, emacs now ships with orgmode included, so there isn't a lot of additional work that needs to be done. you can just jump right on in.

Orgmode understands lists and dates ... and a whole lot more; but lists and dates are enough to get started with.

First of all, one needs to turn on orgmode. There are a few ways to do this. I do it thought my .emacs file (which, is normally in your home directory; if it isn't there you can create it). In .emacs I have the following text.

;;
;; Peter's setup for orgmode in .emacs
;;
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.\\(org\\|org_archive\\|txt\\)$" . org-mode))
(global-set-key "\C-cl" 'org-store-link)
(global-set-key "\C-ca" 'org-agenda)
(global-set-key "\C-cb" 'org-iswitchb)
(add-hook 'org-mode-hook 'turn-on-font-lock)  ; Org buffers only
(setq org-log-done t)
;;
;; Some more settings
;;
(setq org-agenda-files (file-expand-wildcards "~/org/*.org"))
;;
;;
;;quickly open my gtd file - "M-x gtd"
;;
(defun gtd ()
	(interactive)
	(find-file "~/org/gtd.org")
	)
;;

The main parts of this code are (1) the first line turns on orgmode for any file that is ends with .org .txt or .org_archive. (2) I keep all my orgmode files in a directory off my home directory, i.e., ~/org. any files ending in .org in that directory are scanned when orgmode puts together my agenda. (3) The last little bit of code opens my main 'to do' file called gtd.org when I execute M-x gtd (for non-emacs users that means pressing ALT-x then typing gtd and pressing return). This provides me with a quick way to get to my my to do list. Oh, the "org-log-done" line results in my to do items getting a date attached to them when I mark them as being done.

Now for some fun stuff. First I create my gtd.org file (using c-x c-w org/gtd.org ... that means Control-c Control-x and then typing the path/file name). I can then start making my to do list, vis:

* Work
** Review APR
** Revise article on governance
** Order textbook for INTBUS 202
* Home
** Pick up milk on way home
** Buy a copy "The Wire" (Series 5).

So far so good. I have to have my APR review done by Monday, so let's put a deadline beside it. Positioning my cursor somewhere on the relevant line I type c-c c-d mon (and press enter)

The line changes to be:

** Review APR
   DEADLINE: <2010-01-18 Mon>

And I what to schedule doing the article revision on next Monday. So, on the appropriate line, I type c-c c-d +2mon (and enter). The line changes to be:

** Revise article on governance
   DEADLINE: <2010-01-25 Mon>

I also want to schedule buying "The Wire" today. On the correct line I type c-c s and press enter. The line changes to be:

** Buy a copy "The Wire" (Series 5).
   SCHEDULED: <2010-01-16 Sat>

Now I have dozens of tasks to do. And looking at them all at once doesn't always add clarity. So let's look at my agenda. Pressing c-c a a will bring it up (no need to press enter). My agenda looks like:

Week-agenda (W02):
Monday     11 January 2010 W02
Tuesday    12 January 2010
Wednesday  13 January 2010
Thursday   14 January 2010
Friday     15 January 2010
  gtd:        Scheduled:  Buy a copy "The Wire" (Series 5).
Saturday   16 January 2010
Sunday: 17 January 2010
  gtd:        In   1 d.:  Review APR
  gtd:        In   8 d.:  Revise article on governance

And that's probably enough examples for now. So to sum up, c-c c-d marks an item with a deadline, c-c c-s marks an item with a scheduled date. Oh, and to save your file (the currently open buffer) use c-x c-s

One blog I always find myself going back to is by Thomas Basbøll, who is the Resident Writing Consultant at Copenhagen Business School. He calls his blog Research as a second language.

I was promoted to mention it now as I was reading his article Free Time, Blank Pages, and other Catastrophes. As I hurtle/stumble towards the end of my thesis, I find myself wondering about the practices associated with "doing" a PhD. Here, at the University of Auckland Business, or at least in this part of the Business School, a thesis seems to be a largely individual exercise. And yet it doesn't have to be that way. A colleague has some theses from a renowned Swedish institution. The detailed structure of each PhD thesis is very similar to each other ... down to the number of paragraphs per section. Clearly there has to be a greater level of congruence between practices there than, say, where Saku Mantere did his thesis (which exhibits some lovely ideosyncracies).

It's hard to believe that its been over two months since my post on A vision of students today . Well I have been somewhat pre-occupied with my thesis. Anyway, today I read Revisiting 'A Vision of Students Today' by Michael Wesch

It has re-invigorated me. I'm started to finalise my teaching outlines for MGMT 716, INTBUS 202, and BUSADMIN 768, and as I do so I am keen not to fall into the trap of making those classes high-tech information dumps.

No. What I hope to do is to help the students in my class to develop better judgement in the topics I am teaching (Extending software engineering, Foundations of strategy, and Strategic Management). In a practical sense, that means I have to find ways to connect those topics to real world concerns for the students. Only then, can I (and they) hope to break out of the "getting by" game can pervade students' experiences of University.

[Of course, there are big links here to my research topics, and in particular the notion of communities of practice]

I think for MGMT 716, Extending software engineering, the current structure of course will pretty much achieve those goals. Having students help real firms apply the Cambridge 'fast start' technology road mapping model, whilst working with senior management should be a recipe for success. Of course the devil is in the detail.

For INTBUS 202, Foundations of strategy, the move to Team-based learning has the potential to succeed in those goals. But, I need to spend a week or two sorting out the detailed structure--otherwise I'm likely to meet my first goal but not the second.

Probably, the biggest challenge (for me) is BUSADMIN 768. Traditionally, I would do this as a pure case course. However, I need to spend time considering how I connect it to the students real-world concerns. This is a similar problem to that with INTBUS 202--event though the teaching methodology is different (TBL vs. case-based teaching). Perhaps I should consider using TBL in both classes.

I've just moved to beta version 1.5 of Zotero. It was a trial.

1. My database wouldn't convert, so I had to upload it to their db repair tool.
2. Upgrading the Word add-in irrevocably changes your documents so you can't go back to 1.0. That isn't a problem in its self, but it looked as if the upgrade was hanging--it took 20 minutes to upgrade a 144 page, 220 reference document.
3. The sync option often gives errors ... but it always manages to sync in the end.

Now, all I have to do is figure out how to use webdav with Amazon's S3 to back up all my PDF files (Yes, I know I could use Jungle Disk, but I like my solutions more open source than that (generally)).

Anyway, it is working fine now and its nice to be able to share my bibliography.

It is so nice when ones research and teaching interests intersect. As I've been studying practices, I've become increasing interested in the "situated" nature of practices (Suchman, 1987; Sharrock & Button, 2003; Lave 1991). This has led me to become increasing interested in the notion of Communities of practice

This lead me to some reports about The Manchester Method as a means of teaching (especially with regard to MBA students). There is a helpful PowerPoint sideshow that puts the method into context (of course--where would we be without context).

References

PhD's and productivity. What could be relevant at this juncture? Academic Productivity does what it says on the box.

Tucked away on the site are the following observations:

1. Doing a PhD is lonely
2. Your picking the right advisor will determine your happiness level more than anything else

The second point reminded me of a joke. I found this copy at Rabbitchick

One sunny day a rabbit came out of her hole in the ground to enjoy the fine weather.

The day was so nice that she became careless and a fox snuck up behind her and caught her. "I am going to eat you for lunch!" said the fox. "Wait!" replied the rabbit, "You should at least wait a few days." "Oh yeah? Why should I wait?" "Well, I am just finishing my thesis on 'The Superiority of Rabbits over Foxes and Wolves.'" "Are you crazy? I should eat you right now! Everybody knows that a fox will always win over a rabbit." "Not really, not according to my research. If you like, you can come into my hole and read it for yourself. If you are not convinced, you can go ahead and have me for lunch." "You really are crazy!" But since the fox was curious and had nothing to lose, it went with the rabbit. The fox never came out.

A few days later the rabbit was again taking a break from writing and sure enough, a wolf came out of the bushes and was ready to set upon her. "Wait!" yelled the rabbit, "You can't eat me right now." "And why might that be, my furry appetizer?" "I am almost finished writing my thesis on 'The Superiority of Rabbits over Foxes and Wolves.'" The wolf laughed so hard that it almost lost its grip on the rabbit. "Maybe I shouldn't eat you; you really are sick ... in the head. You might have something contagious." "Come and read it for yourself; you can eat me afterward if you disagree with my conclusions." So the wolf went down into the rabbit's hole and never came out.

The rabbit finished her thesis and was out celebrating in the local lettuce patch. Another rabbit came along and asked, "What's up? You seem very happy." "Yup, I just finished my thesis." "Congratulations. What's it about?" "'The Superiority of Rabbits over Foxes and Wolves.'" "Are you sure? That doesn't sound right." "Oh yes. Come and read it for yourself." So together they went down into the rabbit's hole.

As they entered, the friend saw the typical graduate abode, albeit a rather messy one after writing a thesis. The computer with the controversial work was in one corner. And to the right there was a pile of fox bones, on the left a pile of wolf bones. And in the middle was a large, well-fed lion. The Moral of the Story: The title of your thesis doesn't matter. The subject doesn't matter. The research doesn't matter. All that matters is who your supervisor is.

Ouch. The grammar fairy didn't like that last sentence at all.

For the past couple of weeks, I've been switching over to Zotero for my PhD thesis. With over 300 references and 1,000+ citations this hasn't been a quick task. Anyway, on Thursday I finally pressed ALT+3 (the key I've set up to insert the bibliography) and was rewarded with a VB run-time error '6' (Overflow).

It seems that there is was a bug in the Zotero.dot code. Anyway, a day later there was a fix. Thank's to "Mat Hickman" for posting the fix. It was a matter of changing two variables for INTs to LONGs.

So, I've now generated my bibliography.

The next step is to check my work. I've produced to text files from my current (Zotero-ised) version and my Endnote version. There is a really nice tool, called WinMerge that does a spiffing job of visually showing the differences between the two text files.

Sometime later this even, I should have a 'correct' version of my thesis with all the citations correct from Zotero. Then I can get back to writing ....

Two little features, that I haven't checked on the Zotero forums are:

1. If a bibliography has been inserted in a document, then adding/amending citations takes a long time as the bibliography is recreated, and
2. Editing an existing citation, with multiple authors, doesn't correctly sort the authors (and there seems to be now way to manually move them).

Nevertheless, I'm really happy to be using Zotero.

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

It seems that I haven't addressed the issue of my PhD Topic anywhere on this blog, So ... as I say in my thesis:

The question that I seek to answer is "What is the nature of effective strategising in professional service firms?"

This question contains two parts:
1) How do strategy practitioners in professional service firms 'strategise': what is the nature of their praxis (i.e. the formal and informal 'day-to-day' activities in which they engage when strategising)?
2) How do strategists in a professional service firm have impact beyond themselves; what characterises the praxis of those whose strategising is consequential and thus strategic?

These questions come out from my long-term interest in both strategy and professional service firms.

Whilst I focus on engineering consultancies in my thesis, I have also carried out research in the context of accounting firms and law firms.

From time to time, I find myself using some words too frequently. When this happens I turn to Word's thesaurus (good old F7).

Today, I unleashed the awesome power of Micro$oft on 'broad', and was rewarded with:

Minor road, byroad side street, lane

WTF? Then Lisa points out, I'm using the English thesaurus, and Word thinks I'm talking about a B-road (as opposed to main, or A-roads, such as the A1). What is odd, is that it doesn't list all the other meanings of broad.

Switching to the US thesaurus gives me more of what I expected.

Now, I wonder what the mechanism is to let Micro$oft know of this feature -- or will it remain forever causing English writers to say Doh!