The second month of my sabbatical was dominated by my trip to the University of Malta, in my second year as Visiting Professor in Digital Marketing. Activities included research seminars, corporate education, some teaching and numerous meetings. Arguably, I went to Malta to share what I know about digital marketing, but I always learn a lot, too. For instance, I learned about marketing in small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and that inspired the Digitalisation in SMEs project that I have been talking about here on the blog. This year, I paid particular attention to the social dynamics in such a small island (population of around 430k), and I am feeling inspired to do some work into offline vs. online communities – this idea is still in embryonic stage, but I will keep you posted.
On a different note, I am still taking a picture at 5pm every day. This is an overview of my February:
And, now for this month’s highlights.
Researching
I presented the preliminary findings of the Digitalisation in SMEs project, at the University of Malta. I hesitated about doing this presentation as the findings are still emergent, but doing so really helped me develop my thinking about this project. Plus, it was very fitting that the first presentation about this study should take place in the very placed that inspired it.
Writing
This was a month of tidying up, as far as #AcWri is concerned. I did some revisions to a paper, and finished and submitted another one. As I had decided by the end of last year, every time I submit a paper to a journal, I add something to the related entry on Wikipedia – and, true to my promised, I edited the entry on ‘service networks’.
Very excitedly, a book I have been working on with my former colleagues Bang Nguyen and Lyndon Simkin, on the Dark Side of Customer Relationship Management, has now entered production stage, and should be in the bookshelves soon. Stay tuned 🙂
Teaching
I did a bit of teaching in Malta, about Digital Marketing, and will be uploading some materials into SlideShare, soon.
Learning
I am very keen to use the sabbatical for professional development. This month I learned about Google Analytics, which I found really interesting – I really want to build on this and learn more about online metrics.
What were February’s highlights for you?
Ana Canhoto 
Hi Ana – love your summary here. Particularly interesting that you take a picture every 5pm! I may do something similar! My highlight this month has been submitting my very first journal article to the Industrial Marketing Management journal, in joint authorship with David Rees (you may know him). It’s based on my work on employee participation in social media strategies in high tech firms.
On the dark side of things… I’ve been thinking about the dark side of social capital. Well done on your book almost out 🙂
Kemi
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Hi Kemi, First of all let me tell you how impressed I am that you have submitted a journal paper, already. Don’t despair if the feedback is not as positive as you would like: it is all part of the learning experience. And it really is a major feather on your PhD cap that you are submitting, already.
As for the 5pm project, it is a way of bringing awareness to my days. I realised last summer that the second half of 2013 had just merged into the following year, and I had very little awareness of where my days had gone – I really hated the feeling. I like two things about this experiment: Pausing everyday to take stock of where I am, who I am with, and what I am doing; plus, going back through the photographs at the end of the month. Give it a try! You take such great pictures, that I am sure your 5pm album would be quite a delight to look at.
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Hi Ana, always love your round-up posts. And, as said before, and also in line with what Kemi said: your 5 pm photo project is super cool. Love how you not only go to Malta to teach, but also to learn and to be inspired.
My February was super exciting. Also about travel and learning. I went on a super study trip sponsored by the US Embassy in Berlin to learn about different approaches to support and inspire entrepreneurship in the US. We visited several universities and organisations in Washington DC, Baltimore, Tucson and Phoenix. Still trying to get back from that cloud :).
This month is going to be exciting, too, right at the start. But I will share about that next month 😉
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Thank you, Arjan. I followed your US adventures via Social Media. I was intrigued by the ‘save-the-world-preneur’ one… I look forward to reading your reflections on the differences that you witnessed. Oh, and to read about the exciting things that this month is bringing, too…
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