June 2015 round-up

All good things come to an end, and the sabbatical was no exception. As of July 1^st, sabbatical consummatum est.

As I entered the final month of my sabbatical, I told myself that I ought to not stop being on sabbatical before it was over. And, that was exactly what I did: June was a full-on month, with talks, training, meetings and writing.

My #5pm pictures tell me that there were a lot of paperwork and music practice this month. And rain… though, rain is the last thing on my mind, today, which is the hottest day of the year, so far, in England.

This month’s highlights are captured below. I look forward to hearing yours.

Researching

The second survey that I mentioned last month has now been piloted. Changes were made, and the survey is now live.

I have been commissioned to do some work on the use of social media by business to business (B2B) organisations. And, after presenting at Britmums Live 2015 about the consequences of sharenting*, I have been sketching an empirical study on this topic.

* This talk looked at how data and metadata shared online by parents creates a digital legacy for their children and contributes to the development of profiles of their children as consumers

Writing

I submitted one paper on the implications of digital technology for strategy development in small and medium organisations, and worked on another one on customer screening. I had one paper on sentiment analysis published, and one on customer management accepted. And the Surveillance book has been featured in Oxford Brookes University Faculty of Business Research Newsletter.

Teaching

Still, no teaching, as I am on sabbatical. Though, I have been planning the module that I will be teaching next semester, and someone gave me a very interesting idea for an assignment.

Learning

Lots! I surely made the most of my last month of sabbatical, on this front.

The month actually started on a negative note when I had to cancel stage 2 of my statistical course to attend some meetings. But, then, I caught up on training, with the following:

• Staff development week at Oxford Brookes University, where I attended a session on resilience and came back with a handful of ideas to implement at course and module level. I also attended a session on using mobile data to develop customer insight;
• A session on research impact – both designing impact into the research, and communicating it to project sponsors;
• Research presentation and one to one chat with Professor Vicki Morwitz, at Said Business School;
• Academic writing workshop at Loughborough University;
• ERSC workshop at Nottingham University on the implications of technological developments for the Financial Services Industry – e.g. how it creates new competitors, and how it changes customer perceptions of fairness. I also gave a talk at this seminar, on the uses of social media data to segment customers.

What were June’s highlights for you?