I felt a lot more in control, and less agitated, during October, than I had felt in September or even August, bizarrely. There were a couple of lows, but also quite a few highs – so, I am mentally filing October in the ‘good months’ category.
Here are the highlights.
Researching
Most of my attention was focused on researching segmentation, targeting and positioning in the tourism industry, because of a project that I was working on. I was particularly interested in the potential and limitations of technology (social media, mobile apps, …) to gather consumer insight and facilitate targeted interactions. My literature search led me to some interesting examples, such as this one, about the use of big data to augment tourism statistics, in the Netherlands.
I also met the lovely Stephan Dahl, over coffee, and came back with a couple of ideas for research projects. Hooray for face to face meetings, specially over good coffee.
Writing
I worked on a paper related to the research project on the digitalisation of SMEs, together with some colleagues. It is such a different paper (and a bit risky), that, at the moment, it is being a bit difficult to find a good fit for it. But we will persevere.
On a more positive note, the paper looking at the factors that determine sustained use of health and fitness wearables (vs. adoption) has been published (here). Hooray.
And another paper, looking at the impact of the digital revolution on the marketing discipline and the marketing profession has been accepted. News on that, soon.
Teaching
The MBA module on Services Marketing has started, though it is delivered online. I had finished producing the content last month (video, audio, discussions, materials, …). So, this month was more about supporting online discussions, answering queries, the odd Skype call, etc…
I also ran a session on sentiment analysis for our undergraduate students, and another one on segmentation for our MBA group.
Other teaching-related activities this month were the marking of dissertations (lots of them), and various meeting with PhD students, as two of them are progressing towards registration, and another one is approaching submission of his final draft.
Learning
My main learning opportunity, this month, came in the form of the Open Academia workshop that took place at Goldsmiths College, on October 29th. The workshop aimed to inspire and help researchers to open their research, which is something that I am passionate about. The videos of the talks are now available here.
In the morning, there were various talks focused on ‘how to’ aspects, such as:
- Sharing your data
- Sharing the research process
- Engaging the public throughout the research process, and
- Making your writing accessible
But there were also some sessions forcing us to think about broader issues, such as:
- Creativity vs innovation
- How social media impacts on the nature of academic work
- Power issues
The afternoon was hands-on, in the form of a ‘hackathon’ focused on making aspects of our own work open.
Platforms and tools that I learned about, at the workshop, and which I want to explore further include:
What were your highlights this month?
Ana Canhoto 
One thought on “October 2016 round-up”