May 2017 round-up

My heart broke twice, this month: when I woke up to news of the attack targeting children and young people at Ariana Grande’s concert; and when I learned that some dear friends are facing a very difficult challenge.

 

Both these news immediately put my personal ‘problems’ into perspective (swiftly downgrading them to mere inconveniences), and reminded me of the need to live in the moment. For instance, it reminded me to take time to enjoy the lovely weather we have been experiencing; to savour the delicious meals that my kids have been preparing rather than the mess that they leave behind them; and to be grateful for this channel – the blog – which allows me to share my love of marketing and social sciences with you, to talk about my work and research interests, and, sometimes, to talk about the things that sadden or frustrate me. Thank you for being there.

 

Researching

This month, I dived into the qualitative data from the in-store technology project that I have been mentioning for the past two months, and I had great fun unpicking the various themes. Yes, data analysis is fun – my favourite bit. Afterwards, I prepared a presentation about that project, for the Digital Customer Experience Symposium that I joined, later in the month.

 

 

Writing

Again, I did not manage to finish and submit a paper. Instead, I did bits and pieces on a few papers, and on the book proposal that I mentioned last month. I also reviewed two conference papers.

 

 

Teaching

It is exam season. So, no teaching this month. Instead, exam marking – lots of it.

 

Oh, and I did a presentation for our PhD students on using social media to promote their work. The slides are here. I also wrote a related blog post, here.

 

 

Learning

I found the Digital Customer Experience Symposium really inspiring and educational. There were presentations on how to research the digital customer experience, on how to design augmented experiences, on segmentation of the wearables market, on the potential of the grey (i.e., older people) market for smart technologies, and on the use of social media to engage with customers in regulated industries. Quite a diverse range of topics.

On a different note, I came across “Digital Times“, an e-mail newsletter curated by PwC (which, incidentally, was my first proper job, post BSc degree). It reaches my inbox every morning, and I find it a great way to catch up with technical, business and political news related to the digital economy. I recommend it – It is free and very much worth your time. You can subscribe to this newsletter, here.

 

Have a great and peaceful June.