Finally in Öckerö

The only remarkable thing about my journey BOS-AMS-GOT was that there was one empty seat on the transatlantic leg -- next to me! I left Boston at 7PM on Sunday and after a couple of bottles (1/4 size!) of wine with dinner slept through the breakfast service. Schipol airport meant a second security check, some strong European coffee (I decided against Starbucks), and a l-o-n-g walk. That plane was completely full and I had the very back corner (window) seat. There was absolutely no leg room. A university taxi driver was waiting for me and I was soon in the center of Gothenburg, Sweden. It was cold (6 degrees Celsius) and drizzling with patches of snow on the ground. The trees are at about the same stage of coming into leaf as in Connecticut. By 12:30 PM (Monday, local time + 6 hours from CT) I was installed at my office desk in the Business & Design Lab.

After lunch with Ulla and her colleague Maria, Ulla spent the afternoon in meetings while I reveiwed and began a linguistic editing of the paper Maria will present at the Paris conference. A visit to the campus security office provided me with a magnetic card to open the main building door and a key to the office. I still need to get a library card/password.

Ulla brought her car to work today, so we did not need to lug my two heavy suitcases on the bus and ferry to Öckerö, where she lives. The ferry ride was very short; the sea was so calm and we were talking so much I didn't even realized we had reached the island! After viewing the outside of her house from all sides and a quick walk to the end of her street, I had the inside tour and -- most important -- Ulla connected me to the wireness network!
I'll take all of you on a tour of the house another day. I have a very nice suite upstairs with lots of light and comfortable furniture. We had dinner upstairs admiring the sunset over the water. Sunset was at 7:50 PM. I'll try to remember to check when it is when I leave in a month's time.I made a first pass at unpacking and am ready to turn in. Tomorrow I'll stay here while Ulla goes to the university.

Checking off today's tasks

Checked in on NW 38 departing BOS 1900 on Sunday March 30 ... "Flight Summary: Your reservation indicates you have checked in for the flights listed" ... but not yet made decisions or re-packed the clothes I removed from my suitcase yesterday!

Check-point for readers concerned about how Jack will survive in my absence: (1) I donned the striped apron --the successor to the chili apron -- and cooked up a pile of meatballs and a pan of lasagna, and (2) He has a new toy/jig saw--with instruction manual of course--to keep him occupied!

Check-up on the basil that fell eight stories -- it's doing well

Checked in with Diana on April plans for our Donor Decisions Datat base project and distributed links to my next location. No more blog entries until I'm there!

Too much, too long, and too absorbing

To continue where I left off -- this evening I unpacked my suitcases (in Stonington; I'd packed them in Fairfield) and hung up the clothes "by outfit". Tomorrow I need to reduce the number of items by at least a third. Can I do the "black with scarves" routine for a month? Do I really need a reasonably formal outfit? Can I work every day in the same jeans and sweater? Can I wear sneakers with everything? More decisions to be made!

Earlier I finally submited the task request to customize the Digital Measures scholarship area, both input and output. I'm not sure why it took so long to write the request -- it must have taken me the equivalent of a week working full time. I suppose it was beacuse we have already developed our reporting scheme in some detail, and backing into efficient data entry was quite complicated.

And I went to my favorite bookstore and bought three books -- two novels and a collection of short stories edited by Zadie Smith -- to enjoy while I am away.

The day in review

Went to campus: a technician checked mty laptop and I checked the coffee selection.











Did the "desk thing"






Left a tidy office




Selected suitcases and stuffed them with clothes -- I think I have a different outfit for every day for a month! Tomorrow I'll regroup.

Wednesday in Fairfield

I spent ALL the working day on CI Adminsitrivia -- though completing the AACSB annual Business Schools Questionnaire and designing the Digital Measures custom input/output screens are not really trivial! I needed to enter some BSQ data so that I could access the appropriate MBA admissions forms to send to the Graduate Admissions Director, but the inormation was the same as last year, so the process was a tedious rather than a decisions activity. That done, at about 9:30 AM, I turned to the scholarship/research area of the faculty activities database. My challenge was to make the output in the format of the WCOB AACSB-CVs, while having the input fields as simple as possible. I've been engaged in an email conversation with our Director of Research for weeks, and have been thinking about it most every day. Today I decided I would work until it was complete -- or at least until I could take a break and give it a final review later. (I'm determined to submit the task request before I leave for Sweden on Sunday.) I didn't even go to the Founder's Day lunch and celebration. At 4PM I reached the endpoint -- though I have just realized that I need to include four additional contributions and I'm not sure where. I hope I don't need to establish another data entry category!

In a while I'm out to dinner with Steve and Mary and two guests from the University of Nancy, France. We're going to an Italian restaurant! I'll blog again if anything exciting happens! Later ... nothing exciting: pleasant company, poor food.

Is life on campus really THAT bad?

I hadn't realised how hard it would be to be back on campus! Of course spending two and a half hours in "the Factory" dealing with my computer problems didn't help. Then there was a l-o-n-g meeting, and lots of talking with different people (my disguise didn't work very well) and trying to squeeze in Continuous Improvement nudges. Even going to the Pitt gym this morning created memories and anticipations. And it will be more of the same tomorrow because I must return to the computer help desk to correct the functions that worked earlier, but not now, plus I have a long list of half-finished tasks from today. How long is it before I leave for Sweden?

But the dean had a long laugh. For some unknown reason my designation in the university system had been changed to "Staff" so I had minimum controls within my laptop. Maybe this is part of the plan to make a faculty member dysfunctional because she disappears on sabbatical! And it's not even April 1!

New directions

Today I threw away 'the white bag" that has faithfully transported odds and ends between Torrington/Avon/Fairfield and Stongington every journey since October 1971. It was always the last item put in the car, and I can't remember it ever being left at one house or the other. In its place we now have "the new white bag with blue handles," and I can only hope it will make as many faithful trips as its predecessor.

Work-wise this week I'm being very disciplined about what I do from my Fairfield base. Two on-campus meetings, two course coordination activities, three commitments to individuals, and one book to be returned to the library will be the total extent of my regular faculty activities. Paper-shuffling, printing articles, and making lists will be just the beginning of my next research project.

No words needed!

11:20 AM

38 degrees F

1290 miles in 20:16 hours @ 32 mpg

Happy Spring!

1175 miles brought us to the home of "our friends of the most years" for last night. We passed daffodils by the roadside in Virgina and flowering trees in Washington. Final leg north today!

Wednesday night

Click here to see where we are ... after 11 hours and 10 minutes of driving

Leaving

. . . coordinates 27 deg 15' 14" N, 82 deg 32' 3"W (Google Earth)

The landry is clean, the floors vacuumed or washed, the fridge is pristine, the beach chairs are stowed, the car is (almost) packed, the coffee pot is set to go, so all that needs to be done is to power down the network and first thing in the morning head north with the GPS set for 41deg 12' 18" N 73deg 14' 41"w.

The time went by all too fast. Of course I didn't get everything (scholarly) done that I had hoped, though I probably accomplished about what I expected. I've still to finish reading Gary Hamel's new book, The future of management.

Perhaps that's just as well!

Last day of the Florida sabbatical work scehdule

Last ...walk... as far as the public beach (1.5 miles each way)

and work ... on the donor-decisions-database and WCOB administrivia

before lunch ... the fridge is almost empty ...

and professional reading while sitting on the beach (The art of innovation by Tom Kelley)

followed by a first dip in the gulf, and last laps in the pool

and wearing the chili apron for a final selection from the Nigella Express cookbook.

Tomorrow I'll start to think about my next (third?) life!

How much work was done in 8 weeks?

Surprise, I'm not talking about sabbatical projects! Instead, look at the photos of this humongous house that is being built by the beach. The property originally had a little cottage, then was for sale with an asking price of about $6m, then construction started .... One set of photos (front and back of structure) were taken in late January, the other today. Which set is the older -- the one on the left or the one on the right?

Today's multiple choice quiz

Q: What's happening?
a. __ Mass invasion of northerners?
b. __ Mass exodus of natives?
c. __ Spring break activity?
d. __ Walk for diabetes?
e. __ All of the above?

Friday's accomplishments

Sometimes my reported accomplishments are not exactly what I might choose! Today I spent "several" hours in phone conference conversations in connection with the Dean search. But I don't have the warm feeling that (allegedly) accompanies service work -- maybe that's beacuse the process isn't over yet. Yet I certainly would not have had warm feelings about accomplishments on my DD database if I had not participated in WCOB work. (oops! Brit double negative!)

I did get some work done on the database by getting up when it was still dark (not hard here -- the sun does not come up till 8AM) and working for a couple of hours before the phone calls. Jack isn't back from the (base)ball game yet, so have no excuse not to do another hour or so of work (another double negative!)

Thursday's accomplishments

Database is in good shape ;-) Dean candidates have been interviewed :-] Beach and pool have been visited :-) Off to the opera -- but first I need to change my shoes :-(

I caught it myself!

It's a puffer fish!

Tuesday

I put my nose to the grindstone today and slogged through data entry for the Donor Decisions database. I must admit that when I heard a colleague speak about the need for a subscription to the Compustant database for a "real research instution" during today's A-sq meeting with a candiate to be our new dean (I attended by phone), I was somewhat envious -- I don't deny the need for this database for those who do secondary data research, but some of us construct our own databases! Be that as it may, I have LOTS of work still to do on this database and need to keep working diligently for the next week.

And, wonder of wonders! I had a "feedback" DM message from Rosemary. It acted as a reminder to get going on uploading the teaching schedules as .csv files. .... tomorrow ...

Gave the chili apron a break and patronized the restaurant that used to be our favorite fish place -- now an "Italian Tapas" restaurant. And what, you may ask, is that? After being there, I still don't know!

A sabbatical is not all fun!

What a (non) productive day! First a couple of hours spend communicating with my brother John on a UK banking issue by email, voice, pdf files, and the US postal service, then working with Jack on our biannual carpet cleaning project (I did the spot cleaning, he drove the big machine), followed by far too long spent formating the DMI paper to conference proceedings specifications of font, margins, headings, etc. (they want pfd, word AND two hard copies -- when did you last send a paper copy anywhere?) interspersed with WCOB adminsitrivia.

But the day was not entirely wasted: after loafing, swimming, and eating, I settled down to work on data entry for my "donor decisions" data base. This is a database with (all) the information provided by various charity rating services that is intended to help "ordinary donors" (not wealthy philantropists) make descisions as to whether a cause will spend their gift wisely. Diana Stork and I intend to do some correlation analysis to investigate whether (or not) all/any of this information is "helpful" (however defined -- TDB).

I haven't worked on this project since mid-January and I had trouble even finding the sources of information (note-to-self, take time to update the code book so this doesn't happen again). Then, as soon as I'd sorted out how to locate information in the American Institute of Philanthropy watchdog report, SPSS started sending me messages "Have to close -- sorry for the inconvenience." I'm not sure if this is a VPN or exe link problem. I think I'll just work in Excel tomorrow. Or maybe I can wear a sign saying "Need help with SPSS" during our morning beach walk and see if someone stops me to offer advice! All-in-all, not much real progress, but I did get going again on this project.

Bad internet day

Whatever happened to "bad hair days"? In my world they have been replaced by bad internet day! Last night I decided to spend a couple of hours this morning working on my Donor Decisions database -- and this imperative was confirmed when I opened the NYT and found the magazine section devoted to "giving money". But, my internet connection was s-o s-l-o-w that I knew I did not want to mess with using SPSS through my SHU VPN. (Good excuse, eh?)

Instead I worked on Digital Measures -- and experienced a different sort of frustration. I am desperately needing feedback from early adopters before I request more customization of input screens and output reports. That in itself is a drawn out process -- when I submit a task request DM has two weeks to complete it. But if I haven't been sufficiently specific, the programmers send me an email (usually at midnight of the last day). My response starts the clock on another two week window -- and sometimes the programmers still have more questions for me! My longest running request (so far) is 6 weeks, and it's still not resolved! I'm desperate to get this database up and running before our new dean arrives. It took me just an hour to enter my scholarship activities (and I have a reasonably active amount), and Sue K and Rosemary are busy entering administrative information. So, PLEASE, everyone who can work on their DM account, do so and send me feedback about what works and what frustrates you. Otherwise I may regress into nagging mode -- not appropriate for a sabbatical!

For a while this morning we couldn't even retrieve email ... panic set in .... the network was reset, cables and computers were swapped, technical service was called, their advice heeded. Still no success. But the gremlins were on our side and, with a final switch of cables, all was connected again!

I think I had better leave the internet for the beach!

Where we -- and the seagulls --found hundeds of live sallops stranded by the tide.

WIND!

Yesterday the TV forecast high winds -- but fortunately we were spared a tornado watch. I woke up during the night to the sound of the tables and chairs on the balcony crashing about. All my herbs had blown off the table -- and the basil went right over the railing to land 8 floors below! Do you think it will recover?

In the daylight we could see the trees blowing and the ocean "boiling".

The beach was deserted -- the sand was blowing and not even the seagulls were around. There had been a very high tide during the night, but much to my surprise there were no new shells or sea creatures at the tideline. Maybe they will get washed ashore in a day or two.

Catch-up day

Today I worked on a number of boring things: Grocery shopping (I actually said I looked forward to being back to a shop with fresh vegetables and a real selection of wine!), sorting out some Digital Measures data entry fields, and watching Jack wait for Office 2007 to load on his laptop, knowing that I need to do the same.

More interesting things inlcuded taking with Ulla about our paper and the weather in Sweden, and watching the beachcombers-- there were lots of sea urchins and other shells washed up with the overnight tide.

And the really good thing was hearing tha Karen has been awarded a research fellowship to the Huntington Library in San Mateo to work with their archives! Well done, Karen :))

We ended the workday with a crabfest that did not require wearing the chili apron. The verdict? Good, but not as good as either Mark's or Jack's crabcakes!

Passing the baton on the paradignatic partnership

At 12:54 PM EST I pressed the send button to transmit the paper to Ulla.
It's 21 pages with 6554 words, 8 diagrams, and 76 references. The full title is, "Towards a better paradignatic parnership between design and management."
I don't want to even think about it for at least 24 hours!

I started the morning with an early beach walk -- in time to see backstage services and and the shells left by the tide before the shell-hunters took them. Then I went into "extreme Google Scholar mode" to locate missing references -- until it was finished. . . for now!

Three pieces of good news!

First: The paper is now in "pretty good shape." (I've worked hard on it today.)

Second. Henry at Endnote technical support helped me recover the Design bibliographic library that Ulla spent several days preparing and I was unable to open. (She did not give me a needed folder; I emailed the library to Henry, he recovered the missing file using his Mac, and sent it back to me. Now that's technical support!)


Third. For those of you following the Chili Apron Chronicles, we installed a new "extraction" (carbon filter) fan over the stove, so I shouldn't set off the fire alarm the next time I cook something special!

By the light of day

8:30 AM FL time.
After a careful read-through of the paper, maybe it's not so bad. But there's still lots to be done. Back to work!

DESPAIR!

I've reached a low point of the writing process. I'm unconvinced by our argument, my diagams are ridiculous, the references to ground the scholarship are either too few or too many, depending on the section, and the whole paper's a mess. It's not that I haven't worked on it -- paragraph by paragraph in short bursts throughout the day. But at the moment I know it will embarass us -- and Ulla's and my mantra is always that no matter how small our contribution, as long as we are not embarassed making the presentation or submitting the paper, it's OK. At the moment I'm embarassed.

Will I feel better about it tomorrow? Who knows? I've printed it out for a quiet read away from the screen, and Jack and are are heading out to dinner. I'll let you know tomorrow.

Return to a disicplined life!

Back to -- or into -- the March schedule: Walk on the beach as early as possible, then write, lunch on balcony, and more writing. To beach for professional reading after 3:30 (too hot before), swim in the pool, make a simple supper, followed by writing as needed to finish the day's allotment. And, most important, no checking email till late morning.

Why so strict? I need to finish the arduous task of turning our "first draft" Paradigmatic partnership paper into a proceedings-ready version. I must send it to Ulla by Swedish start-of-day Friday for her final reveiw and reference check, then back to me for formatting and submission by the due date in the middle of next week.

Who thought I was having an easy sabbatical life? (OK, check back later, to see how long I keep up this pace!)

One paper, two weeks, and three perspectives

Ulla says:
Here we are. I'm at the airport going back to Sweden. Two weeks go fast with hard work, good food, and fun company. Jill looks for what we have left to do -- and that's a lot. But I look for what we have accomplished = one paper in first draft and one paper in English editing (Jill for Katerina's reserach report for Volvo), plus two hours email a day (both). Sometimes 10-12 hours of work a day. I am awfully satisfied and look forward to the next time.

Jack -- On the Joys of Being Only an Observer:
I’m glad that I was somewhat distant from the paper that Ulla and Jill were writing. Quite frankly, I didn’t have the slightest idea what they were working on, so whatever they were doing didn’t really affect or distract me in any way. Just as well. But when it got noisy, then I paid a bit more attention as to what was going on.

Each had their ideas on some aspect of it, and tended to vocalize that aspect with some energy and determination. Bam! Bam! But! But! etc., etc., etc. At this point I might be inclined to look up just to make sure that blows were not about to be exchanged. It really never got to the stage of pounding fists on the table or anything like that, but I was watching. And just as suddenly as this volcano erupted, somewhere they found the thread of reason that they both accepted and then they joyously proceeded onwards. It was quite something to watch – but best at a distance!

They both agreed today that they worked harder on this paper than they should have considering their age. I can agree with that! Nevertheless, it was great to have Ulla with us for these two weeks – we had lots of fun in between the work - and we look forward to our next meeting.

Jill says:

And I'm left wearing the chili apron!

Until next time!