Weird

Describes the way I felt and looked today.

I'm working between time-frames in my Ulla-Jill projects: (1) Composing the graphic narrative for the ESCADE proceedings -- that's irony that began in 2001, culminated with the book publication in 2005, and had a fleeting return last June. Way back -- as SnugAdapters were wont to say. (2) I'm editing the galley proofs of our "dancing with hierarchies" article -- it began in Ulla's Steninge house and traveled to muslim Turkey for Easter 2007. That's Mary Parker Follet who goes back to Ulla's and my early 1990s doctoral student days (and really to the early 1900s). (3) And simultaneously we're writing our paradigmatic partnership piece. It began May '06 in Fairfield and traveled to Florida and Paris in 2008. That one grabs 70's sociologists Burrell and Morgen and hurls them into design management of the 21st century. Research activity today: Medium low. More churn than action.


And if you doubt that I looked weird, take a look to your right! Yes, the sailing conditions dimension tended towards good.


New tablet laptop skills learned: How to work virtually with a techie from the Factory -- Kim used a special link to grab my computer controls and fix my VPN access and the laptop control panel. It took an hour, so I didn't work on any penmanship. Maybe I'll have better luck tomorrow.

False negative

According to the typology I developed yesterady (see post below) today was a Bloody Awful Day! No sailing, no research. But that label doesn't really fit the situation -- The sailing conditions were good but I went to Fairfield to leave my IBM T60 (on left) and pick up my new Lenovo Thinkpad X61 tablet pc (on right) on which to continue writing my scholarly papers (and blogs).







I spent about four hours working with a techie to transfer my files and settings, and already I find that some applications don't work (e.g., my VPN) and I appear to have lost some documents (e.g., my June photos.) Tomorrow promises to be a long day! But by the end of it I hope to have some "creative writing" for your review.

An ironic day

I focused on Bacelona keynote book chapter today -- Eduardo invited Ulla and me to contribute the paper we presented as a keynote at the Narratives and Rehtoric Conference at ESCADE last June to a book he is compiling. We don't have a "paper" -- just the irony book and some intriguing slides. So I settled down to a "graphic narrative" using the ppt on one side of the page and snappy comments on the other. It's a more time consuming task than even I had expected! But I found (with some difficulty) a collection of somewhat ironic postcards to inspire me and set to work. By the end of the dayI had annotated 6 of 15 slides. It's due a month from now so I'll need to keep focused on this task -- beside reading the proofs for the Design Journal article that came in this evening, and on Wednesday driving up to WNEC (Springfield, MA) to work with Jeanie on the paper we expect to submit to the EAM-International Conference in Brazil next June. Not to mention the fact that Diana will be down here tomorrow and probably hot to trot on the two projects we have in process.

As a distraction from discussing binary oppositions and how irony dissolves them, I created one (two actually) of my own as a way of measuring my day. There are two axes: One is Sailing Conditions (from bad to good) and the other is Resreach Activity (from low to high). The four quadrants have suitable descriptors.

Today I said, "Hope for better wind."

The day fell apart when I tried to back up my files onto the small harddrive before swapping out to my new laptop tomorrow. About two thirds of the files copied easily; the rest would not copy. I'll have to go to the session early tomorrow to get help. How embarassing!

And if I don't make a post tomorrow, it's because I can't make my new machine work!

Conference follow-up

Finally, a useful conference bag! OBTS, The Society for Management Educators, has adopted the principles of the United Nations PRIME Global Compact and is developing its initiatives and measurement processes.

Wow!

This morning at OBTC we had another great plenary session -- by Ed Schein. He reflected on his own teaching experiences over his 50 years at MIT and descibed different courses he taught -- often with other outstanding names in the field -- and what he learned from each one about student learning and his own teaching style. I'm looking forward to hearing his presentation again when a video is posted to the OBTC website.


But, in the interim, I can enjoy a visual depiction or graphic recording of Ed Schein's talk created by Sita Magnuson (of Visible-Think) while he was talking. That's "design" helping "management education thinking"!

Incidentally, at 80 Ed's a "youngster" compared with Chris Argyris!

The conference ended at noon (I also attended two other sesssions and the town meeting) and I drove back to Stonington. Good conference -- lots of usable ideas from program level to course activities.

Serious conference

Attended sessions all day -- starting at 8:15 AM and finishing at 6 PM. First a short discussion of service learning courses, then the day's keynote by Chris Argyris on Leadership, Culture, and Traps -- who exceeded all expectations -- and received a standing ovation. (In case you're wondering, he's 85). After the break -- and a walk to another building -- a student designed exercise intended to illustrate Kousner and Posner's exemplary leadership practices, with good audience discussion on other ways to incorporate the activity into a class.

Lunch, then Mary, Diana and I (minus Steve) were "on" with our exploration of Gardner's Five Minds as a framework for designing courses. Participants were engaged and appeared to enjoy the session. Afterwards I learned about a great new simulation --I'll definitely use it -- and went to a panel discussion where top HR executives talked about what business leaders want from management students. The evening program was a barbeque and the famous OBTC talent show. Diana and I decided to forego the talent show and retreat to the peace and quiet of her home. A tiring but stimulating day!

two different meal settings

I had a good day at OBTC. I enjoyed the plenary session and attended several interesting presentations -- one was Andra and Valerie's vignettes that linked to professional codes of ethics; another was about using James Perry's stages of cognitive development for diagnosing groups, and a third on the design of a diversity module for MBA students at Harvard. Good teaching stuff in all of them.


My midday and evening meals were taken in quite different company -- I went to Christopher's 10th birthday party. (He's the boy in the red shirt with sunlight on his face)