Reverting back to the day of cutting and pasting (literally)

In an attempt to FINALLY wrap up my literature review, I sat down in my living room with stacks of papers I had gone through over 3 times each, and decided it was time to actually start dissecting the information.  I couldn’t help but start to sweat when I stared at the mess of paper I was surrounded by, and decided I needed to figure out a way that I could deal with all of the information.  So, I went to the office, grabbed a pair of scissors, markers, tape, paper clips, glue, and a stapler.  The only way I knew I was going to get through this was visually – thanks to 4 years in art school I only understand things when I’ve got a picture in front of me.  I started cutting, pasting, highlighting, and sorting through about 1,000 pages of research and finished up with scraps of paper that had all the information I was to include in my literature review.  Now all I have to do is critique the data and write it up

What goes down…must come back up

Graduating w/ my masters degree

I got my first conference rejection this past week…an empirical paper I had submitted to the Summer AMA.  As one of the hardest conferences to get accepted into, I didn’t feel incredibly disappointed, but was saddened to have missed out on such a great opportunity.  However, as Neil always says – I need to get used to it.  Apparently the academic world is quite a cruel one, and rejection is a common occurrence.  Not one to ever give up, I will be submitting another paper to the Winter AMA.

One a fantastic note – I’ve been accepted to attend the EMAC Doctoral Colloquium in Copenhagen in June!  I’m greatly looking forward to this as I’ve never been to Denmark, and as I am always welcoming the opportunity to discuss relevant topics with professionals in my industry.  On another exciting note – I will be surrounded by other PhD students dealing with the same struggles I am – inspiration to hopefully ensue!

Lastly, after being told no summer positions were available, I was emailed yesterday asking if I would be interested in teaching Internet Marketing this summer at RIT!  I’m thrilled!  Beyond thrilled!  RIT is my alma mater, as well as the university where I had my first teaching job!  Teaching is the reason I’m putting myself through the pains of getting s PhD, so any opportunity presented is truly a motivation to finish this degree!

That’s it for the updates…I’m home in Rochester while my school has a Spring hiatus, and am finding that work does not stop even on “vacation”!

Keep your clothes on chatters!

So, unless you’ve been hiding under a technological rock, you have probably heard of Chat Roulette. What started as an innovative video chat website developed by a 17 year old Russian kid, has turned into somewhat of a live adult website.  At inception, it was possible to hop on the site and video chat with people all over the world and engage in random chitchat.  Now, I’m not naive, although my first experience with Chat Roulette didn’t involve seeing naked people, I knew it would eventually come to this.  What better way for creepy men and young boys to check out pretty girls anonymously than to hop on and scour through the people chatting.  However, I really see potential value with this concept (and it doesn’t involve the adult industry).  Just as Twitter was seen as a worthless tool for self-indulgent people to share their monotonous daily lives with the world, I feel Chat Roulette could be on to something.  Perhaps CR is the newest web 2.0 media outlet for marketers to adopt or target.  Who knows what the future has in store for such a site, but I’m interested to see where its taken.  One hope – this 17 year old boy gets himself a very talented legal team and a crew of creative business partners.

Warning:  anticipate seeing the not-so-occasional naked man lurking around.  http://chatroulette.com/

Pi Day, and my birthday!

While most people would not enjoy sharing their birthday celebration with someone else, I am happy to split the attention with a very special number…Pi.  Yes, my birthday falls on Pi Day (3/14).  In observance of such a significant constant, here are some 3.14 facts:

• • Most people would say that a circle has no corners, but it is more accurate to say that it has an infinite number of corners.

    The sequences of digits in Pi have so far passed all known tests for randomness.

    Here are the first 100 decimal places of Pi

    3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679

    The fraction (22 / 7) is a well-used number for Pi. It is accurate to 0.04025%.

    Another fraction used as an approximation to Pi is (355 / 113) which is accurate to 0.00000849%

    A more accurate fraction of Pi is (104348 / 33215). This is accurate to 0.00000001056%.

    Pi occurs in hundreds of equations in many sciences including those describing the DNA double helix, a rainbow, ripples spreading from where a raindrop fell into water, general relativity, geometry problems, waves, etc.

    There is no zero in the first 31 digits of Pi.

    Pi is irrational. An irrational number is a number that cannot be expressed as a ratio of integers.

    In 1991, the Chudnovsky brothers in New York, using their computer, m zero, calculated pi to two billion two hundred sixty million three hundred twenty one thousand three hundred sixty three digits (2, 260, 321, 363). They halted the program that summer.

    The Pi memory champion is Hiroyoki Gotu, who memorized an amazing 42,000 digits.

    The old memory champion was Hideaki Tomoyori, born Sep. 30, 1932. In Yokohama, Japan, Hideaki recited pi from memory to 40,000 places in 17 hrs. 21 min. including breaks totaling 4 hrs. 15min. on 9-10 of March in 1987 at the Tsukuba University Club House.

    Pi is of course the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. If you bring everything up one dimension to get 3D value for Pi, the ratio of a sphere’s surface area to the area of the circle seen if you cut the sphere in half is exactly 4.

    If you take 10 million random digits, statistically on average you would expect 200 cases where you get 5 digits in a row the same. If you take 10 million digits of Pi, you get exactly 200.

    If a billion decimals of pi were printed in ordinary type, they would stretch from New York City, to the middle of Kansas.

    The square root of 9.869604401 is approximately Pi. The square root of an irrational number is irrational too.

    For a circle to equal pi the diameter must be 1.

An American stomach on an English diet…

Along with the other changes I’ve needed to make to my life since moving to the UK, my stomach (and waistline) have demanded that I abandon my newly acquired English diet.  With the exception of a few things, I feel that I’ve adapted quite well to English living and this whole PhD lifestyle:

• Sleep – often sporadic and limited in nature.  Although the clock ticks away, my body resists getting itself aligned with GMT and tirelessly likes to keep itself on EST.
• Social life – non existent.  Friends made:  1 (he works at my school – convenient because my work schedule is never interrupted)
• Finances – pas si bon (stupid conversion rates)
• Driving – I’ve got this down!  Just call me James Bond (except that I’m generally equipped with a VW and not a Maserati)
• Professional – although this PhD is kicking my butt, I’d say I’m progressing rather well

Yet, after months of being excited about immersing myself in a new type of cuisine – I find myself, and my stomach, very unhappy.  Things I refuse to eat:

• eggs (they’re not refrigerated and sit on the shelves in the supermarket)
• Fish and Chips (I don’t like fried fish…but will gobble up the chips)
• Any kind of “pudding” (because I fear that for what I take as ‘chocolate’ is usually some sort of animal organ)
• Bangers and mash (again, I’ll do the mash, but had a hideous experience with bangers last week)

Things I eat a lot of:

• cookies (shortbread, chocolate, ginger – I don’t discriminate)
• tea/coffee
• Indian food (its always readily available on campus)
• Oatmeal
• Anything free on campus

So, after much examination and deductive reasoning – I’ve decided that my American stomach just can not handle my diet of cookies and curry any longer.  I need to reintroduce my stomach to chicken.

International Women’s Day

Just for women?! I wouldn't be caught dead in this, and I'm a woman

Monday, March 8th, is International Women’s Day and Professor Moira Clark will be participating in a live blog event discussing the increasing buying power of women…go ladies!!!  Professor Clark has written an article for Reuters UK about the female economy, and addresses the age-old question “what do women want?”  Well, I think its about time marketers and companies start fundamentally addressing this issue, as women make up 85% of all consumer purchases.

A few companies who have successfully started targeting women as their own niche:  Harley Davidson, Ford, and Giant bikes.

However, a word to the wise…Making something pink doesn’t make a female targeted marketing program.  This is quite evident in Dell’s failed attempt at directly targeting women by increasing their product offering to include a pink laptop.  A true campaign marketed towards women?! How about a laptop with a mirror built right in to the hardware…ok, ok, just kidding – but that would be convenient 😉

Check out Moira’s article:  http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate-uk/tag/professor-moira-clark/

Join the club!

I find myself continually running into people/organizations who are resistant to the adoption of social media (for the purpose of anything from marketing to employee retention and recruiting)…”we’ve thought about it, and its not for us”.  What do you mean “its not for us”?!  Today I sat through a conference where social media was at the forefront of conversation and I found myself having to bite my tongue as people questioned and disregarded the information the main speakers were presenting…arguing that, social media is fundamentally “fluffy”.  Well, research, experience, and testimonies would argue otherwise…so, why the resistance?  Cisco Systems Marketing Director of European Markets, Dr. Christine Bailey, spent time presenting on WHY social media is so useful, and also on some thoughts for inspiration…yet she was still faced with a room full of disbelieving onlookers, and individuals who believe the European market will never adopt social media as the USA has.  Well, I’d say its time everyone jumps on board, looks to corporations who’ve already adopted these technologies as a learning experience, and start coming up with ways social media can improve customer experiences, and improve your bottom line.

(Side note – Christine is a past PhD student of Moira’s, who is also my supervisor…I’m in good company!!!)

Funny, you don’t LOOK like a cookie…

You don't LOOK like a cookie...and you certainly don't TASTE like a cookie.

One of my rewards for working so hard on this dissertation is that, I treat myself daily to a deliciously buttery shortbread cookie (or well, as many as I can sneak without people looking at me with eyes of judgment).  I am conscious of the “outsider’s” view on American eating habits, and, as it is very clear and evident, from my bubbly ‘tude, that I am from the country of “can you supersize that!?”…I try to be a vision of a changing America.  Keeping up this vision requires me to make many “H2O” trips to the parlor room of heaven where, on the table on the far right wall, my cookies rest, awaiting my selection.  Obviously, these trips to “quench my thirst” solely exist so that I can examine the on-lookers to see if any of them have already seen me sneak a cookie; if the coast is clear, I look at the table, like I’m contemplating whether or not I should eat such a “despicable” treat, and then finally snatch the biggest one as if I were reluctant in the first place, and take it away seeming that I will only eat a bite, and find solitude in my little corner where I quickly demolish the whole thing in one damn bite. (This charade continues until they take the plate of cookies away at 5pm, and let me put it to you this way…on some days, I drink a whole heck of a lot of water.  On a good day, I leave with a stomachache, which forces me to look demeaningly at my actions and inner self.)

So, today, like any other day, 1pm roles around (I’d been watching my computer clock eagerly since 12:48).  I get up from my chair, brush away my PB&J crumbs, and excitedly trot to the parlor to snatch me some naughty treats.  Imagine my surprise, when I find a basket of FRUIT sitting where my shortbread is supposed to be!  Fruit isn’t supposed to be out until 3pm!  From 1pm to 3pm I am entitled to NOT feel guilty about choosing a cookie over a pear!  I have the delivery of all food timed out perfectly, so that my self-confidence doesn’t take a blow (and I don’t feel the hours I’ve spent reading “eat this, not that” have been wasted).  I sit down on the couch nearest to the sweets table, that has turned into the “you’re chubby eat a banana” table and patiently wait until the waiter realizes he’s made a hideous mistake and switches the basket for the porcelain plate of cookies.  Said event – Does.Not.Happen!  I am forced to take a despicable green apple, because even though I don’t want it…I’m starving because today I have only eaten:  a bowl of oatmeal, progressive soup, 2 PB&J sandwiches and half of last night’s pasta dish.  BLASFEMY!

From public presentations to 1st year PhD presentations

Whyyy do I do this to myself??? A reccuring question

Three weeks ago I finished, and turned in the first draft of my literature review, a task I have been dreading for months.  Since November 2007 I have been reading, charting, and taking notes on hundreds upon hundreds of articles that I’ve dug up from endless internet databases and libraries in TWO different continents.  Needless to say, I’ve had enough with reading.  In fact, so much so, that I wanted to take a few days to leisurely read but found myself interested in anything BUT reading (unless said reading material had a glossy cover featuring a perfectly coiffed Hollywood starlet promising to spill her diet secrets).

I must admit, even though my first (err actually second) attempt at a lit. review is now complete, I am dreading the countless edits I must make before the end of this school year.  In May I have to present my literature findings, as well as a research plan, to a room full of people ready to attack my hard-work; hard-work that is covered with blood (literally!  from the time my sink broke and crashed onto my foot, sending me to a British hospital), sweat, eau de parfum (to cover the sweat), and tears (which all of you should know…fall quite regularly).  Not usually one to shiver at presenting in front of groups of people (as urged by my mother, I’ve been doing this since I was 7 and have come quite fond of hearing myself speak, and, lets face it, being the center of attention), I am unexplainably nervous about my presentation.  So nervous, that my mother, and potentially my husband, will be flying across the Atlantic to be by my side.

And, because I’ve not yet made myself nervous enough, I VOLUNTEERED to do a preliminary presentation in 2 weeks in front of my peers.

Please wish me luck…not so much for the presentation in 2 weeks time, but for my presentation in May.  No worries, I will update you on my progress as well as whether or not my Prada pumps kept me on my feet and not on my face.  Eeek!

Airlines say what?!

Kevin Smith

Let’s face it – Americans are continually getting bigger and bigger, an issue that is typically dealt with in the health care and food sectors.  However, we now see this issue being addressed by the airline industry after a very public situation with Southwest Airlines and director Kevin Smith, who was asked to get off his flight before departure as he was deemed a “safety hazard”.  Smith’s size was the catalyst, but he was buckled with the armrest down like his fellow passengers.  So, what is it that we need to regulate?  Should we regulate?  Should the airlines begin making changes to accommodate the growing size of American behinds?  All of these are questions that will need to be addressed in the near future.  We’ve seen airlines begin charging for checked baggage, stop serving peanuts, and charging for blankets, all in an effort to save money and make money.  So, can airlines even afford to make the appropriate changes?  And, to boot, isn’t this a relatively sensitive issue?  Can we expect that it will be addressed in an equally sensitive manner?  Because, lets face it, American sensitivity is growing equally with the size of our behinds.

On a side note, we can thank the power of Twitter for bringing light to this issue.  Kevin Smith immediately took to Twitter to tweet about what had just happened stating “I know I’m fat but not that fat”.