Flying Back Home Tomorrow
Time has gone by so quickly. Tomorrow, thursday July 26th, I'll be flying back to Munich. Having spent a year in the Boston area, I am very much looking forward to have a cool beer in the German "Beergardens"!
I had a lot of fun during my time here at the Kennedy School in Cambridge. I got to know many different people, among which there were tons of Germans, and I progressed a lot with my dissertation. I spent almost a month in Colorado and Utah to do field research and I explored most of the areas and cities between Boston and Québec.
I experienced the people here in the US as extremely friendly and helpful. I found them to be much more willing to help and chat than in some central European areas. Besides that I loved the food. Especially the triple-chocolate-fudge-free-refill culture really impressed me a lot.
In any case, it was a great time and now I need to get done with my PhD!
Almost over!
I cannot believe it and I do not know where the last 10 month have gone. Next week is July 26th, which is the day of my flight back to Germany/Europe. I'll be going from Boston to Philadelphia on Wednesday night and I'll be in Munich on Thurday morning.
I already organized my first speech in my sponsoring club, the Rotary Club of Erding. I'll be speaking to the club on Thursday night. After the club meeting I'll go and see my parents in Nurnberg.
Although I am a little bit sad to go back to Germany/Switzerland, I am really looking forward to seeing all my friends again and climb the highest mountains in the Swiss alps. It's been a great year where I learned a lot about doing research, about being an academic in the US system, about Rotary in the US, and about life at an "elite" university.
From an academic perspective I got pretty much done all the things I have been planning to do. Here is a brief list of the things I have been working at
Activities I have participated in during my time here at the Kennedy School (Sept’05 – July 06)
Course-Work:
Winter Semester: Managing Technological Innovation (Business School)
Spring Semester: Network Analysis for Managers and Analysts (Kennedy School)
Journal Papers:
Absorptive Capacity Building, Intrafirm Social Networks, and Knowledge Integration Mechanisms: Why Do Some Firms Turn Good Ideas Into Profit and Others Don’t? (Planned submission to AMR in August’06, written with Dr. Ines Mergel and Prof. Christoper Tucci (EPFL))
Conference PapersEffective Citizen Relationship Management: Hurricane Wilma and Miami-Dade County 311" (conference paper, submitted to and presented at the 7th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research, DG.O, 14.-18. May, Atlanta, GA., co-authored with Alexander Schellong)
Effective Citizen Relationship Management: Hurricane Wilma and Miami-Dade County 311" (conference paper, submitted to and presented at the 7th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research, DG.O, 14.-18. May, Atlanta, GA., co-authored with Alexander Schellong)
"Managing Citizen Relationships: Hurricane Wilma, 311 and Miami-Dade County" (submitted to HICSS 40 conference, co-authored with Alexander Schellong)
Seminar Series and Blogging:
Participation in the PNG Seminar Serias on Complexity and Social Networks
Blogger at the
PNG Complexity and Social Networks BlogResearch/Dissertation Work:
Data Collection for the dissertation (understanding the effects of social networks and innovation on firm performance):
- 37 qualitiative and semi-structured interviews with firms and organizations operating in the US ski industry
- Online social network survey (http://newschoolers.com): survey instrument development, data collection, cleaning, and analysis
- Archival data collection and analysis
Colorado Ski Museum (Vail, Colorado)
Research Proposals:
I contributed to thinking about and planning/designing a potential research project with an online social networking community (openBC.com)
PresentationsFall 2005: Brown-Bag Seminar PNG: Social Networks and Knowledge Mangement in Online Communities
May 2006: Rotary District 7930 Conference: Knowledge Mangement and Community Building through Online Social Networks
I'll start writing my final report right now and I am pretty sure that I'll have a lot more to post here on this blog.
