Notes of Carlos

An important area of my research is to look at cultural and engaging activities for the city of Frederikshavn. The activities that the city has carried during the last years have been pretty cool and innovative. One of them has been the Festival of Tordenskiold.  I will quote supervisor who explains about it:

The Festival of Tordenskiold started in Frederikshavn in 1998 and has been organised as an annual summer festival in the city since that year. From a humble start in 1998 in 2007 more than 25,000 people visited the festival which had 1000 local participants and activists. The historical core of the festival is a sea battle in the year 1717 in which Tordenskiold participated as a twelve year old boy. The festival is constructed as scenery at the harbour, with the water as an important element. A theatre play involving sailing ships, rowing boats, guns and canons and the wharf, as well as people dressed up in XVIII century clothes as king and nobles, soldiers and mariners, represents the culmination of the festival. Many people dress up as XVIII century peasants, vendors and street performers and serve food, sell arts and crafts and give little performances of different kinds during the two days of the festival. Sailing ships from different countries visit the harbour during the festival. The visiting ships are actors in as well as part of the scenery of the festival and the theatre play. Some of the ships are also attractions, inviting people to experience their beautiful interior. Only since 2004 the city council has put the festival on the budget with a salary for a coordinator. Until then it was run by volunteers and based on private donations. (Lorentzen, January 2008)
 

Well this last weekend the 2008 Festival received more than 30.000 people. Which is a great sign that the Festival is doing better every year. Unfortunately I didn’t go, as it coincide with my moving to my new place. I feel bad about it, next year I will go 100% sure. Anyways, it seems people did not miss me to have great fun…

Oh, I forgot to tell you. Torden, in Danish means Thunder, and Skiold, Shield. From what I understand is the title that it was given to this brave guy (Peter Tordenskiold) who defended the city. That was in 1717.

In a way reminds me the ideas shared by Gilmore and Pine, in their last book Authenticity (2007), about celebrating key dates for a place.

The other day I met Google Trends, a powerful tool. I think still some unprecise, but it can bring useful info. I started looking at some of the keywords of my research interest, like “innovation” & ”entrepreneurship”,  

We can comment a few things. First, people are more interested in “innovation” than “entrepreneurship”. Even if some of us, keep saying that “Entrepreneurs or Intrapreneurs, We Couldn’t Innovate Without Them” (Mary Key, today). Second thing is that Copenhague and Singapore, are the  most interested city/regions in the world about innovation (Google dixit). Third thing, is that entrepreneurship is much more googled in developing countries. Which makes sense as they have the highest entrepreneurial rates in the world, and are the ones kicking Europe and US. Last thing to point out, that always in Christmas, people don’t care about these things, that’s funny to see in the graph. I always like to see things from a multilevel perspective.  

The experience economy

I looked at other words, but probably the most interesting is “experience economy“. Notice, that Aalborg (or Ålborg), it’s ranked as the number one place in the world more interested in this concept. My supervisor got quite excited when yesterday I saw her that. Of course that is not only my Department that has been interested in this subject, other in Aalborg also do.

So if you are interested in this issue, stay tuned. In fact, the word in the street says we will soon open a website about it.  

This afternoon the CCDP or Kulturudvalget in Danish, came to visit us. Here in the official website of the Parlament explains about their trip. It was very interesting to meet this people. I was the only foreign, so everything was in Danish, which it was hard for me to follow as my command in Danish is still shaky
So 10 people from this Committee came and we were 4 academics, my supervisor, another professor and two PhD’s (including me).
My supervisor talked more in general about the experience economy and the projects done in Frederikshavn. The Comittee was very interested, and they asked many questions. My coworkers were very glad how the meeting went.
H.P. my fellow PhD student, also made a presentation they liked. I’m including my presentation, it’s a very small one and it had to very fast as the time was almost consumed, but at least you can see a little of what I talked about.
For me it’s very interesting how these people in the goverment, from different parties, are interested and get engaged in what people are doing in their “Kingdom”. I’m very happy to be in a project that it’s important, not only at local/regional level, but national too.

Well it seems today SlideShare does not work. So I will updated it in another time. I have recently updated the RSA Presentation, today I saw 106 people had view the presentation since I put it, too bad no one has left any comment.

My main supervisor is Anne Lorentzen and my secondary supervisor is Phil Cooke.

From my previous post “How not to get a PhD“ it was stressed the importance of the supervisor for a successful completion of your PhD. Well, I’m quite happy with my both supervisors. It’s not unusual in Aalborg to have two supervisors, which I like, because you get two different mentors.  

I’m not going to start saying good things about them, because although they currently don’t know I have this humble blog, perhaps in the future they will find out.

I will just say they’re good academic people. Anne is quite enthusiast about our project, and I love that. Phil Cooke, is an outstanding scholar. It’s amazing talking to him and see how intelligent he is.

They both have very different backgrounds, and different beliefs and interests. So is great to have them. I think they will be complementary for my work. Last week we had PhD course and it was very interesting. I have learned a lot.

Here is the power point presentation I prepared for the conference. It was really exciting and I meet many great people in the conference. It’s so exciting to find that many other academics are studying these issues. I also enjoyed the atmosphere of Prague.

In my presentation there were 3 other presentations, and I got 3 or 4 questions that I loved to answer. Many never heard about the “experience economy” so it was nice to see their faces.

I’m going now to Prague, Czech Republic, for the Conference. I’m quite nervous for my presentation. I will upload, later. I’m afraid I will be working on it till the last minute.
My conference paper, wanted to go on a direction I could not take due to my questions. It will be soon online too.
It’s quite exciting to go to a conference where I’m going to talk for the first time, it’s not my first presentation in public, but is the first one in a Conference.

Richard Florida visits Googles headquarters to discuss his book “Who’s Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life.” This event took place on March 28, 2008

This is an hour presentation. It has been fantastic listening to him. There are many things that I could comment about it. I like the idea of the importance of taking decissions on where to live. I have been also surfing Florida’s site Who’s Your City, and I specially enjoyed the maps sections.

I have to say that the two main critics I had about him have him addressed. The first one, is that the there is no correlation on this issues, as he says in the economic phenomenon things are very complex, ”association” better fits the term. The second thing, is that while looking at the new megaregions, he’s using number of patents to measure innovation. Which I consider with too many flaws, specially at the international level, but in the video he said something: “Using number of patents is quite a rude thing to do, it could have been done better…” 

That by the way, is something that I commente on his blog. I wonder if I could ever influence a 0.01% him? That would be cool.

One of my professors suggested me the book “How to Get a PhD“. Then I run into this website who was talking about “How to not get a PhD.” Because I’m starting I really appreciated this information, the book I have no read it yet, but the article was quite fun.

It summarizes 7 ideas, that I would like to keep present: 

 ”Be aware of the seven ways of not getting a PhD:
· not wanting a PhD;

· overestimating what is required;

· underestimating what is required;

· having a supervisor who does not know what is required;

· losing contact with your supervisor;

· not having a ‘thesis’ (i.e. position, argument) to maintain;

· taking a new job before completing.

It’s interesting to remember that there is a great number of PhD students who can’t or don’t want to finish their studies. One needs to keep these 7 things present.  

This post is like a continuation of Kotkin comes to Denmark to kick R. Florida

So my colleague H.P. pointed me out that Florida quotes Kotkin in “The Rise of the Creative Class” to support his argument. I totally overlooked at it! In fact, Florida quotes him a couple of times, and it looks they’re perfectly in tune.
Googling a little bit about their relationship, I found that Florida last summer gave his opinion about the “Kotkin-Florida debate” as he says, quoting Bill Fulton to support that Kotkin came after him without any reason and that Kotkin’s arguments are getting old. I don’t know what to say about that. I mean these guys don’t really like each other.  

The thing is that they are working in different spheres, they both bring their contributions, but sometimes is just hard (at least for me) to put them together. I also feel that Kotkin has his feet more on the ground, but he just focus on criticizing instead of giving ideas. For example, Kotkin and Florida meet in Pittsburg last February. They agree in immigration, entrepreneurship, and both disagree in building huge projects (like the stadium), but it’s they’re always putting disagreeing at the end.

Gotta love these guys.  

I subscribe to this Manifesto. Even if you do not mention it in your blog, I hope you also do.