Kong Carlos. A Spanish champion in a Danish team.

He, he. No, it’s not me. It’s Carlos Sastre winning the Tour of France. People again congratulate me, as I’m the only guy from Spain in the institute. The Eurocup, the Giro of Italy, the Roland Garros, Wimblendon and now the Tour of France.

The Danish were quite happy when Spain recently won the Eurocup, it was a strange coincidence Spain beat Germany of course. The Danes are also happy that the winning team was the Danish CSC Saxo Bank. Today my coworkers are joking with me that I’m the Spanish guy in the Danish team… kind of a high stake for a more humble Carlos.

A textbook to teach: Global Economy

Frontpage of one the books I will use

My supervisor gave me the first book that I will be using to teach this Autumn Semester. I will be teaching things related to geography. Because of my background in Business and Economics I will be teaching in the geography group more things related to Economics. 

It’s not the first time I teach. I was an Spanish teacher for more than 2 years in Spain, in my early university years. That was a side job, not related with my studies but it was fun and well paid for a few hours. Then at the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech in the Autumn semester 2006, I was also a TA (Teaching Assistant) for a class that combined Science, Technology and Politics with Hans Klein. But anyways although I a little experience teaching, now I’m really excited.

I think this is one the better things for a PhD fellow to be able to teach other students. Now I need to learn by heart the first 6 chapters.  It’s going to be cool.

Oh, next week I will be in Spain for vacations. I have been really missing it this week with the running of the bulls in Pamplona. Now, let me tell you, that’s a real experience!!

Moving to a different room

Well, vacations are here, and many people in the Department have been living. Today, I have changed to a bigger room, number 3, still in Fibigerstræde 13. There are 4 of us here. My mates are Karl Sperling, Christina P. Grann and Isaac Kwamena Arthur (who I have worked with him before).

I like to be able to exchange ideas, etc. For me is also very helpful, because they are more experienced phd and Karl and Christina speak Danish. Karl is from Germany but he speaks Danish without any problem. My last room was ok, but I’m happy for the change.

The Committee on Culture of the Danish Parliament visit us.

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 supervisors

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.

My presentation at the conference.

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.

How not to get a PhD

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.  

Intrapreneurship, and its potential to create a fruitful discussion

Yesterday I presented to my group (2 professors and 3 other phd students) some of the ideas that I have working on. It was my first presentation as a phd students so I have to admit I was a little bit nervous.

I think the idea that most caught their attention was the “intrapreneurship” concept. Today I have been adding some things in Wikipedia about it. Well, I have a deadline to meet this May 10 to submit a paper for the RSA Conference. So, if you want to know more about intrapreneurship and how it can be connected to innovation and the experience economy, then read my next paper (next week) and stay around!