Back in the saddle...

I teach Digital Marketing and am acutely aware that my own web presence has suffered in the last two years but here's why:

The long and short of it is that this blog used to be  a place where I would discuss my research, it acted as a place where I could rehearse arguments and points of view. As those who have read this blog previously will realise I've been undertaking a PhD. In the last two years that has dominated my time. Well my time when I've not been teaching. Six weeks ago today I submitted my PhD and at some point in the coming months I will have my viva.

While one might assume that completing (or as best possible until it is examined) would overwhelm one with relief and joy, this is not quite how it is or was.  Over the final months of bringing it together I was very disciplined (for me):  little to no social life, a lot of gym visits, early nights and long-ish  days (I am a parent so the working day is naturally curtailed when parenting starts) writing/proofing/checking. I was in an odd state: focused, anxious and adrenalin (and caffeine) fuelled and all the time trying hard not to get ill. As it happens within half an hour of submitting I had a sore throat, followed by a week-long, heavy cold and recurring shoulder/neck problem back with a vengeance, leading to a month of sleepless nights and physio bills, in retrospect it took its toll. I will write a  more in-depth post about how the PhD process was for me at some point soon, I am still a little nervous to talk publicly about it until I've got through the examination process.

I am now left looking at what next? I have a lot of ideas and things I want to do in terms of research, although I will miss my PhD (there I've said it!) or maybe I will miss the people who became the focus of the research, their stories and struggle. This is another posting for the future. I'll also give a synopsis of my thesis at some point too. I have written or attempted to write three papers in the last 6 weeks too. This was over ambitious and as they are derived from the PhD I've had to be careful to not plagiarise myself (much harder than you would imagine). Two of these papers are intended for this year's ISBE conference. I've attended ISBE every year since 2004 (a year after my academic career began) but last year, other than giving a keynote presentation at the Cultural Entrepreneurship conference in Pori, Finland, I was on a self-imposed conference moratorium. So I am really looking forward to ISBE and reconnecting with the research community. This year it will be in Cardiff.

So my next steps, other than get through the viva (everything crossed): to re-engage with the research community, develop my research ideas and seek collaborators to help make them happen, continue writing about and disseminating my recent research and reconsider and develop my online presence. This is where this posting started. Those who know me know I have a pretty lengthy history working within online/digital/Internet environment, as if to haunt me some old photos recently emerged, which I might share including press cuttings from the 90s....'Women take on Cyberspace' (Birmingham Post, April 1997) *cringe*.... but my focus on my recent research focus has meant I have dropped the proverbial online presence ball. This timeout has also offered me an opportunity to reflect. To value my privacy. To consider how much I want to share and why? I have become a 'lurker', an observer, utterly bemused, sometimes amused and delighted by the banality of what people choose to share (incidentally I would suggest this is a useful exercise for anyone working in this field: to take yourself out and observe others for a bit). But I feel it is time to test the water again. So my next steps also include attempting to re-build my online presence, tidy-up and revive this blog and practise a little more of what I preach in my Digital Comms and Digital Marketing modules....

Cultural Entrepreneurship Conference 2012

(A little shameless publicity to follow)
In recent months I have been buried in the 'writing up' of my PhD. Apart from my teaching commitments I've been keeping a very low profile within the research world. This means for me, this year, I haven't submitted any papers for conferences! For example this is the first time in my 9 years in Academia that I won't be attending the ISBE conference (which I am a bit disappointed about, especially given they have a dedicated creative industries track).

However I have been invited, and have accepted, to give a keynote presentation at The Cultural Entrepreneurship Conference in December, of this year in Pori, Finland. I figured by then I ought to have the bulk, if not all, my writing complete.... My presentation title will be: Creative Disciplines Education; a Model for Teaching Entrepreneurship and the Paradox of Teaching ‘Creatives’ Entrepreneurship.

What is great is that finally the two main areas that I have been working in (with in my research) have converged. For those of you who don't know me: alongside my PhD work on 'Creative Entrepreneurship, Gender and Careers' I've also been working pretty hard in the field of 'Enterprise Education' (ironically this is the area I've published in too). Perhaps this was inevitable, afterall so much of my approach is dependent on my own role within the research, I guess I couldn't help but influence myself.  Anyway I aim to look at where these two fields converge in December.

Before I go I have an observation/PhD tip:
If I get stuck, if I go back to my data I always seem to find the answer. I am still very fond of my data I feel like it's gold or something of very high value and when I get lost or am off on some mad detour (which often feels the case) my data can really help to focus my mind and reassure me that I'm actually on the right track.

PhD update

Well for anyone who read this blog when it was updated on a more than once a year basis, you'll recall I am a part-time PhD student as well as a full-time senior lecturer. My study is looking at entrepreneurship within the careers of creative industries graduates. To say this has been a long process is an understatement but finally I think I am beginning to see the 'light at the end of the tunnel'.

It has been a tricky balancing act. Like many in my profession I am also 'research active' so at the same time as doing my PhD and carrying out my teaching commitments I've also been working on other research projects and publishing papers within a linked field - Enterprise Education.

A list of papers recently published, related to that can be found at my Birmingham City Business School staff publication page (BTW I know that photo is awful).

I'll maybe write a more detailed post on these papers sometime in the future.

So the PhD. Well. I'm basically ‘writing up’. I think. What I mean is the literature review, methodology, data collection and analysis are complete (all but tidying up/final sweep of the lit etc.) and I am writing up my ‘findings and discussion’ chapters. This is a nuts job and I have to kind of get into a particular head space and really concentrate. I think, due to having supervised and now having been supervised so long, that I am beginning to be able to self-supervise if that’s possible. So I can see where my work is flawed or there are gaps but it all makes my head hurt (in a good way).

I am working with a relatively small and specific sample group who I interviewed, at some length, the interviews were long and intense and are around 20,000 -25,000 words long. It’s a lot to analyse and make sense of. But I’m enjoying the process. Even if it has resulted in increased insomnia. I feel really strange if I manage to get a couple of consecutive days to work on it. Like I have to re-join the world afterwards, but I also resent being taken away from it because I find it so hard to get back into that zone, that level of concentration.

I would say though that once I got into doing my interviews (which were full of issues at the time - again that’s another story), which I really enjoyed, the whole PhD experience has been far more rewarding than those early days where I felt I (it wasn't just a feeling I literally did) spent years doing my literature review and getting very little in return.

I just hope now that I can keep up the momentum for this final push!

I’ll keep you posted…

Blogging again

S0 another year went by and I didn't blog. Oops.

Recently I've been talking to my Digital Marketing students about blogging and encouraging them to set up blogs, develop their online presence and it occurred to me that perhaps I ought to be setting a slightly better example. I also figured that from a research perspective (i.e. I am research active) I ought to be sharing more. A colleague once said to me 'if you don't tell anyone about your research then it doesn’t' exist' or something like that I guess it comes from the same school of thought as 'publish or perish'.

So I will blog a bit more - or try to at least.....and in my next post I will give a bit of an update on where I am with my PhD. That doesn't sound that exciting I realise but may be of interest to those of you also on the PhD path...

Where did 2010 go? and now I am 5

Well it's that time of year again where I teach Digital Marketing. I spend a few weeks talking to students about their own online presence. Some start blogs, some develop their twitter identity...last week I asked them to join Linkedin and make contact with me. I don't think any did that.



This year I had to reflect that perhaps I hadn't given my own online presence much love. In fact this blog has somewhat gone to seed. I last posted in late 2009!



This afternoon I am taking a break from marking, last term I had an intense amount of teaching that meant my research suffered and blogging was the last thing on my mind, it also means I've a huge stack of marking still to get through. Still with some light at the end of the marking tunnel I thought I'd spend part of the afternoon figuring out how to go forward with my research and that's where this blog comes in.



I am about to embark on an intense period of time related to my research and PhD specifically and I intend to reflect on the process as I go along. Here I'll be highlighting various aspects for example when I manage to publish something, give a conference paper or read or write something of interest.

That was always the original purpose of this blog which incidentally celebrated it's 5th year last October!! here's a link to that first months blogposts back in 2005 - crikey what a lot has changed in that time!

IEEP; Twitter and Teaching Enterprise

Yesterday (yeah okay I know I haven't blogged for ages, anyway...) I was presenting to this year's IEEP (International Enterprise Educators Programme) cohort with colleagues from two other universities; Dr Kelly SMith (Huddersfiled, @kellyjs) and Tom Williamson (Coventry @floppyarms). Not really sure how we were billed but I went along to talk about how I have used Twitter in my teaching.

Above is a screen shot of a slide. The table highlights how I think twitter is useful for the different courses I teach on.


I was trying to talk about why I use Twitter? Mainly it's because I teach interactive or digital marketing. So obviously Twitter, along with many other things, is covered. I use it for a number of practical things too. Students can interact with my networks (an area that with colleagues I have discussed elsewhere), develop their own, get an insight into appropriate ways of using Twitter on behalf of their future clients and for developing their own businesses and personal online presence. Twitter is not explored in isolation it is one of many tools (just currently particularly useful). As well as this students are encouraged to use it to annotate the session under a common #hashtag, making for group note taking and an ensuing conversation which, potentially, extends beyond the class room.


At the IEEP event a number of concerns were voiced. One of the issues that arose was anxiety about referring students to documents which held no academic rigour. Along with this was anxiety about the level of academic evaluation as to the value of services like twitter.

My initial response to these two points. Firstly the speed with which technology changes and the ways in which folks use the Internet and apply the various tools available is constantly evolving. In contrast an academic paper can literally take years to go through the review process and be published. This making research relating to use of twitter (at least peer reviewed academic research) rather thin on the ground. Twitter only started in 2006 after all.

A second aspect is a tension which I perceive within enterprise/entrepreneurship education and which has been borne out in various evaluations of enterprise provision I've been involved in. This being the balance between academic/theoretical pursuit and the need to provide students with insight into new and emerging business models as well as timely and appropriate marketing approaches (and that's scratching the surface). I am talking about theory vs practice.

The ensuing talk offered much healthy scepticism and tough questioning.

However anyone would think that we were pushy sales folk trying to flog our wares, rather than a couple of academics discussing how we are embracing new technologies, trying to conceptualise their implications and seeking opportunities from them for ourselves and our students.

Hmm as a final note I must thank the IEEPers as one way or another the debate has ended a long drought period within this blog (been tweeting too much....:-) Thank you and perhaps see you on twitter @charlottecarey

Enterprise education and web 2.0

Okay so there's no new years list. No resolutions (of the blogging variety).  Last year was pretty intense but in a good way. I am now more a lecturer than a researcher - although I have a couple of research projects about to get underway and so the balancing act will continue for the forseeable and PhD rumbles on (desperate to get some of my work time devoted to this - that's a little something to work towards). 

So my research interests are evolving but still focussed on the following broad topics:

• Gender and entrepreneurship in the creative industries
  
• Enterprise education 
  

The former of these is my PhD topic and pretty much under wraps for the time being - it is a long slog with moments or real joy when I can literally feel my brain absorbing new ideas and stuff, but otherwise hard.

The latter, which has emerged from my funded research, has developed into various strands: 

1.  Contextualised enterprise education (i.e. enterprise taught within the context of a discipline e.g. sport or art and design)
   
2. What can generic business school enterprise education learn from how existing curriculum is taught within art and design?
   
3. Enterprise pedagogies and web 2.0  - this is an interesting area and one which seems to have a growing interest. Mainly it's about how education can respond to students increasingly immersed in the online world? how does that make them different sorts of learners? and what fantastic opportunities exist with in social media etc to engage with our students?
   

Based on the latter I am presenting next Friday (23rd Jan 09) at Birmingham City University for an event run by the Higher Education Academy for English.

Trying to blog...

Wow can not believe I've not posted since July- I think perhaps my twitter addiction is to blame. That and what has proved to be a very busy summer. Not holidaying you understand but writing. And then writing some more. I've already mentioned this is not something that comes particularly easily to me. But hey.

Thought I would do a little recent news for those who might be interested and for me to remember what I've been up to.

Well term starts soon so I am in the process of writing some course materials for an interactive marketing module I'll be teaching. But as well as this I am developing my current research portfolio and developing some interesting areas with colleagues from all over the place - more news as these emerge. I've also been writing a chapter for the Diana Symposium over in Belfast later this year -this is related to my PhD research so it is taking priority somewhat. I feel a bit sort of too close to this one to talk about it too much so I'll see how it goes before saying anymore.

While in Belfast I will also attend this years ISBE conference, building on some of my project work my paper there develops some of the ideas I've been having around the role of the practitioner as educator and looking to creative disciplines to see how it works there - this paper focuses, specifically on assessment and assessment of ideas (please still do the survey if you do teach in a creative discipline - see last post).

In other news earlier this month I was at BAM in Harrogate. I really enjoyed this conference for the most part. It was in the Majestic hotel which was fabulous - sort of faded glory, I loved it. The conference had a 'Creative and Cultural Industries' track which was great for me. There was a good set of strong papers presented, mainly in a 'round-table' format, which was good for a less formal discussion around the various topics. I've still got to go through all of the various bits of paper I collected, but when I have done I'll try and comment more on some of the themes which emerged.

Creative educators; ideas assessment survey

I am involved in a small research project which is looking interesting, part of it requires gathering the perspective of educators from creative discsiplines. Can you help?

'Creative disciplines education is characterized by an experiential, project based learning environment, regular peer review and frequently led by lecturers who are also practitioners. In contrast, teaching entrepreneurship in business schools has been criticised for its traditional lecture and text book based delivery, as well as issues on the assessment of ideas within an academic framework. The aim of this research is to explore how creative disciplines education is taught, delivered and assessed, and how this might inform the development of enterprise education UK.'

Are you an educator in *any* creative discipline? If so I would be very grateful if you could complete this survey on how you assess ideas:

Creative Educators Assessment Survey!

It should only take about 5 to 10 mins and would contribute significantly to this emmerging field.

Following the development of the exercise, academic papers may be prepared for presentation at an academic conference (or for publication in an academic journal which uses this survey data as material). Institution details and names of individuals will be kept confidential. If the results are used for other purposes you will be consulted.

Many Thanks

Charlotte

Creative Enterprise 2008 Presentations and speaker info all online

Had all the stuff from the Creative Enterprise 2008 conference through yesterday, which has been neatly packaged into a press release and a section on our Media Depts - website with all the speaker presentations and biog details. According to the press release here's what I said at the time with regard to the relationship between schools of Art and Design and Business schools in terms of delevering enterprise education:

"We had some interesting comments about collaborations between Art, Media and Design faculties and business schools which suggested some tensions, however the conference highlighted how, at least two institutions had navigated this and benefited. What is clear however is that the pros and cons of such collaborations are somewhat uncharted."

The full press release can be found here and all the speaker details, presnetations and wotnot can be found here