My Research Assistant and Thesis Babies
1. Sleepless nights
Both will give you a super hero-like resistance to fatigue that you would not have thought was previously possible.
2. Good organisation skills never go astray
There is little difference in the skills required to have 400+ journal articles filed with consistent naming conventions and getting to swimming lessons on time every week.
Posted in life, the universe and everything..., PhD
Tagged parent, parenthood, parenting, phd, pregnancy, pregnant, study, submission, thesis
#SMAANZ Conference Twitter feed
I have been both a Tweep and an attendee at the conference of the Sport Management Association of Australia and New Zealand (#SMAANZ) since 2007. I have been itching to have a go at combining the two after watching others tweeting from conferences. I had a bit of a go in 2009, but it was only @GeoffSchoenberg and I, so it was a bit lonely. This year there was a critical mass of tweeps in attendance.
Posted in learning, life, the universe and everything..., PhD
Tagged conference, SMAANZ, tweet up, Twitter
Having had three babies during my candidacy, I feel reasonably qualified to comment on the commonalities between confirmation, confinement and completion.
1. Everyone is asking you when it’s due
Have you submitted your thesis? Are you a doctor yet? Have you had those babies yet? Finishing a pregnancy is probably more obvious to spot, but don’t think I won’t be sharing either of these things with you. Repeatedly.
Posted in PhD
Tagged parent, parenthood, parenting, phd, pregnancy, pregnant, study, submission, thesis
This week saw the 10 year anniversary of the Opening Ceremony of the Sydney 200o Olympic Games. A commemorative ceremony was held at the Olympic Stadium. Volunteers were excited there was finally a (semi) valid reason to get their uniforms out of mothballs and don them once again. It’s no coincidence that Lord Coe and the London 2012 team are in Sydney, hoping to emulate the magic that the volunteers added to the games.
I was one of the 45,000-odd people who took some time off work and volunteered, carrying a placard in the opening and closing ceremonies and working with doping control during the Olympic and Paralympic Games. I knew it would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And it was. Continue reading
Build it and they will come? An analysis of the impact of the Australian Surf Life Saving Championships in Scarborough, Western Australia on sport development (a research summary*)
It is commonly believed that major sporting events should provide ongoing benefits, including increased participation in the sport and physical activity in general. This is becoming an increasingly important aspect of hosting a major sporting event and it is commonly recommended that event organisers consider how a major event can benefit the development of the sport. In terms of providing ongoing legacies, it is not a case of “build it [an event] and they [legacies] will come”; a conscious, sustained effort is required in order to create a legacy that will benefit sport. Continue reading
There’s a small event on at the moment. It may have just brushed the realms of your outermost consciousness. It’s the FIFA World Cup.
My PhD research is in the area of event legacy – the impact and change that events have. My specific area is in community sport/sport development – so in this current example, will Football in South Africa be played more? Have better coaches/officials? More members and supporters?
If you think of sport as a pyramid, there are us sporting try-hards at the bottom; those that do it for fun, fitness and friendship. The base of the pyramid is wide representing the large numbers of playing sport (and let’s not forget the coaches and officials and administrators) at this level. As you move up the pyramid, the level of performance gets higher and the number of people decreases. This is quite similar to organisational structures that show a CEO and executive at the top of the pyramid, middle management in the middle, then frontline staff and finally clients at the base. Contemporary management speak recommends that the pyramid be turned upside down (Bhote, 2002) so that the most important people are at the top. I think this applies to sport, and the Crawford Report seems to support this notion.
I recently read an article called Death to the Syllabus , which discusses syllabi that “… carefully lay out the rules for attendance, punctuality, extra credit, grades, and penalties for missing deadlines, as well as detailing writing assignment requirements…”. This was a very interesting article, because I find myself swaying between agreement and disagreement depending on the stage of the term and any specific experiences I might have had with a cohort. Continue reading
Posted in learning
These are my thoughts on sport management using the ADDIE model – there are some economies of scale gained from the sport marketing exercise I did earlier in the week. The Analyse phase in particular has a lot of similar material, but I have inclued here so this entry can be read independently of the Sport Marketing entry. The material I am using is from the College of Education, Idaho State University. Continue reading
These are my thoughts on sport marketing using the ADDIE model. The material I am using is from the College of Education, Idaho State University. Continue reading
