In Santa Barbara

I arrived in Santa Barbara yesterday for Fielding's winter session. After a good flight and bus trip, I am now setup in my room and preparing for the week to come.

This morning, I started by running around town. I ran this route. (Hold and drag the orange guy in top left corner on any point in the route to see what it looks like.)

There are quite some exciting meetings on the program here that I will attend. In addition to a number of meetings, there are informal network meetings, lunches with faculty, final oral reviews, and committee meetings worth attending.

Monday

On Monday, I will run the beach with Fred Steier, my mentor and dissertation chair to catch up and prepare for my committee meeting. In the evening, I have dinner with colleagues from my anchor group, a small band of fellow PhD students that I am part of since the start of the program.

Tuesday

On Tuesday, there is a meeting of the integral leadership panel. This is a group of scholars who work intensely with Ken Wilber's Integral Theory. The panelists are Anne Acosta, Clint Fuhs, Alexis Nicolaides, and Nancy Wallis. Jerry Snow will facilitate the meeting. I hope to learn how these people apply Wilber's thinking in their work, as it informs mine.

After the meeting, I have my first committee meeting. With Fred Steier as the chair, Frank Barrett and Jeremy Shapiro as the faculty readers, and Dan Maxwell as my student reader. I will engage in dialogue with these wise men about my dissertation concept paper, which I composed of the wiki blocks here on mindz.

The afternoon will be spend on an in-depth review of the dissertation process, so I get a good overview of what's to come in the last two years at Fielding.

Wednesday

Wednesday is composed of two nice workshops. One on Shakespeare and leadership, and the other on music, consciousness and society. In Fielding a lot of research is done on the convergence of the arts and sociology. These workshops bring together scholars and practitioners who engage in discussion and knowledge sharing around these fascinating topics.

In the evening, there is a reception for the founding of the CMM institute, which formalizes the legacy of Fielding Professor Emeritus Barnett Pearce, who with his colleagues, worked for almost 40 years as a researcher and practitioner in communication to create the tools and concepts of the Coordinated Management of Meaning. An approach to communication that looks at what communication does in addition to what it means.

Thursday

Thursday starts with a meeting of the ISAKO concentration. ISAKO is short for information society and knowledge organizations. A specialization that I have chosen to do as part of my PhD. The faculty and students interested in these topics get together to exchange knowledge and identify new developments worth researching.

The rest of the day is spent around CMM. Many people from the CMM network get together to celebrate Barnett and work on advancing the methodology in research and practice.

Friday

Friday continues the CMM event, which lasts two days.

Saturday

Saturday morning, I get together with four students and Barnett Pearce to discuss how we can use his method in our dissertations. After this meeting we will engage in a collaborative research module to learn more about the advanced application of CMM in research.

The afternoon is for a workshop with Jeremy Shapiro and Miguel Guillarte on reading philosophy, where we will look at postmodernism and Kant.

Saturday is also graduation day, and I look forward to seeing some of my colleagues receive their title.

Sunday

Packing and travel time.

To be continued… Sergej