Poster competition follow-up

There's no feedback on the OU poster competition. I knew I couldn't present but expected to be able to show the poster, share information and get feedback. Since I’d gone to the trouble of creating a poster before I knew of clashing dates, I was a tad peeved to have put in all the effort to then get told that if I couldn't present, there was no need to put the poster up. I'd sent my apologies, with explanation, but got this reply.

"It is not going to be possible for your poster to take part in the poster competition as you do need to be present with it. There is therefore no need to drop off your poster.
Should you decide that you do wish to take part in the poster competition after all we look forward to seeing you by 9.45 am"

No way was I going to take part in 'playing posters' at the expense of losing good contacts. Although, few things would keep me away, one would be access, and I had an opportunity too good to miss.

My director protested to the person who 'organises' the competition, and I was allowed to get a colleague to put the poster up. As a consequence I also learnt that the competition is marked in two halves, 50% for the poster and 50% for the presentation.

However, there's no feedback. No one knows how many marks are allocated to whom for what. No-one can tell me who won, or what topics won, except by word of mouth that science posters won again. It doesn't seem worth the effort.

But I did come second in the on-line competition, so I must have been doing something right. :)

Poster competition

There is a research poster competition, including a web competition so I've uploaded my poster there. If you can log in to the OU site, do look here and vote for a poster (preferably mine). And details of the competition are here.

Voting will open at 9 am, Friday 29 May and will close at 12 pm, Thursday 4 June. You can only vote once and you can't change your vote.

The poster competition is on Friday 5 June, which is a bit of a bother because that afternoon I have to be in London for something more important than playing with posters. After all my effort to get the photos edited right, I'll not be in the room to explain my research to the poster judges. Mind you, it's a Friday, so I doubt there'll be anyone else on campus to come and see the posters any how.

Poster competition

Yesterday the OU research students had a competition to assess the best posters on research. Six of us in the OUBS submitted something, and two of us won, which was nice. One was a blood and gore depiction of the ethics of advertising - the author demonstrated his advertising skill, and deserved to win. The other on acculturation and branding struck the judges because of the impact of its branding logo that immediately indicated what the research was about.

The training had suggested that less is more, to keep it simple, but a lot of those that won seemed to have heaps of small writing, and even included references, which to me is more what you want in a report than in a poster. One particularly striking poster didn't win, which was a shame. Perhaps, it had the same problem that mine had; insufficient methodological detail.

One of the judges afterwards gave me individual feedback. I needed to indicate my hypothesis and show that I'd done a preliminary case study with some quotes from it. She said it was all in my head, but not on my poster. So I'd better redesign it for the OUBS research week at the end of June.

Management of External Consultants in the Public Sector

What? Consultancy is a growing industry, and its biggest UK market is the public sector. This brings issues of:

• project iteration processes,
• culture and roles of various parties,
• motivations that vary with roles,
• risk aversion,
• separate departments’ resources & experience, and
• good or adverse media.

Why? Government receives variable value from consultancy projects

Research question: How does the public sector manage external consultants?

Preliminary findings: a chain of management exists with official processes such as reviews and reports, but with some missing or weakened links of accountability, e.g. when the consultant doesn’t have to work with the contracting official. See diagram.

Future research: How can improvements in management in the public sector reap value from suppliers?

This is what I am putting together for a poster for a competition for research students. My aim however is also to address public sector workers who might use consultants and could offer me access for my research. So:

1. Does this content work?
2. Some people don't like diagrams, so perhaps I should take it out. What do you think of the diagram?