Official LSE IS Alumni Network Formed

The new and official LSE Information Systems Alumni Network has been formed. If you are a former ADMIS, ISOR or PhD student from the IS Group/Department (whichever it was when you attended LSE :)), then hop on over to join our new group on facebook. If you don't have a facebook account, then you probably regret studying IS already :).

The group will make its new home on facebook until we can build it a nicer new home at a suitable address on Internet Boulevard. Whether it will be on this domain (WWW.LSEADMIS.INFO) or as part of the LSE domain (WWW.LSE.AC.UK) or a 3rd domain remains to be seen. Either way, it will surely get a link from here when the time comes. For now:

JOIN THE INFORMATION SYSTEMS ALUMNI GROUP!!!

Stay tuned for updates regarding the alumni group.

Kenneth Rohde
Chair
IS Alumni Network

ADMIS is officially over

I handed in my dissertation on Friday around 2pm and without noticing it, that was actually the last piece I had to submit for the ADMIS qualification requirements. That was it - I am done. Wait a minute? I AM DONE! It's FINISHED, no more ADMIS. OMG I never thought it would go this quick. My goodness has time gone by quickly. 11 months have passed since I arrived in the UK last year at the end of September. Friday I was done. What a feeling.

If anyone wishes to continue this blog for the next batch of student on ADMIS please send me an email (see Contact the editors) and I will be more than happy to discuss it.

If you want to read my is dissertation it is available for download here.
All Rights Reserved (C) 2007 - Kenneth Rohde

I have a few ideas in mind how this blog can serve as the platform for announcements to the wider ADMIS community even in the future, but since I have just started work, the time I can afford to spend on the blog will be limited and posting from now, will probably be weekly at best.

Take care everyone!

Dissertation Word Limit

In a recent email to ADMIS students from our course secretary, it was specified that the word limit is only 5% for the dissertation. In the student handbook and on WebCT, a general 10% margin is listed. I emailed Melissa to receive clarification as to which one is correct:

Hi Kenneth,
For dissertations there is a 10% margin.

Regards,
Melissa

Your word count can therefore swing between 9000 and 11000. If you go over/under your grade may suffer.

Plagiarism in ADMIS – all rumour

I recently heard of a rumour about students who had been caught plagiarising in the ADMIS programme. Apparently 35 students had been caught and as soon as I heard the figure I was nothing but sceptical. 35 students out of 150 represents nearly a quarter of the student body and this could simply not hold any truth. Fortunately it doesn't.

After emailing our course administrator with the figures and seeking a clarification, it was quickly dismissed that this number is anywhere reality.

Hi Kenneth,
I'm afraid that it's just a rumour. That figure sounds possible for the whole school, including undergrads and PhDs, but even this is unlikely. I'm responsible for undergrad assessment offences in the school and I don't remember any plagiarism cases this year.

So there you have it from an official source.

Tell your friends who may try to scare you in the midst of handing in your dissertation that as long as they reference properly, there have little to fear. Including the fear that they may try to instill in you.

Good luck with your dissertations. The deadline is coming soon.

A legitimate reason for depression: London's weather

The weather in London has over the past two weeks been absolutely nothing but horrible. It doesn't matter which weather forecast source you pick (here, here or here), they are all telling the same grey and rainy story.

If we allow ourselves to be optimistic just for a little bit, then the same sources seem to agree that there is sun to be had in the coming days.

I cannot wait to finish the dissertation and to get away from this miserable weather. Sitting indoors for several hours a day writing on my dissertation is one thing. But when I also have to look outside at a grey sky, rain clouds and their small droplets of rain on my window, it cannot but put my mood in a different league.

Fingers crossed the coming days will bring a bit of sun to finish the dissertation with more enthusiasm than the weather currently affords us.

Mudslinger - not your average pig...

Check out Mudslinger who can do more than just end up as a pork steak:

Getting on with the ADMIS dissertation

In case you have not taken a look at a calendar or ADMIS course requirements recently, you should know that there is an assignment due soon. It's called "the dissertation" and it is a fairly important part of your degree. In fact, if you fail to hand it in, you might get the same result.

For those of us, who have had a look at the calendar recently, or perhaps constantly over the past few weeks, we are all getting rather stressed with handing in this assignment. You will too if you didn't know it was due soon.

Of the students in ADMIS I have spoken to so far, few of them are at their most positive stage in life. Some claim they are getting depressed and don't feel like they will be able to finish. Others are nearly finished but aren't happy with their work. I fit into a 3^rd category.

When you think about it, it will be hard to fail the dissertation. It will also be very hard to get distinction. As we all know, unless we get distinction in the dissertation, we can forget about being awarded distinction for the overall course. The dissertation sets the bar and everything else is support. Support alone won't do it – it's all down to the dissertation.

We can either cry about that and call all of our friends to say how $hi££y life is, or we can accept the challenge and just get on with it. The category I fit into is of the latter kind.

Unlike others I really can't get to the stage where my dissertation is affecting my emotions and mood excessively. Sure I'm stressed and sure I'm trying to hand in a dissertation that will get me a distinction, but as Benjamin Disraeli said: "The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes."

So as Nike has so famously put it, just do it. Get on with the dissertation and do some writing. I found that the easiest place to start was the research methodology chapter where everything I wrote doesn't concern my findings, literature review or analysis at all. I merely refer to them but they have less influence.

The dissertation is not impossible to write. It is hard but given that you have passed the exams – and you know that they were tough – then you must also have or build the confidence to know that you can succeed at this assignment too.

If anyone should be in doubt, the deadline is 31 August. That leaves exactly: 2007-8-31 17:00:00 GMT+00:00!

Good luck...

Your file cannot be read: Everyone’s nightmare

I thought I was going to go mad just a few minutes ago.

I have been in the library since noon working on my dissertation. I've learnt (the hard way) to save a file multiple times as I'm working on it even as a new file name e.g. Dissertation v 1.2, Dissertation v 1.3 etc.. Today however as I was restarting due to the lovely windows updates, I tried reopening my most recent version only to get the error prompt that everyone wishes didn't exist.

"You file is corrupt and cannot be read. Try opening the file using the 'Open and Recover' mode or 'Recover text from any file'"

As I tried the first option my file still couldn't be opened still due to some file error. In the recover text from any file mode, I was presented with a document, but the document was presented in "development mode" as I call it, because it opens the document as if it was a text document. If you have ever seen a word document opened in "development mode" there is little formatting left and the endnote references are all a big chunk of code that nobody but the guy who wrote the code (ie your computer) could possibly understand.

I finally managed to get a working version of the file by running it through the online file converter ZamZar. Luckily it supports the new Word file type DOCX from the Office 2007 Suite. Simply upload the file and ask it to convert it to an older version of word, ie from DOCX to DOC.

The point I'm trying to make is save often and save as different versions as you are writing that dissertation. Also keep backing up your files and use the space from your email provider (I hear Yahoo has announced it doesn't have a storage limit anymore). Just add a draft with an attachment so you always have the latest copy available in case your files are corrupted, your laptop crashes or is stolen.

An excellent backup program is Mozy which I have previously highlighted and recommended.

Otherwise if you believe that you are some divine human that has nothing to fear then by all means don't use any backup service but I don't want to be the guy who said "I told you so"

Clever people backup and use file versioning.

Grade Distribution

The ADMIS survey to collect marks is now closed.

This collected responses (55 in total) have now been reviewed and the responses are available for download here.

If you know your way around Excel you can look into the difference in performance between the answers provided by males or females. Who performs better?

As can be seen from the graph, the distribution is "normal" and the distribution is a typical bell curve.

Points to note:

• No marks below 50% reported (A mark below 50% is a fail). This is probably unlike the official results which would include some failures.
  
• No grades below 60% reported for IS471 -- easy Merit :)
  
• Total number of responses: 55 (F: 16; M: 22; X: 17)

(Note: When the survey was launched initially it did not include a gender related question. Replies to the survey before this question was added are marked as "X" under gender).

Backup Service (you need it more than you think)

In a time such as this where the information stored on our computers captures precious moments of our lives, the loss of a picture set or a document can be more than devastating.

Imagine your computer crashing the night before the deadline for handing in your dissertation! (God forbid!) You have a copy of the file but it was an old copy that you had emailed yourself at the beginning of the month. The latest version of your dissertation is no longer available and the perfect structure that you had worked so hard on is now lost - forever!

If you are like most people you "forget" to take regular backups. Backups are everyone's nightmare, until now.

I read a review of a handful of online backup services, and Mozy (for Win & Mac) was awarded as the best option because of its ease-of-use and price. I have now played around with it and I must say I like what it has to offer. You don't even have to think about encrypted file storage, encrypted transfers, or finding every single file that you need to back up because Mozy does it automatically. Just use some of the pre-configured data sets and it will take care of most of your files right out of the box. Besides it is free with a paid version available however, I doubt I will need all the extras that come with it. Even if I did want to get it, it only costs $4.95/month with discounts to be had on longer contracts.

Check out Mozy here, sign up, download, install and then choose your backup sets (like find all word, pdf, excel and powerpoint files and then back them up every week).

Click here to try out Mozy for yourself - Avoid the pain and start your backups now.