faulker038

. We ( CESC ) organized a full-day dog-and-pony show for  the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency   ("Naturvårdsverket") recently. (It in fact happened the better part of two weeks ago but I've been too busy to write about it until now.) The Environmental Protection Agency were interested in CESC's activities and had gotten in touch with us and we welcomed them by putting together a one-day program for their visit (together with  OpenLab  who held a practical workshop about ideation). It was more specifically  their department for "analysis and research"  that came to visit as part of their internal "training/further education". The department for analysis and research " is responsible for maintaining an overview of the status of the environment and the progress being made in efforts relating to the environment. It is also responsible for coordinating environmental research and environmental monitoring. " The backbone of the activitie...

. One week ago my colleague, Maria Svedin, defended her ph.d. thesis, " Do excellent engineers approach their studies strategically?: A quantitative study of students' approaches to learning in computer science education " ( available here ). Maria was my next door neighbor until earlier this year when I moved from the sixth to the fifth floor . We are both at the same department (Media Technology and Interaction Design - MID ) but we do not belong to the same "team"( I belong to MID4Sustainability - MID4S ) and the reason I write about her thesis is because I was the chairman for the dissertation ceremony - for the first time in my life. Parts of the procedure of presenting/defending a ph.d. thesis is scripted and other parts are very free. It is specified that the faculty opponent should query and discuss the thesis with the respondent (the ph.d. student), but the actual contents of that discussion is naturally left open. Still, I was the guardian and the mast...

. I've changed my name. I've always only been "Daniel Pargman". It has not been a great source of concern for me, at least not for a couple of decades, but I did suffer some mild phantom pains during my childhood due to the fact that I didn't even have a measly second name (not to mention having a third). I was slightly jealous and it definitely felt like everybody else had at least two names. My brother had a children's book about "Tiger Truls" and he want my second name to be Truls when I was born - but my parents vetoed it. Truls is apparently an old viking name (harking back to the name of the god Thor). Partly to compensate for my own lack of additional names, my kids each have three names... So I applied to change my name on a whim and asked to add another name at the end of the summer. I can't really remember my train of thoughts but it had something to do with distinguishing myself from other Daniels and also about distinguishing myself...

. I have recently written about five papers I have submitted to the conference " Energy and Society " ( #1 ,  #2 ,  #3 ,  #4 ,  #5 ), but I in fact also submitted a  sixth  paper to the conference. This is the sixth  and last  paper submitted and this is also the one paper (abstract) I have written all by myself, even though it builds on the same project idea that  recently generated an abstract  that Jerry Määttä and me submitted to the academic track at the upcoming (August 2017) 75th World Science Fiction Convention. The paper that Jerry and me wrote (" Estranging Energy : Teaching Abstract Concepts through Making Strange ") is more theoretical and it discusses the "hows" and the "whys" of using images and metaphors to explain abstract concepts for teaching purposes. This paper instead cuts to the chase and presents and delves into the "hows" and the "whys" of the two metaphors in themselves , e.g. what  is  a...

. I should probably have written about our  Future of Media course  and this year's theme " The Future of Computer Games"/"Computer Games of the Future " some time ago. Our students were divided into project groups more than a month ago based on a  nifty if slightly complicated system  that takes students' preferences into account but that at the same time is not ruled by and can not (easily or at all) be "gamed" by them. Last week we had our "mid-crit", a practice we have adopted from architecture educations and where students pitch their ideas and get feedback about halfway into their project. Here are part of the instructions for the students: At the mid-crit, you should [...] present: - Your group's fundamental ideas, concepts, logic, business models, scenarios, vision etc. - Describe work you have done in the group to support your ideas, concepts, vision (etc.) in terms of reading literature, collecting materials (or planning to...

. I have recently written about four papers I have submitted to the conference " Energy and Society " ( #1 ,  #2 ,  #3 ,  #4 ), but I in fact also submitted a  fifth  paper to the conference. This paper is time-wise in-between  a journal paper we are already working on  (the first, relatively polished 10.000-word draft was submitted at the end of October) and a journal article we are planning to write for another upcoming special issue. The abstract below could almost be the overarching programmatic explanation that sets both of these two (and several future) articles into a larger "story arc" of planned articles on this topic. At the time that the conference in question will be held (April 2017), our first article will be finished and the first draft of the second article will have been written, so we would prefer just to bring these articles to the conference and hand them out rather than writing yet another, third paper. It is at this point not cle...

. I helped organize our first "Literary Salon 2.0" one week ago. It is not an activity at my job but rather something we do in our free/leisure time and that we plan to do once per month. There are four (or probably rather six) organizers and we hope to have around 15 participants/discussants at each such meetings. It's enough for each organizer to invite only one or two persons for the event to be full so don't be sorry if  you  haven't been invited ( I'm  sorry about it anyway). What you should do instead is organize your own literary salon. I'll tell you how we did it: I stated my interest in organizing a Literary Salon (2.0) on Facebook half a year ago. A few people expressed interest in helping out. We met over lunch and discussed what what we wanted to accomplish and how to go about to organize it. We wanted to have monthly meetings and planned for them to start in September. That didn't happen, we had our first meeting in November and will have ...

. I have recently written about three papers I submitted to the conference " Energy and Society " ( #1 ,  #2 , #3 ), but I in fact also submitted a  fourth  paper to the conference. This paper is the outcome of a process of repurposing and refocusing a previously presented conference paper for the purpose of broadening and deepening the reasoning in the paper and for extending it into a longer journal paper. Here's the background: The earlier work in question is my (2016) ICT4S best paper-nominee " Designing for sustainability : Breakthrough or suboptimisation? ". The previous paper was based on work by two former bachelor's students of mine and the case used in the paper builds on their work. As the work is now further developed, their contribution becomes a smaller and I instead have a new co-author, Oliver Bates . I have in fact already written a blog post about the curious way in which he was "recruited" as a co-author of this new, emerging ...

. This past week I went to a half-day event, the " Stockholm PhD. Student Dialogue on Sustainability " at the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE). I thought it was an event that SSE had organized all by themselves but it turned out that it was done in conjunction with my university (KTH) and it also turned out this was not the first but rather the fourth time such a dialogue was organized.  The actual reason I went was due to this year's theme and the (as it turned out) excellent speakers. The theme for the event was " Critical perspectives in sustainability research : The Sustainable Development Goals ". The event was opened up by Lars Strannegård, the SSE president, and that was a nice touch. He could only stay for a short while and the academic host of the event was Susanne Sweet who is an Associate Professor and the "platform leader" for MISUM (Mistra Center for Sustainable Markets). While it's always nice to listen to Susanne, the event for m...

. I recently wrote about two papers I submitted to the conference " Energy and Society " ( paper #1 ,  paper #2 ) but I in fact also submitted a  third  paper to the conference. This paper is an outcome of a research project  I have written about before  (a long time ago) on the blog, " Improved energy counseling and energy habits by Quantified Self Assisted Advisory ". Here's the background: we find that the Swedish municipal energy and climate advisors are asked to do a lot ("save Sweden", decrease carbon emissions") but that they are not allowed/encouraged to talk about many aspects of our energy-demanding lifestyle like our indirect use of energy (through the choices we make as to the food to eat, our consumption habits, our everyday and vacation travel habits etc.). This puts individual (idealistic) advisors in a difficult position and also decreases the possibilities of the advisors having a big impact on all (energy-demanding and climate-pr...

. We had the best event but the worst timing ever! I supervised five master's students who wrote their theses in the intersection of ICT and sustainability this past spring. Three out of five had a research project as their principal. That means the task they worked on for half a year originated in a KTH research project and that they got additional help (to varying degrees) not just from me as an advisor but also from the people who worked in the research project in question. Several students were delayed (one started late) and most presented their theses after rather then before the summer. My previous two blog posts are about the outcomes of two of these theses, e.g. two proposed paper that we have now submitted to the conference " Energy for Society " ( paper #1 , paper #2 ). It could very well be the case that at least one and perhaps in fact two additional paper might come out of the remaining three theses! Most of our students write their master's (as well a...

. I recently  wrote a blog post  about a paper (abstract) that I submitted to the conference " Energy for Society : 1st International Conference on Energy Research and Social Science".  Well, I submitted another abstract to the conference, " Using low-fi user-centered design methods to overcome barrier to adopting photovoltaics ", and it was written by Robin Chanapai and me. Here's the background: I was Robin's advisor when he wrote his master's thesis this past spring. Robin's thesis was presented only a month ago and it's called " Tearing down barriers of photovoltaics with usability design:  Winter is coming " (see the thesis abstract below). Robin wrote his thesis within the research project called " Holistic business models and ICT solutions for prosumers " and it involved researchers from Uppsala University and KTH Royal Institute of Technology as well as energy companies and the service design company Transformator. Som...