My upcoming faculty exchange to the Azores starts in April.

At UCT, not only was I able to meet with some of Mark Shuttleworth’s professors, but also ran a session of their Master’s degree seminar.  Most of the student projects were focused on adoption issues in South Africa.  I hope to do some future work with their team on open source adoption.

At Monash, I spent a month as a visiting researcher.  I was interested to learn that the organizational and social informatics group was not only going strong, but in fact had healthier student numbers than any other area of the IT school.  Their group was strong in health care, government, and community informatics.

I gave a talk on my open source deployment research in San Francisco (talk title:  “Open Source Deployment at the City and County of San Francisco:  From Cost Reduction to Rapid Innovation”).  Open Source (or öppen kod, as they say) attracted good interest, particularly with the eGovernment angle.  I also served as an external examiner on Ella Kolkowska’s licentiate thesis, which focused on a values-based approach to IS security.  As Örebro, along with many other European universities, makes the transition to a more American-style system of rewards based on publications, strategies for cracking the right journals were another hot topic.

I’ll miss having the intellectual stimulation of Karin, Ella, Fredrik, Johan P, Johan A, Kai, Nena, Hannu, and the entire group on the rest of our sabbatical world tour.  Thanks Örebro!

So far, I have four official university visits lined up:

• Swedish Business School, Örebro University, Sweden (6/09)
• Center for Organisational and Social Informatics, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia (11/09)
• Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Chile, Santiago (3/10)
• Department of Economics and Business, University of Azores, Ponta Delgada, Portugal (4-6/10)

I’m hoping to visit other Universities for seminars, long lunches, walks on the beach, etc.  If you’re interested in having me visit, or give a talk, check out my slightly cheesy looking brochure with a list of research interests and potential seminar topics.

At the University of the Azores, I will be a visiting lecturer in Innovation and Technology Management.  I’ll be teaching an MBA class during their third term (April-June 2010), meeting with students, and consulting on curriculum.

The Fulbright scholars program is the “flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government”, sending about 800 U.S. faculty and professionals abroad each year.  To fulfill my mission of “increasing mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries”, I am prepared to eat do whatever it takes to promote international harmony.