Allgemein

Leadership

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The 99U Website is very inspiring. I watched the talk from Teresa Amabile Track Your Small Wins to Motivate Big Accomplishments about creativity and how to improve work. I wanted to read her book The Progress Principle and so one of my XMas presents in 2013 was her book. I could not let go reading it because it reminded me about my feelings and my every day events at work. Because it is of great value for me, I want all of you to read her book.

  • It helps to define good and bad leadership
  • It helps to become aware of good and bad events
  • It helps to better distinguish good and bad behavior
  • It helps to improve your (inner) work life and your skills
  • It helps to define yourself

She describes very profound the properties of a good and a bad work environment and the events, which boost your inner work life to the bright or the dark side.

For all of you, which are more comfortable watching videos, here is a awesome talk from Simon Sinek: Leadership Is Not a Rank, It’s a Decision. His talk is strongly related to the Progress Principle book Teresa wrote but from another perspective.

I hope you watch the videos and start to get curious about your work environment and your place in the food chain ;-)

A Paper Review

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The paper I was worried about suggesting good referees is now accepted with minor changes at the 1st try. It took 1 month an 10 days. This is my second accepted paper as main author  and the fastest review I have seen in the institute.

The referees comments are very positive and increase the quality of the manuscript and caused a positive mind set. I wonder if I should thank the referees and put there names on the paper. Ups Its a single-blind review process. So thank you, mysterious scientist.

Another interesting thing are the different reviewer comment styles. I only have a small sample set of two measurement points but it shows already an extreme gap. Some referees directly like what they see and only comment on major issues. Some referees are giving many very detailed hints.

Example
Referee #1: I recommend the paper for publication. END
Referee #2: <2 sections introduciton> <many hints> I recommend the paper for publication, with some changes.
Referee #3: What is this piece of crap
Referee #4: -no comment-  (?died during review?)

The example illustrates a 2:1 win, which would result in an accepted paper with some changes.

Hello World

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Hi, to all people out there. I am Alexander Vondrous and I like to share some experience and thoughts of my work life. Currently I am a PhD Student at the IAM (Institute of Applied Materials) of the KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) in Germany. I studied informatics, currently finishing my PhD and I am interested in parallel programming with MPI, OpenMP, OpenCL, Threading, …

This blog should help people solving problems and it should make fun. Mainly I want to share some experiences, which can be helpful and would be lost otherwise.

I wish you <Error No: 1054: Query: SELECT * FROM random_empty_phrases>

How to find reviewers for my paper?

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Today (some days ago) is a very good day because I am submitting another paper. This is a very good moment in a life of a scientist or phd student. All the scientific work , discussions, literature search and writing of the last view months, years or even decades is nearly done and condensed in a view pages. Now the human factors are introduced even more by choosing a journal, the editors from the board and suggesting peers to review your scientific work.

How to choose the right persons?

This is the last tricky part. It is tricky because the scientific world is small. You have to suggest peer reviewing scientists and to chose an editor. If they are to close and work in the same field at the nearly same topic, you are in a bad position (www.phdcomics.com). People to far away will not get the point and could underestimate or over estimate (which can backfire) your work.

One part of the answer for me is to choose peers, which I support with my work. The other part of the answer is to ask an experienced scientist. In my case I asked my supervisor. They can tell you some times which persons have a bad habit and which are nice.

Choose Wisely, Young Grasshopper