So that was our little website

I think it was pretty interesting try to have our Class Blog, during the third semester of our master. It was really nice to hear different news and stories from many different places and situations, away from our original Aalborg.

Hardly anyone will write again an this website. This site will remain as part of our story and master studies. Soon (hopefully) we will all have graduated, with different specialties and very different futures, but all with a little common past at Fibigerstræde 4.

The Creative Class; in USA, Europe, Denmark, Spain and Aalborg.

Richard Florida published “The Rise of the Creative Class” (2002), presenting an index of creativity for the American cities, this is formed by the 3 T’s -Tolerance, Technology and Talent-. Florida argued that economic growth and innovation are intimately related (related does not imply causality) to the “creative class”. This class is composed of the people who are paid to use their head to create (engineers, musicians, professors, architects, doctors, MIKE’s, etc.) For all his work he got many praises and many critics. In “The Flight of the Creative Class” (2005), he defends himself from the critics, and talks a little bit like what I commented about Friedman “The World is Flat” style. I have not finnished his the second book yet. I like some of his arguments, but sometimes I feel he’s just looking for a bestseller (which he got).

Like him or not, you might find very interesting a report called “The geography of the Danish Creative Class”, a research published last year by Kristina V. Andersen and Mark Lorenzen. In this article they rank the Danish cities according to their creativity and the 3 T’s (following R. Florida idea). With out many surprises they conclude that “the Copenhagen area, especially the area north and north-west of Copenhagen, has very high presence of the creative class, and Copenhagen city itself is rising. The Roskilde area has a high localization of the creative class, as have Aarhus, Odense and Aalborg.” I think is worthy to have a look at the article. Aalborg city needs to work hard in order to obtain the creative class and creative capital. It’s important to remember as you know, that in the European context, Denmark as a “creative” country is doing pretty good. You can see this from the report “Europe in the Creative Age” (2004), in which Florida participated (although I think the report has some flaws).

Right now, for my class with Dr. Shapira, I’m elaborating a simple index of the Creative Class in Spain. If you’re interested to see the results just contact me.

TA. Teaching Assistant.

One of the good things about coming here to Georgia Tech (perhaps a future MIKE student will be considering coming here), is that they have gave me the opportunity to be a Teaching Assistant, or TA (that is how they call it)
It's in one class called Science, Technology and Human Values, it mixes science, religion, and philosophy "examingin science and technology in a broader social context". It's kind of a mandatory class, and most of the people are engineers in the third year of their undergrad. The class holds almost 200 people, they have 6 TA's. Professor Klein teaches Monday and Wednesday, and Friday, the class is divided in smaller clasrooms of 3o something. The TA's fully teach this class.
Actually, today is Friday, and I will have to teach it. I need to grade papers and quizzes they make every other week. It is a very interesting thing, because the students they reallly look to you as their professor. It's a strange feeling because you're still a student. You know exactly how they feel. I guess once that you are a professor for many years you forget about the feelings of student life, but for me now is just the same!
So I am suppossed to work about 10 hours a week, and hey, they even pay me!. Which it comes at handy for paying for the expensive rent in Atlanta. I am very greatful to Georgia Tech for having gave me this opportunity.

Today's quote.

“That is why I insist that wealth in the age of flatness will increasingly gravitate to those countries who get three basic things right: the infrastructure to connect as efficiently and speedily as possible with the flat world platform, the right education programs and knowledge skills to empower more of their people to innovate and do value-added work on that platform, and finally, the right governance - that is, the right tax policies, the right investment and trade laws, the right support for research, the right intellectual property laws, and, most of all, the right inspirational leadership – to enhance and manage the flow with the flat world” pag. 328-9, The World is Flat. (Thomas L. Friedman, 2006)

This is a book, that I recomend to you all. It's one reading I have to do for one of my classes. I had to do a paper for some policy recommendations for Atlanta (Kommune) based on this book.

Of course I go by bike!

I am living 15 minutes walking to the University. Many people walk, but having lived in Denmark, I had to get a bike! There are not many people coming by bike, they come by public transportation, live on campus, or come by car. Here in the right, is a picture of the street I need to go every day. The fence at the left is part of the University. My apartment complex is somewhere behind the big skyscraper (312 meters).

Georgia Tech is somewhat similar to University of Aalborg, is a technical school, and around the same percentage of students are in engineering degrees. I am supposed to take classes around the subjects of Science and Technology, Innovation. There are many options to choose, and I enrolled in 4 classes. Our program is under the Public Policy department/school, instead of the Economics as is in Aalborg. So they offer many interesting classes about Public Policy. The classes that I took are: Science, Technology and Public Policy; Technology, Innovation & Policy; Public Policy Analysis, and finally Economics of Innovation. The classes here are interesting, and somewhat different from Aalborg (I am not saying that the classes in Aalborg are not interesting!).

In the class of Economics of Innovation, we are addressing the question, “The relationship between Innovation and Economic Growth”. The teacher is from Spain (like me!). There are 12 people in class, many of them PhD students, (as we can mix here in this school). There are only 2 Americans, 6 East Asians, and the rest from other places. Anyways, we are looking at different economic approaches, Classical, Neo-classical (formulas, models, etc…), and today we went over the Evolutionary approach. It really surprised that the people in class were really unrelated with these theories! They were all very interested. The teacher asked some questions, and for the first time in that class, I felt in a very good position (probably the best). I am very grateful to have attended at Aalborg, which has given me a very good perspective of economics, and not only the mainstream models.

In the next classes we are going to look also at the National Systems of Innovation approach. One lecture in the chapter is from Lundvall, how cool, right! Yesterday in another class, we quickly looked at an article from Bjorn Johnson about institutions.

I remember Ana Luiza (another student at Aalborg) told me that our School was much respected in many places. Now I can see that a lot.

Why Georgia Tech students cryed this last weekend? Georgia Tech lost against the University of Notre-Dame 14-10.

First day of classes for some of us.

I arrived in Atlanta last Thurday. The traffic and the heat of the city were the first things that impacted me. The campus of Georgia Tech (Georgia Institute of Technology) is amazing. This University is part of the public system of the universities of the State of Georgia and it was stablished at 1885. Some aprox. figures of the University: 15.000 students . The 3/4 of the students are engineers. 76% are white Americans, 6% black, 5% hispanic. At the graduate level (masters), there are a great number of Chinese and Indian students. There is about a 20% of foreign students, specially concentrated in the Masters level.

I got all this numbers in the initial orientation at the Public Policy building. In the meeting there were Master students and several PhD students. There was around around 30 people. The teachers seemed nice, and the students kind of nervous. There were different nationalities.

I am visiting Georgia Tech under the PRIME (Policies of Research and Innovation in the Move towards the European Research Area) program. My school, Aalborg University and Georgia Tech, are part of this network. There are also a dozen of European Universities. Here is a link of the PRIME program at my home University, which describes my classes. I am specializing in Science and Technology. However I am also interested in other fields.

Here is the building of Public Policy where my classes are held. It as an old building, but inside is all high tech and restored. It is very nice. The School of Public Policy, has a few specializations. It is very nice that they are open to share knowledge with European Universities. The University is already ranked as one of the best Universities in the USA. Perhaps between the top 50, which is amazing, considering that there is around 3.500 university-level centers in this country.

This Monday August 20, was my first day of class. As you know, the American system is very open to enroll in classes, in my case as a visitor I have even more freedom to enroll in whatever I want. I just need to take 4 classes. I will tell you more about them, and what interesting things I find. I will try to compare it to Aalborg.

I wonder how the classmates from last year are doing. I think all of us are having new adventures, some of them in far places. Some of them are working in internships, and others are taking further classes at Aalborg. I hope we can all share some stories here.