Blog - What am I doing?

New post!

Whoehoe, after lots of promises - yes, I will write an update - and lots of missed opportunities, finaly some time to update my blog!

Apparently my last update was halfway March, so lets pick it up from there...

Relatively fast after the last post Rosa and I went to Mexico for a few days (obviously everyone has read this or seen the pictures at http://rosageurtzen.waarbenjij.nu). Below are some pictures of the trip. We stayed in Cabo San Lucas (compare to Salou) and it was a lot of fun. Cabo was a bit overly touristic, so we made sure we traveled to other beaches / towns regularly. We did some great snorkling - never imagined that that could be fun, but it was. Actually, I should try scuba-diving sometime soon. Besides snorkling we did boating trips, had great food, and I did some surfing on small waves over big rocks - and some big waves over sand... Overall we had a great time!

On return obviously we went back to work again. Rosa her work is going well and she seems to be enjoying herself so that is great. My work is working out. I just submitted another paper to the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin - on the effects of similarity and familiarity on public compliance - and I hope that they will accept it for publication (it will take some time before I know). Besides that I am busy with a lot of statistics / mathematics courses, a bunch of analysis of my own studies, and 2 new studies which I hope to 'run' before flying back on the 31st of May. I am also writing an article for Psychological Science (admittedly, they dont know this yet :) ) about the extremely cool findings on contemporaneity: Basically your timing of activities plays a huge role in others perception of you.... So hopefully that works out.

Now, if only all of my analysis confirm my great theoretical ideas I might just have a nice Phd :) - this is obviously likely not to happen.

Besides all the work described above I also went to Atlanta (Georgia) last week to present some of my work on comparisons of nonparametric versus parametric methods for the analysis of multi-factorial designs (great sentence he). As you can image this is an extremely exciting topic and hence the venue was packed, the audience loved it, and I left with some kind of rock-star status.... Well actually, I was happy with the 70 people that showed up, the talk went well, I had some cool discussions afterwards, and people are using my little online tool to actually conduct the analysis I proposed so that was a succesfull event.

Now I am frantically trying to finish all the projects I started before its time to head back to the Netherlands. (And I have to make some time to show the country to the people visiting :) ). Both Rosa and I are up for some busy weeks, but I am looking forward to it.

I might give you an update before we get back to the Netherlands - if not, my apologies!

Cheers, (And see pictures!)

Atlanta:

Apologies..

Wow, that took a long time... I am sorry for not updating my status, not presenting my promised pictures, and not telling you all what I am up to lately. However, I am making it up right now!

Work

So, first an update on my work. Last time I wrote about persuasion profiling and the papers I submitted. Today I got word that both of the papers are accepted to the conference! That is great to hear since it means that people like the work we are doing, and it gives us (Dean Eckles and me) a chance to present the work to a large audience. Hence, I will be in Kopenhage in early June to talk about my persuasion profiling work.

Next to the acceptance of the papers, we also had the final presentations of two students groups I am coaching. Both research projects turned out really cool, and the presentations where great. It will take a while untill all the data of the two studies is analyzed and properly written up, but the initial analysis looked very promising. I am excited about finishing up these projects...

Also at work: Within Philips the persuasion work I am working on is getting more and more reckognition. Currently we are looking at opportunities to use some of the knowledge gained from the experiments to make the Philips health coaching program more effective. Most probably we will be running a trial which implements several of my ideas in a consumer product, so I am stocked that I am not just talking to academic people but that I can also have an impact on actual products.

Finally, for CHI2010 - for which I will be traveling to Atlanta in april - Clifford Nass and I wrote an article on the nonparametric analysis of mixed subject multi factorial designs (euhhh, thats a statistics thing). Since the method proposed in the paper is not generally available in all statistical software packages I created an online application to do the analysis: http://www.apistat.com/apps/nonparametric. I hope people will appreciate it, accept the proposed method, and that its use becomes widespread... Obviously, I think its a good idea :)

Play

As always, I am not just working but also having a good time here in California. (Some of you might be peeking at http://rosageurtzen.waarbenjij.nu for pictures and updates...). Since last time, we have done a bunch of cool things: 1st, we visited Napa and Sonoma - which are the most important areas for the Californian wine production. These areas are extremely beautifull, and the have nice wine :).

2nd, we visited the Chinese new year parade in San Francisco - which also gave Rosa a chance to purchase clothes. It was a fun day, and Rosa actually put some pictures of it up on her site (I wont..). Also, we celibrated birthdays - mine was about a week ago. It was a lot of fun, we had dinner with friends and Rosa and I threated ourselves to some good food :)

3rd (actually the 2nd activity was composed of multiple activities, so dont take the count to seriously...) we had a great movie / music night at Will and Alvin. These two live really close to us in Palo Alto and are good friends of Abe and Katy. Both of them play guitar/drums/piano etc. so it was cool to make some music together.

4th. Rosa and I visited Big Sur (See pictures below). Big sur is an insanely beautifull part of California, which you all should go and visit. We stayed at a really cool cabin at the Ocean, and had a number of hikes (walks red.). After the visit to Big Sur we went to Santa cruz to meet up with Abe, Katy, and a bunch of their friends who cycled over there (over 100k, and very hilly...). On Sunday we went to Cowells and I had lots of fun surfing the mellow wave there (no pictures - sorry).

What else? We / I have been going out for dinner, swimming, skateboarding, making music, traveling, sight seeing, and more.. so its all good. Also, Rosa and I will leave for Mexico for a few days next week (its spring break, and Rosa needs to get out of the country to change her Visum) so I am looking forward to a few days of rest after a period of hard work.

Pictures

Last but not least... have a look:

Quick update

Hi all,

After a long silence a quick update. I will try to post some pictures this weekend since I don't have any right here ritght now... But I will tell you about our adventures:

After the weekend Snowboarding (yes, I thought to pick it up where I left it) Rosa and I obviously went back to work. Rosa is getting along well with her extremely cool study comparing Dutch and American neanotologists! I myself have been very bussy: I replicated a study I did here last year (one involving mobile phones and people that think they are partnered to other people while in fact they are not), I started a new bookstore study (see the post way down with the video), I prepared a cool item ranking study, and I am writing two papers for the persuasive 2010 conference (http://www.persuasive2010.org/)

Both of the papers are joint work: One paper I am working on with Joyca en Shalu from Philips research. The paper is a descirption of a number of cool experiments we ran just before I left to the US. The other paper is a more theoretical paper Dean Eckles and I are working on. The paper is about persuasion profiling (see Deans blog post on the topic at: http://www.deaneckles.com/blog/146_using-social-networks-for-persuasion-profiling/. To boost the whole area of research we are also setting up http://www.persuasion-profiling.com although it will take a while before that one is up and running (no need to watch, its just an empty website at the moment). A nice vid to get a hang of it was made a few years ago by some people in BJ Fogg's persuasive technology lab:

After and in between all the hard work (really, 8.00 till 20.00 quite often...) Rosa and I did manage to enjoy California. Two weekends ago we explored the coastline together with Joris (a collegue from Philiips who just arrived to do some of his Phd work here at Stanford). We went up to Pebble Beach which is amazing (check back soon for the pictures!). Also, Rosa and I visited Katy's birthday party that weekend which caused me to be slightly hung over when exploring the coastline but that issue resolved itself in time....

Last weekend Rosa and I drove down to Santa Cruz where I was lucky enough to catch some surf. It is great to be able to snowboard and surf so close together - and actually both at amazing places. The swell was insane (some of you might have heard about mavericks (www.maverickssurf.com) which took place that same weekend) so the was where up high. It was a lot of fun. After enjoying the sun and the beach we were invited for diner at Katy's parents houser (they live in Santa Cruz) and it was fun. (Pictures coming...)

This week it has just been work. The persuasive technology conference deadline is tomorrow, next week Friday I have a deadline for an invited journal paper, and I am planning to start a study both this Monday as well as next Monday.... However, Sunday we might just be up in Kirkwood :)

The update

Wow, A long awaited update...

For everyone who is reading the comments by my in laws: Yes, I did not smoke since arriving in the US. I am still contemplating whether this improves the quality of life (it is said to lengthen it at least -- which of course is not necessarily a good thing) but it makes Rosa extremely happy, and due to a relatively large bet with Boudewijn (whom some of you might know) it also saves me a lot of money...

But, lets get to business. An update about my life here the last two weeks, and some pictures to make you jealous! Work is going well. I am running one cool study right now, will run another next week, preparing a lot of work with several student groups and I am doing some great statistics courses so I am happy. Cliff is very supportive and I feel I should mention his new admin Erina: she is great! So currently both Rosa and I work during the week and make long hours. We are both trying to get as much done as possible.

During the weekends however we enjoy California. Two weeks ago we visited Berkeley (another very good University). Berkeley is nicely located on the other side of the Bay and looks very cool. Actually, the town looks somewhat nicer than Palo Alto and seems more like a European "Student town". Check the pictures:

Berkeley University as seen from the air (Yes, I learned how to fly -- It actually is pretty easy once you get the hang of it)

Another proof of my flying skills - and more shots of Berkely University.

And this was the extremely cool view from the Berkely Marina (the harbour...) Yes, this is the San Francisco bay. On the other side one sees SF, and if you pay close attention you might even be able to spot the golden gate bridge. The sun made the view awesome.

After Berkeley etc. Katy and Abe took us to Kirkwood last weekend. So instead of Wavesurfing (which I will probably be doing Sunday) I ended up snowboarding in California. This is around 4 hour driving from here in the Sierra Nevada and the spot was great. Lots of freeriding and lots of snow! We even managed to confince Rosa to go up "the wall" and pass rocks, a forest, and some powder on the way down... Yes, snowboarding is indeed more fun when its not on the groomed slopes!

Some snowboard pictures:

Nice views - snow as its supposed to be.

A fish-eyed Rosa :)

Katy looking cute with helmet and gogles...

Yes sir, just straight down next to the tree on the left.

So, that was all for now! Hopefully we will have some surfing action next week, some updates on my projects, and perhaps some links to my articles... lets see what happens.

Cheers!

Maurits

Update - week 2 and 3 in the USA

Hi There,

Given that some people are already complaining about the update frequence of my blog I felt I needed to write another post. So here a small update on the work and pleasure in and around the Bay Area:

First of all, the weather is not really what its supposed to be. (See the youtube video below). It is pouring cats and dogs, and a lot of water :). Which means I get wet when cycling to work on my great "commuter" bike which has no fenders... It also means that there are a lot of thunderstorms, a crazy number of lightning strikes and thus the occasional power outage: Yesterday most of Stanford campus was powerless, internetless, and phoneless during the morning. This happened during a time I was supposed to have a video conference which people at Philips and all of this "viel in het water" to use a dutch expression. Literally and Figuurlijk.

However, during the previous weekend the weather was better, and Rosa and I decided to go to San Jose. San Jose is relatively near (its 30 minutes by train) and is, according to the lonely planet, one of the oldest cities on the west coast with numerous great old buildings and a huge old square with tons of character. I guess Europeans are spoiled (or maybe its just me) but the house Rosa and I live in is older than the oldest building we could find in the whole city. San Jose was slightly dissapointing. We did have great food and a nice walk, but I guess next time we will either head north again (SF) or make sure we get to the beach or the mountains. For those interested, a small impression of San Jose:

This was by the way the oldest building in town. Its descibed as an historical cathedral. It almost feels like the Notre-Dame....

Besides the trip to San Jose Rosa and I are having a lot of fun. Abe and Katie are still around which is cool because we get to hang out with them every now and then. On Sunday they took us to a pizza place, and I must say the Americans know how to make pizza's (If someone local tells you about the place to be...). Besides that I spend time with people in Cliffords Lab, and Rosa is happy at CAPE. Workwise I have been working on implementing my next study. The video below shows how its gonna look. Basically we are testing different representations of books in a realistic online book store. I created the store using Wordpress and wrote the taskbar (at the bottom of the screen) from scratch. This is a nice tool for doing all kinds of website evaluations so I am quite happy with the software which is also quite flexible.... However, we are still in the process of testing it before deployment next Monday so I hope it holds up.

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Besides implementing this study and getting ready to start I also started working with 2 student groups. One group I am coaching together with Dean Eckles. With both groups we are currently designing a new experiment around some important questions left unanswered in my previous work. I had great discussions with Clifford about these and the work is getting better and better. I do have some more deadlines coming up - I want to finish two papers for PERSUASIVE 2010, but tha will be dealt with next week. So, overall things are going well, and I am busy.

For those interested, next time I will post some of the papers I am working on / have worked on.

Cheers,

Maurits

Update - Even before the weekend

Hi there,

I am waiting for a meeting to start which I need before continueing, so I though to update my blog. I guess that makes you all happy :)

Well, let me tell you what I have been up to: On the 1st of January Rosa and I left for the US. We arrived in San Francisco in the end of the afternoon, took a shuttle bus, and ended up in our appartment in the center of Palo Alto later that day (check out some of the pictures below). The appartment is great - thanks to Kim Klyver who saved it for us. Although its not very big, we have a nice balcony, a nice view, a fully equiped kitchen, a gym, and a swimmingpool... hence, what more could you possible want? Rosa and I settled in, did groceries and tried to sleep our jet-lag off (Which miserably failed leading to both of us getting up around 6 in the morning and being tired around 21.00 the next day, which for those whoe know me is extremely exceptional...

But, after a weekend of looking around and getting used I started work. Monday I started a number of courses (I am taking a bayesian interference course, a statistical computations in R - a software package - course, and a theory of interference course) and I had a meeting with Dean Eckles whom I will be collaborating with quite a lot the coming months. Then, on Tuesday I managed to see everyone working in the lab, and I had a great talk with Clifford Nass (my professor) and hence got started.

Now, I had some left over work to do - I submitted 3 articles to the CHI2010 conference over the last 3 days.. So that took up some of my time. However, now I am ready to start the new work here. I am working with two groups of students, and with each of them I will be carrying out some experiments over the next 10 weeks (thats a quarter) so I am looking forward to that. I will share what we are doing, why, and what we are finding once I know what I am doing... I am also collaborating on an online project with Dean which I will be building over the next few days, so I have some coding to do...

Hence, workwis all is going well and I have a quick start. Rosa seems to enjoy working at CAPE to so that is great. I also managed to go swimming already, and enjoy our private gym so I might just come back a slim as I always was dispite the American food. And I might get tanned since the sun is shining :)

Ow, and we had a 4.2 Richter earthquake today... Nobody seemed to care but I must admit I was a bit suprised...

Now, check out the pictures, let me know how you are doing, and check back after the weekend when Rosa and I have visited SF and perhaps did some surfing...

Cheers!

for more pictures see: rosageurtzen.waarbenjij.nu

And in case you haven't tried it yet: apps.facebook.com/sixtunes!

Update

Sorry... It has been busy since I arrived with several deadlines for CHI and the start of a new COM268 course (more on that later). So for now check rosageurtzen.waarbenjij.nu for some pictures and check back here over the weekend for a full report...

Cheers!

Packing!

Hi All,

Tomorrow Rosa and I (Rosa might get a blog up and going, I will let you know when its there) will be flying out to San Francisco to work and live around Stanford for the next 5 months. I am looking forward to working with Clifford Nass and Dean Eckles and all the others once again. I will also be updating my blog a bit more regularly once I am there, just to keep the Dutch audience tuned in.

Rosa will be doing some cool research on the differences between Dutch and American Neonathologists - contact Rosa for in depth info :). I will be workin with Dean om some more persuasive technologies studies: We are interested in the stability of peoples persuasive strategy preferences over time, as well as the effect of meta-cognition / experience on the outcome of a persuasive request. All very exciting research:). I will also be working on some mixed modelling (stats) and I will follow a baysian statistics course (more stats) so I should be enjoying myself work wise.

I am looking forward to having a beer with Abe and Katie once again, but a lot of the others I used to hang out with have left (most of them back to Scandinavia). So Rosa and I have a chance to meet new people, see the West Coast, and enjoy work. Besides the Stanford work I will also try to get 6tunes up and running in the US, so sign up now before you are one in a million...

Cheers, I will let you know when we land.

Maurits

6tunes update

As some of you might know I am working on 6tunes: An application to share mixtapes of youtube video's with friends at Facebook. Although it has been posted here before, I am paying some more attention to it now because the user experience and design of 6tunes have fully been changed since last week (Check the screenshots!).

If you want, give it a try. If you like it, please invite your friends to give it a try to!

Get started with 6tunes by clicking on one of the following links:

• 6tunes.com - home page.
• 6tunes.com - web player (you will be asked to login to your facebook account).
• 6tunes on Facebook - use 6tunes embedded in your facebook page.

   

Update Kyoto

Hi there,

I am still at Social Intelligence Design, Kyoto. Today for lunch I had raw salmon, squid, shrimp, and rice - and a lot of other stuff I cannot name, neither in English nor in Dutch (let alone Japanese, that is extremely tough.) However, it is a lot of fun. We have exciting presentations by a number of gifted speakers. And, we had a great tour trough one of the temples here (there are thousands of them apparently) and it looked just like Japan does in the movies, but than in 3D. (At least I was told - those of you that know me know that I never see things in 3D. It still looked slightly different from the movies, even for me.). Today, before lunch we had a demo of Japanese dance, so besides work I am also exploring the country and culture.

I will give you another picture (google images), and start listening to the current speaker... Cheers!