Twitter

Here is my article which was first published on Social Media Examiner:

Want to expand your Twitter business network? Looking for a way to get to know someone better before connecting with them outside of Twitter?

Twitter interviews are the answer. Twitter interviews are simply interviews where the conversation is carried out entirely in tweets. Here’s a few of the benefits of Twitter interviews:

• You learn more about the people you interview.
• You show your Twitter audience whom you are interested in connecting with.
• You give others the opportunity to share more about themselves.

Twitter interviews can be fun for everyone when you do them right.

Live Twitter Interviews

Jay Baer has been doing “live Twitter interviews (aka twitterviews), long before George Stephanopoulos popularized the concept by chatting with Senator John McCain in 140 character bursts.” Here is Jay Baer’s compilation of his Twitter interviews.

Want to learn how to do great live Twitter interviews? Here’s a 7-point checklist.

#1: Determine Reasons for the Twitter Interview

First, you need to have a clear understanding of why you are conducting your live Twitter interviews. This will help you choose the best people to interview and the right questions to ask to get the most out of your interviews. Here are some possible reasons:

• To provide valuable or unique insights to your Twitter audience
• To have a bit of fun and share it with others
• To network with others and get to know them more
• To help someone promote his or her latest book or services

#2: Make Pre-Interview Contact

You need to make sure the person you interview understands the reasons why you are conducting the live Twitter interview and agrees with this. If you want to provide valuable insights to your Twitter audience and your Twitter interviewee only promotes his or her services, the experience will not be a good one for anyone.

Send a pre-interview email outlining what to expect and how it will take place. Don’t assume everyone is as Twitter- or web-savvy as you are; they may appreciate the extra information you can give them.

#3: Decide on a Hashtag

Hashtags make it possible for everyone to follow the Twitter interview. So you’ll need to come up with an easy hashtag to use.

Jay Baer uses #twt20 for his Twitter 20 interview series and I use #ckinterview for my cross-cultural Twitter interview series.

You’ll want to let people know what your Twitter interview hashtag is so they can follow along or search for it after the event.

#4: TweetChat

Of course, you can simply post your tweets as you usually do, but this only gives you a limited view of the conversation. The Twitter monitoring tools you use to follow hashtags can also help you follow the Twitter interview.

I like using TweetChat to follow and tweet live Twitter interviews for a variety of reasons:

• It’s web-based, which means everyone can access it easily.
• It’s easy to sign in with your Twitter account.
• All you need to do is enter the hashtag you are using—without the “#.”
• With TweetChat you don’t need to add your hashtag each time you tweet. TweetChat does this automatically for you.
• You can use the reply button in TweetChat so others can see the question.
• You have a live stream of everyone using this hashtag.
• You see all of the live conversations, including any comments from your audience.

Simply “sign in with Twitter” and “enter hashtag to follow” in the top box.

#5: Decide Direction of the Interview

You’ll want to think about the number of questions you want to ask and the ideal average length of time for your Twitter interview.

As you can see, Jay sticks to 20 questions in his live Twitter 20 interviews and this takes about 90 minutes.

After trial and error I found my audience and interviewees enjoyed 30- to 45-minute interviews most with about 10 questions.

You’ll need to find the right fit for your audience.

You can also split your interview into two parts: a written interview in a blog post published before your live Twitter interview and an updated blog post with the transcription of the live interview.

#6: Come Up With Interview Questions

Do you want to adapt your questions to each interview? Or do you want a set of questions for all of the people you interview?

When you prepare your interview questions, try to make them suitable for your Twitter audience. There’s only so much you can do in 140 characters.

When your Twitter audience finds your questions fun or intriguing they will want to jump in and enter the discussion too.

#7: Advertise Your Twitter Interview

Let people know about your upcoming Twitter interview through your usual communication channels: your blog, newsletter, Facebook and LinkedIn updates and whatever relevant methods of communication you use offline.

Tweet about it prior to the live Twitter interview:

• The day before
• A couple of hours before
• Half an hour before
• A few minutes before

Find what works best for your audience.

Remember to let your Twitter followers know what you are doing during the live interview.

Keep the Conversation Going

Once your live Twitter interview is finished be sure to put up the transcript on your blog and share it on your social media platforms.

When you do a series of live Twitter interviews it’s easy to collate the different interviews and rebroadcast the information in different formats. As you can see at the beginning of this post, Jay made a presentation of his Twitter 20 interviews. I created separate blog posts for each of the 10 questions in my cross-cultural Twitter interviews.

If you think about how you’d like to continue the conversation before your live interview, you might find questions to ask to make it easy to do this.

Ask how you can help them connect with others and continue networking after the Twitter interview.

Above all, remember this is a networking exercise. Have fun and try to make it easy for everyone to jump in and follow the Twitter interview.

Are you ready to use Twitter interviews to develop your network on Twitter? Please share your comments below.

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

7 Steps to Successful Twitter Interviews

Twitter Interviews – #CKinterview

Today’s Cross-Cultural Interview is with Sean Oliver. Sean is the person behind the Twitter handle @SeanJamesOliver.

Sean Oliver is a Project Manager for Language & Culture Worldwide, a cross-cultural training and consulting firm, and translation service provider. He has traveled in Europe and Central/South America, and has lived in Chile and Costa Rica. He currently resides on the far north side of Chicago, in the Rogers Park neighborhood. He graduated Suma Cum Laude from Beloit College in Wisconsin in 2002 with a BA in Anthropology, and self-designed minor in Sex/Gender Studies.

This is a 2 part interview:

• Part 1 – The Blog Interview
• Part 2 – The Twitter Interview for 10 Cross-Cultural & International Questions

Sean Oliver – Part 1

Hi Sean, for those who don’t know you, can you please tell us something about yourself?

Sean Oliver: I grew up in Sandusky, Ohio. My parents were both college professors; my Dad is a Poli Sci PhD, and my Mom has two Masters’s Degrees, in Spanish and French. They’re both retired now. They took me and my one younger brother traveling a lot, all over the continental USA, and to Germany, Switzerland, France, Cuba, and other European countries when I was little.

When I was 14, we went to live in San Jose, Costa Rica for about 6 months. My brother and I attended school there. In high school I went to Italy with a class trip, which was pretty much an example of how not to travel, as our “adult” chaperones were drunk the whole time, while the students were forbidden from leaving the hotel. In college, I traveled on my own in Northern Chile, between Santiago and Iquique, then made my way up to Pisagua, where I worked an Archeological site in Pisagua on the coast in the Atacama desert.

After I graduated, I got a job as a “dig-bum” with Far Western Anthropological Research Group, based in Davis, California. I followed my then-girlfriend back to Chicago to try living in a big city, which I had never done. I worked in a restaurant for 6 months, after not having any luck with finding Archaeological work in Illinois, then went to work for Countrywide Home Loans for 4 ½ years. I worked as a math tutor when the housing market collapsed, and then I got hired on by LCW, who liked my varied work history, and my combined culture and business experience. I speak decent Spanish, though my trip to Chile in ’02 was definitely the pinnacle of my ability.

I lived in Humboldt Park in Chicago for 6 years, which used to be a largely Puerto Rican neighborhood, and is still the biggest concentration of Puerto Ricans in Chicago, but I don’t get speak Spanish much since I moved up North with my girlfriend. I still miss Humboldt Park though. It’s about an hour each way taking the L (train) and a bus or two, so I don’t get back there much.

I do have an affinity for Caribbean culture, particularly Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. I cook Caribbean-style food all the time. My favorite recipes are Arroz con Moros (Dominican style) and tostones with mojo criollo. I love Salsa, Bachata, and Reggaeton, although watching me Salsa usually inspires laughter.

How did you pick up your cross-cultural skills?

Sean Oliver: I’ve kind of been a 3rd culture-kid, in some respects, my whole life, though not in the traditional sense. No one in my hometown did any kind of traveling like my family did, and there wasn’t much exposure to non-English language.

My parents both grew up on farms, and were from extremely humble beginnings. There’s a picture of my Dad from the late 40’s where he and his sister are wearing overalls, straw hats, and no shoes; they weren’t in costume, that’s just how little money my grandparents had at the time. My Dad was a staunch conservative; he dropped out of college twice, and then went to Vietnam, and he returned to the US one of the most liberal people I’ve ever met, much to the chagrin of some of his former students. He served his last two years of military service in Bavaria, and made lots of friends that we ended up visiting.

My mom was the first in her family to go to college; her language skills still amaze me. So you have the rural grandparents, the ivory-tower parents, and then Sandusky, where I spent 18 years, was a relatively gritty, urban, rust-belt type of town, only an hour away from Cleveland, right on Lake Erie.

So before I even got to college, I was juggling 3 different cultures: I had to learn to be un-nerdy to avoid getting beaten up at school, to speak at home in a manner that was acceptable to my parents, and to show interest in church to make my Grandparents happy.

If you’re familiar with the DMIS model of Intercultural Sensitivity, I’ve had to be in the “Adaptation” stage for quite some time. (Knowing when to audit and alter my own speech and behavior in particular cultural context.)

How much of your cross-cultural experience is related to your professional experience? Is there a story behind your interest in international business?

Sean Oliver: When I worked for Countrywide, I remember being shocked at first by the diversity of the people I worked with. You would think that a financial services company wouldn’t be that diverse, in general, but even in the suburban offices I worked in before we moved to downtown Chicago, there were people of Chinese, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Guatemalan, Brazilian, Polish, Irish, Croatian, Filipino, African-American, German, Greek and Thai backgrounds. I was a processor, which meant I had to work on deals with all of the different salespeople.

I had a leg up on other processors, as I knew a little bit about the various cultures, and was able to work out the best ways to work with everyone as individuals. Some people needed very direct communication, some very indirect. Some people wanted to form relationships as a pretext for working together, some people just wanted to “get down to business.”

My Anthropology degree and personal background were a great jumping off point for working in such a multicultural environment. I actually kind of fell into business as a career. I got hired because I was smart and had great references, and then found I really enjoyed it.

Nobody in my family, or the people I grew up around expected me to go that route. It’s always exciting and fast-paced, and as it’s not what most of my training was in, there’s always new skills to learn. I love learning new things.

Can you tell us about your online presence?

Sean Oliver: So… I don’t have a blog. I used to use MySpace, but I think it’s been 6 months since I even looked at it. After all the work that went into the MySpace page, I haven’t had the desire to develop another profile on Facebook. And honestly, as far as a blog goes, my interests are varied to the point where I don’t think I could write about 1, or even 2 or 3 topics without getting bored with it.

I tend to get hyper-focused on one thing for a week or two, and then it’s onto the next thing. I’ve played the guitar since I was 12, I’m an avid bicyclist (although Chicago Winter is too much for me, though lots of people ride year-round), I love sports (especially American football), reading, cooking, politics, particle physics, zoology, silly video games, barbecuing, cooking, playing darts and pool, going out … I’m all over the place. I don’t think there’s a blog audience for people who want to hear about the evolution of offensive strategy in football, and then talk about gender roles across cultures. I could be wrong, I suppose.

I like Twitter because, to me anyways, it’s all about the content. I like that there’s really no profile, unlike Facebook/MySpace: you are what you post. That’s all. People that tweet nothing but ambiguous “inspirational” quotes, or the minutia of their daily lives, or constant self-promotion get un-followed pretty quickly.

I was reading the article, “How to Connect Globally with Social Media” that you collaborated on, and I definitely fall into that American archetype of being content-focused. Content, content, content. It’s such a neat tool to get on the same page as other professionals; I went to a roundtable discussion for language service providers and translators the other day, and we had all read the same articles. Guess how we connected to them all? Twitter.

I started my personal Twitter profile in August, and I started Language & Culture’s in October. I’m proud of the fact that I’ve pretty much grown them both organically, although there’s definitely plenty of room for growth and improvement.

I have a couple of lists I’m building here on this blog, and wonder if you have anything you would like to share.

Have you come across any cultural stereotypes that bother you, or you find inappropriate?

Sean Oliver: Is “all of them” a good answer?

Unfortunately, we need archetypes as people. There simply isn’t time to get to know everyone we interact with as individuals. Especially in a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic city like Chicago, and in international business, having some idea about how people will likely prefer to communicate, and about what to expect people to value gives you a huge advantage in negotiations and forming relationships.

However, letting those archetypes become ingrained in our heads as concrete stereotypes is hugely counter-productive. People, as individuals, can vary widely from the cultural “norms” of their particular society, and we should never make assumptions about people, only educated guesses.

Also, knowing something about people’s history, language, and material culture always provides a jump-off point for conversation. Particularly in the United States where a lot of people really don’t know anything about the world outside the US borders, and their attitudes tend to be stereotype-heavy, actually knowing something about different cultures can surprise and delight people you’re dealing with from those cultures.

I’m always saddened by the enduring stereotypes about African-Americans, Latinos, and gay people in the United States, particularly from members of other cultural minorities. I could list a few examples, but they’re really too numerous to mention.

Do you have a favorite movie that could help people understand cultural issues?

Sean Oliver: I would recommend: “Crash”, “Black Robe”, “Men with Guns”, ”The Mission”, “Mr. Baseball”, “Dances with Wolves”, “Lost in Translation”, and “Remember the Titans”.

Do you have a book you could recommend to help others improve their cultural insights?

Sean Oliver: “Culture Matters” The Peace Corps Cross-Cultural workbook, is excellent. If you’re a newbie to the whole cross-cultural field, or a long-time trainer or consultant, it’s a fantastic resource. Language & Culture’s founding partners, Randall Stieghorst and Monica Marcel met while they were Peace Corps volunteers in Latvia. It’s how they got the idea to start the cross-cultural training part piece of the business.

It’s slightly unrelated, but “In Search of Respect” by Philippe Bourgois, all about life in Spanish Harlem in the 1990s, written by an anthropologist living there, is a fantastic read, and really explores race and class in American in a way that’s not often dealt with honestly.

Is there anything else you would like to share?

Sean Oliver: I’d like to get better at Spanish, of course. I don’t really have the aptitude for language like my Mom, or like my boss Randy, who speaks 5 languages. I’m always jealous of that skill!

I suppose I’d like to start with the continents I haven’t been to: Asia and Africa. I’d kind of like to see Vietnam with my Dad, I think that would be incredible. It’s kind of a pipe-dream though. I’d love to get to South Africa for the World Cup this summer, but it’s probably too late to plan that.

Africa is definitely the continent I’m the least knowledgeable about. I think by and large, Americans have this stereotype of Africa as mono-cultural, but it’s really as varied and diverse as any other place on the planet, both culturally and ethnically. I’d like to see that for myself. I’ve been following a woman on Twitter ( @gaylepescud ) who is a volunteer in Ghana, and her experiences are a great window into that culture.

Sean, this was very insightful. Thank you for sharing so many tips in this portion of the interview already. I’m looking forward to hearing your answers to the 10 Cross-Cultural Questions on Twitter with you later today.

Sean Oliver- Part 2 – The Twitter Interview

This is an interview series of the people I recommend you follow on Twitter for the cross-cultural and international business insights in their tweets.

More Twitter Interviews

• Martin Lindeskog – @lyceum
• Rajeev Edmonds – @mintblogger
• Rossitza Ohridska-Olson – @culturalrealms
• Charmayne Paul – @psitutor
• Lucy Chatburn – @pocketcultures
• Doreen Iannuzzi – @DoreenatDMS
• Donna Jackson – @wisequeen
• Chris Cotter – @CotterHUE
• Jack Yan – @jackyan
• Silvia Cambié – @XCulture
• Bill Ward – @DR4WARD
• Thierry De Baillon – @t_de_baillon
• Seshu – @PicSeshu
• Neil Urquhart – @culturematters
• Klaus & Flavia Westerwelle – @transdomo
• Donagh Kiernan – @dkiernan
• Christian Hoeferle – @hoeferleconsult
• Caroline – @ohh_la_la
• Deborah Swallow – @DeborahSwallow
• Steve Roesler – @steveroesler
• Matthew Bennett – @matthewbennett

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

Twitter Interview With Sean Oliver

Twitter Interviews – #CKinterview

Today’s Cross-Cultural Interview is with Chris Cotter. You can also find him on Twitter: @CotterHUE.

The transcript of the Cross-Cultural Twitter Interview with @CotterHUE is now below.

This is a 2 part interview:

• Part 1 – The Blog Interview
• Part 2 – The Twitter Interview for 10 Cross-Cultural & International Questions

Chris Cotter – Part 1

Here is the first part of the interview with Chris.

Chris, For those who don’t know you, can you please tell us something about yourself?

Chris Cotter: Hello everyone. My name is Chris Cotter. I’m originally from Chicago, but currently live in Japan. I’ve been here for twelve years, primarily in the language industry. At present, I develop curriculum and courses with a private language company for adult Japanese students, which requires marketing research to provide the greatest impact in learning and student satisfaction. I also institute improved service programs for students based on their needs, such as one-to-one feedback sessions, new courses, and . And like many people in the language industry, I hold a variety of part-time teaching positions that keep me in the classroom.

And then, there are a few websites that I run:

• Heads Up English for real, relevant materials based on current events.
• The Flashcard Hub for flashcards and vocabulary.

In short, I’m quite busy. However, the assistance I provide to adult learners is very rewarding. It’s a good busy.

How did you pick up your cross-cultural skills?

Chris Cotter: I picked up my cross-cultural skills through a lot of trial and error. I initially lived in a rural part of Japan, which required me to observe and understand other approaches to communication. A direct, American approach just didn’t work there, nor elsewhere in Japan.

In addition, I read quite a lot about the country’s culture and history before I came here. And although a lot of the information was over-simplified or outdated, it still provided a good foundation to make sense of daily life here.

How do you use your cross-cultural skills in your business?

Chris Cotter: I work in middle management, which means funneling a lot of information from Japanese upper-management to others. Japanese management continues to take a top-down approach. In addition, managers continue to incorrectly believe that they must be experts in their fields, always possessing the correct answer. Of course, this isn’t true at all companies, yet it remains the prevailing practice.

As a result, I must use my cross-cultural skills at my company to (sometimes) creatively work in ideas from others, as well as deliver company-wide practices in a palatable and effective form. A lot of egos must be considered, both above and below my position.

Can you tell us about your websites?

Chris Cotter: I began the two websites primarily because there were so many ideas that just simply couldn’t be worked into the curriculum. The sites served as another outlet for my creativity. At present there are more than 500 pages of material, all providing a variety of methods for language acquisition. The sites continue to grow each month, in terms of visitors and content, so that’s another positive.

I recently completed work on a teacher’s manual too, which I released as an ebook. It’s called Better Language Teaching. It contains the methodology I’ve used for successful classes and courses, from major corporations like Starbucks to individual, one-on-one lessons. I’m putting a site together for the book at the moment.

I’m building up a few resources here on this blog, and wonder if you have any insights to help me add to them.

Have you come across any cultural stereotypes that bother you?

Chris Cotter: Japan is a much more closed society. A significant number of people, even in Tokyo, have had little to no contact with non-Japanese people. Many others have only had superficial contact. All of this means that the average person has far too many stereotypical views. It takes patience and, for lack of a better word, education each time any American, Brit, or other person enters into a new business relationship or make friends.

On the other side, though, many non-Japanese who live here fail to become close friends with Japanese people. They don’t make the cross-cultural leap required. This is a problem equal to the Japanese one, because cultural understanding takes effort from both sides in any relationship.

Do you have a favorite show that could help people understand cultural issues?

Chris Cotter: Although the move is a bit old now, Mr. Baseball still remains very true of life here from a Westerner’s perspective. Tom Selleck plays a baseball player shipped to Japan, and he must learn all the customs and manners to eventually succeed here. However, the Japanese characters in the movie must also learn that alternatives exist to the Japanese way.

Lost in Translation is another good movie that shows the loneliness that quite a few people feel, although the message transcends Tokyo and can be applied to any large, foreign city in which one finds him/herself.

And finally… Is there anything else you would like to share?

Chris Cotter: As a final comment, it’s important to realize that the initial ideas and beliefs gained from your childhood in your home country continue to form the foundation of your thoughts. You may know the host country’s culture very well, it may heavily influence you, but those initial reactions and opinions remain. This means that there will be bouts of culture shock. There will be times when you simply cannot understand a decision or reaction. Yet this is all part of living abroad.

Chris, I really enjoy following your tweets for their cross-cultural insights. I can’t wait to see what answers you will give us when I put you on the hot seat for the 10 Cross-Cultural Questions on Twitter later today.

Chris Cotter – Part 2 – The Twitter Interview

This is an interview series of the people I recommend you follow on Twitter for the cross-cultural and international business insights in their tweets.

More Twitter Interviews

• Charmayne Paul – @psitutor
• Lucy Chatburn – @pocketcultures
• Doreen Iannuzzi – @DoreenatDMS
• Donna Jackson – @wisequeen
• Jack Yan – @jackyan
• Silvia Cambié – @XCulture
• Bill Ward – @DR4WARD
• Thierry De Baillon – @t_de_baillon
• Seshu – @PicSeshu
• Neil Urquhart – @culturematters
• Klaus & Flavia Westerwelle – @transdomo
• Donagh Kiernan – @dkiernan
• Christian Hoeferle – @hoeferleconsult
• Caroline – @ohh_la_la
• Deborah Swallow – @DeborahSwallow
• Steve Roesler – @steveroesler
• Matthew Bennett – @matthewbennett

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

Twitter Interview With Chris Cotter

Twitter Interviews – #CKinterview

Today’s Cross-Cultural Interview is with Jack Yan. You can also find him on Twitter: @jackyan.

Today I am happy to interview a long time Twitter friend from New Zealand, Jack Yan. Check him out on Twitter @jackyan and you’ll quickly see how busy Jack is online. I like following Jack on Twitter because he engages with interesting ideas.  He is always abreast of the latest trends… and it is very interesting to see these new trends through the eyes of someone with a culturally open mindset. Jack has diverse interests and runs:

1. A media company
2. A typeface company
3. A branding consultancy

These are not the only thing keeping Jack busy; he is also invested in his community and is now running for Mayor of Wellington.

Read what Jack has to say about his cultural skills and his wide international experience below. Stay tuned for the Twitter Interview later today where Jack with share his answers to the 10 culture questions. If you are not on Twitter then, don’t worry, this post will be updated shortly afterwards and you’ll be able to read the tweets here.

The transcript of the Cross-Cultural Twitter Interview with @jackyan is now below.

This is a 2 part interview:

• Part 1 – The Blog Interview to get to know Jack
• Part 2 – The Twitter Interview where Jack answers 10 Cross-Cultural & International Questions

Jack Yan – Part 1

Here is the first part of the interview with Jack.

Jack, For those who don’t know you, can you please tell us something about yourself?

Jack Yan: I was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to New Zealand just before my fourth birthday in 1976. I started my own company in 1987, doing really basic things like hand-lettering and proofreading. But it wasn’t really enough for me, so I kept growing the business. It is now Jack Yan & Associates, still a small company, but we have fingers in many pies. I do all the boring admin stuff, but occasionally can get to have some fun.

I have had stints in the US, France and Sweden that total to a couple of years.

I speak two dialects of Chinese. One is Cantonese, which is native to Hong Kong. The second is Taishanese, which is comprehensible to most Hong Kong people, but it is slightly different—for years, this was the language of most Chinatowns. English, I obviously speak. I also speak French, and I have a very basic grasp of Swedish and German (not enough to watch TV but enough to read the papers).

Strangely enough, other than my own culture, which I am very close to, I feel a great affinity with the Swedes. But I identify myself as a New Zealander when I travel, and it’s the culture that I can get most easily “in to”. Sometimes I feel I understand what it’s like to be a New Zealander more than some people who have been born here and have lived here all their lives, probably because I hold an idealized, romantic idea of the concept.

Immigrants who choose their nationality never take it for granted, which is something that anti-immigrant politicians fail to grasp consistently. They seem to have this adversarial image that immigrants come and change the cultural mix of their nation. This is a fallacy on quite a few levels. It (a) exposes their lack of confidence in the strength of their own nation; and (b) exposes their closed-mindedness, for anyone who has dealt with any immigrant knows the love that most of us have with our adopted nations. In fact, many go so far toward integration that they lose their original cultures, which has its down sides, too.

I happily say that my ethnicity is Chinese but I can’t claim Chinese nationality. The fact is I was born when Hong Kong was a British colony, and I grew up in New Zealand. I have two passports: a British one and a New Zealand one. So if I say I am ‘Chinese’, do people assume this to be my ethnicity or my nationality? It’s entirely dependent on the context.

I don’t subscribe to communist ideologies, which is probably not uncommon for descendants of Chinese who escaped the revolution in 1949, or chose to leave Red China in later years. I feel a cultural bond with all Chinese people individually, and if there were a sporting match between, say, someone from the People’s Republic of China and Japan, I would always cheer for the former.

However, that’s different from saying I fully understand the context in which they grew up between 1949 and today. And being a staunch anti-communist, both from upbringing and out of choice, would people automatically group me with members of the Communist Party if I said I am Chinese?

So if the question is about my nationality, then it is either British or New Zealand, and more often the latter. To any other question, I am Chinese.

To me, being Chinese today is being someone who appreciates our history, Confucian philosophy and the Republic as founded by Dr Sun Yat-sen. If China is to be united, it would be under these tenets. Yet I see so much divisiveness from my own people because of the rifts of the last century, in particular from communists themselves, when we have five millennia before that which unites us.

How did you pick up your cross-cultural skills?

Jack Yan: I was exposed to Anglo culture from a young age, living in a British colony. There were two Chinese-language TV channels, and two English-language ones. So learning English and being aware of a separate culture was normal in colonial Hong Kong. There was no “picking up”, at least not consciously, though I did grow up with the image (stereotype) of the mischievous white boy—that it was generally regarded among Chinese that whites were less well behaved, for example. I heard this when starting school in New Zealand and that I needed to be guarded against them. While the stereotype fitted a few members of my class, it certainly did not apply to the majority. Children, too, bear so few prejudices—the above was probably the only one I was exposed to—that bridging cultural gaps was effortless.

I was also fortunate that I attended a school that was multicultural. St Mark’s Church School, in Wellington, New Zealand—to which I maintain very close ties to this day—was where many diplomats and expatriates sent their children. It was just normal to have friends from Switzerland or the UK. My father worked for the local Grundig concessionaire so I knew what German was at age five and learned the months of the year. I was also given the choice to learn Japanese or French at age six—St Mark’s offered these as foreign languages—and my parents explained to me that being multilingual was an advantage in life.

In the mind of a six-year-old, I deemed Japanese to be an inferior form of Chinese (though my parents really pushed for me to learn Japanese so I could maintain my writing skills, since Japanese kanji is derived from Chinese), and insisted on French. It was odd reasoning at the time, but I don’t regret having made that choice, since in my lifetime I have been to France seven times and Japan once.

Perhaps since then, I have never found it that difficult to cross cultures. It was just normal. And, the anti-immigrant politicians will be shocked to hear, my appreciation of New Zealand culture remained intact.

How do you use your cross-cultural skills in your business?

Jack Yan: I confront it every day because I hear from people of all cultures. If I get an email from France, I might switch into French to respond to it. And many of my cousins live in the United States, so I always understood American culture. Schooling helped as well: St Mark’s purchased, being a private school, American textbooks, which we read in addition to those mandated by the New Zealand Government. However, my cross-cultural experience has not come from work. It has come from upbringing: I was already someone who crossed cultures easily by the time I began my work in 1987.

I will say that the advent of the internet and the World Wide Web was a great catalyst, however. I was already fascinated, around age nine or ten, by the telex, and how one could have conversations with someone on the other side of the world. Bulletin boards were the next step and I got in to using modems fairly early, inspired in part by movies like War Games and TV series like Whiz Kids. Bear in mind that online communications, then, were quite respectable, and there were no child predators or freaks like that.

When the internet and the web surfaced, I took to them immediately. It was like being the proverbial kid in the candy store. So technology helped fuel my desire to work internationally, and turned whatever I was doing into an inter¬national business, but I like to think that even if the internet did not exist, I would have found a means to go global. I never considered that I could function as a single-nation businessman, and maybe that’s in part due to New Zealand being a small country population-wise. My market was always going to be limited if I looked at only the domestic one.

Can you tell us about your blog?

Jack Yan: Actually, I was very late to blogging. My impression of blogging in, say, 2001, was that it was for amateurs who lacked the skills or resources to create a proper website. And since we had those resources, I took quite a snobbish view to blogs then.

I got in to blogging to support Beyond Branding, a book I co-authored with my colleagues at the Medinge Group. There was a belief (which I agree with) that the blog would be a way to show we believed in the principles of the book, which was about transparency and integrity. That was in 2003, but I was, at best, a once-a-quarter blogger. People like Johnnie Moore did the lion’s share of blog posts there, and it was only till 2005 that I got in to blogging regularly, partly to have my own space during a time when I had some negative employees at my company. It was a way to vent, and there was a lot to vent about when you have negative influences around you!

I started my own blog in January 2006, and was fairly prolific the first year, but I have become a weekly blogger in the last year or so. It was called The Persuader, not after The Hidden Persuaders, but The Persuaders TV show—the one you might know there as Amicalement Votre. It was, and probably still is, my favourite television series, and it was a cheeky homage to Roger Moore and Tony Curtis, but without the marijuana!

I initially met fellow bloggers and those who were interested in marketing, which was no surprise given Beyond Branding’s scope. It was always inter¬national, but there were a few posts, sometimes political, that were domestic. (If you read through, you’ll find that I have been interested in politics for a long time.)

However, I do not have a favourite blog post. Blogging is cathartic, and once I got what I needed to out of my system, I moved on.

I have a couple of lists I’m building here on this blog, and wonder if you have anything you would like to share.

I have a few lists, such as my blogroll, and I have kept links’ sections on our websites. We’ve even kept the links for the sites we agreed to exchange links with—even when they dishonoured their side of the bargain. (A few of those probably need to disappear.) Feel free to take what you need from our lists.

I’m building up a few resources here on this blog, and wonder if you have any insights to help me add to them.

Have you come across any cultural stereotypes that bother you?

Jack Yan: All the time. There is an idea that Chinese people in this country are not interested in politics. That is total BS. The under-representation is not to do with disinterest from my race, but more to do with discouragement. When I went to business school, people automatically asked if I was studying accounting. It was as if it was unacceptable for a Chinese man to study anything but at a business school. These assumptions hold back all but the most determined. We, like any race, can get dissuaded by societal expectations, and a few of us have to trail-blaze for the rest.

Another one that I find fascinating is that business people of colour aren’t supposed to promote themselves as much as whites. I encounter it here. There are people who are actually bothered by the amount of promotion I do for my company, even though it is no more and no less what someone in my position would do. Fortunately, there are fewer and fewer people who believe this is the case: it’s something that seems to be restricted to folks who are over a certain age. They seem to be offended that I have the same rights that anyone else does in speaking my mind.

The third cultural stereotype is that of the “second banana” oriental. Look at the media—shows like Flash Forward, for instance. John Cho is the willing sidekick to Joseph Fiennes. American media have failed to produce shows that have an oriental—an “Asian–American”—as the lead, other than the odd ones such as Martial Law, Vanishing Son and All American Girl. That’s three I can name in, ooh, forty years. I am sure that is hardly representative of the Asian–American population. And the Americans are not the only group.

If indeed we were in a colourblind society, the proportions would reflect the population. They do not. But when you have stereotypes like this, no wonder people get upset when their constructed worlds are shattered.

When I announced I would run for mayor, I had people ask me—including people I admire—‘Wouldn’t you rather run for council?’ In some cases, this question is warranted, because their motives are good: they want me to understand the inner workings of the council before I take on the top job. Never mind that some of the best mayors we have had in this city had zero council experience prior to their elections. I personally believe that anyone who has had their pulse on the city and understands interpersonal and interdepartmental dynamics will be able to fathom the workings of council very readily.

However, other people ask this question because of the “second-banana” principle: that they would rather see me as the sidekick. To those very few people, I hope they will change their views if Wellington chooses to elect its first non-white mayor. Even if it’s not me, and it’s someone else either at the 2010 election or later, it would destroy a few stereotypes.

Do you have a favorite show that could help people understand cultural issues?

Jack Yan: No one movie, but take a look at how one’s own culture is portrayed by foreigners and that might give you an insight on how your own culture unfairly portrays others. We talked about the second-banana idea above—no wonder Chinese people thought the world of Bruce Lee in The Green Hornet when prior to that, the most-seen Chinese character on American television was Hop Sing off Bonanza. But if you see how Anglo cultures are portrayed in, say, 1980s’ Hong Kong cinema—occasionally inaccurately, I might add—you might note that cultural misunderstandings flow both ways.

Do you have a book you could recommend to help others improve their cultural insights?

Jack Yan: Sicco van Gelder’s Global Brand Strategy is an excellent title that I would recommend, and it comes from first-hand experience in many cases. Sicco is one of the best thinkers in the business.

Thank you for sharing! This will help me to build those lists.

And finally… Is there anything else you would like to share?

Jack Yan: I think I’ve been pretty deep on my own background above, but I would love to perfect Swedish. I would also love to learn the native Māori language here in New Zealand. I have made some efforts in the case of the latter, since it is the national language of this country, but I have to say it is not easy, since the structure is very different to Chinese! But I feel a great deal of patriotism toward the Māori language and culture; the familial traditions of Māoridom are not dissimilar to the principles found in Confucianism. I also think it is ridiculous in a country where Māori is the official language that it does not appear on street signs or banknotes—something that I’ll use the mayoral platform to push for. Anyone who has been to Hong Kong or Canada knows that bilingual official documents are perfectly normal, and it has bothered me for some time that Māori appears only in limited places.

I would not mind returning to Sweden for a holiday, and French Polynesia draws me, too. Now there is one place which prides itself on its native languages alongside French. But these are places to which I would go to feel familiar with my surroundings. Last year, I went to India for the first time and loved the experience. I would not mind going somewhere where I have not been: parts of Africa and South America fascinate me.

Jack, it is great to know a bit more about you. And I’m really curious about the answers you will give us when I put you on the hot seat for the 10 Cross-Cultural Questions on Twitter later today.

Jack Yan – Part 2 – The Twitter Interview

This is an interview series of the people I recommend you follow on Twitter for the cross-cultural and international business insights in their tweets.

More Twitter Interviews

• Charmayne Paul – @psitutor
• Lucy Chatburn – @pocketcultures
• Doreen Iannuzzi – @DoreenatDMS
• Donna Jackson – @wisequeen
• Chris Cotter – @CotterHUE
• Silvia Cambié – @XCulture
• Bill Ward – @DR4WARD
• Thierry De Baillon – @t_de_baillon
• Seshu – @PicSeshu
• Neil Urquhart – @culturematters
• Klaus & Flavia Westerwelle – @transdomo
• Donagh Kiernan – @dkiernan
• Christian Hoeferle – @hoeferleconsult
• Caroline – @ohh_la_la
• Deborah Swallow – @DeborahSwallow
• Steve Roesler – @steveroesler
• Matthew Bennett – @matthewbennett

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

Twitter Interview With Jack Yan

Twitter Interviews – #CKinterview

Today’s Cross-Cultural Interview is with Silvia Cambié. You can also find her on Twitter: @XCulture.

The transcript of the Cross-Cultural Twitter Interview with Silvia @XCulture is below

Silvia Cambié is a cross-cultural communication practitioner and a journalist. Her background includes reporting from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union for major British and German publications (The European, Euromoney, Handelsblatt, Süddeutsche Zeitung) well as managing communications and public affairs for Brussels-based international trade associations.

Silvia is based in London where she runs Chanda Communications. She serves on the boards of two organisations with global outreach, the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) and The International Alliance for Women (TIAW). Silvia blogs about the cross-cultural communication challenges facing the business world at X-Culture and is read by an audience of 10,000 each month. She is the author – together with Yang-May Ooi – of “International Communications Strategy – Developments in Cross-Cultural Communication, PR and Social Media” to be published by Kogan Page and nominated for the Financial Times Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.

This is a 2 part interview:

• Part 1 – The Blog Interview to get to know Bill
• Part 2 – The Twitter Interview where Bill answers 10 Cross-Cultural & International Questions

Silvia Cambié – Part 1

Here is the first part of the interview with Silvia.

Silvia, For those who don’t know you, can you please tell us something about yourself?

Silvia Cambié: I was raised in Italy, educated in Austria and spent my entire career working in an international environment. I speak five languages and have lived in Czechoslovakia, Germany and Belgium. I am now based in London where I run Chanda Communications and advise clients on stakeholder relations, cross-cultural communication and social media.

How did you pick up your cross-cultural skills?

Silvia Cambié: When I was a little girl growing up in Italy, I was fascinated by everything foreign. I even made up my own foreign language that I would speak to myself when nobody was around. In school I then learned German and English and that opened the door to an entire new universe. I discovered that I could see things from another point of view. When I spoke German or English, it was as if I had grown up in a different place and I had had a parallel life. That’s how the adventure began. But it wasn’t until I moved to Czechoslovakia right after the fall of the Berlin Wall to work as a journalist that I understood how important it is to be able to put your cultural background to the side in order to tune into a different one.

How do you use your cross-cultural skills in your job?

Silvia Cambié: The fact that I have lived in different places and understand the way in which different people think is of enormous help in my job. I work a lot with international organisations helping them with different aspects of their communication strategies. My multi-cultural background enables me to decipher behaviours and read between the lines.

Can you tell us about your blog?

Silvia Cambié: It was my co-author Yang-May Ooi to come up with the name XCulture for my blog. I had wanted to start a blog for a long time. Yang-May convinced me to launch XCulture two years ago. It has been a fascinating journey. I am a former financial journalist and was used to hide my feelings behind charts and figures. XCulture has helped me to find my voice. I blog about issues that come up in my work and topics I feel passionate about, like the economic empowerment of women and Corporate Social Responsibility.

Have you come across any cultural stereotypes that bother you?

Silvia Cambié: The stereotypes that annoy me most are those concerning the role of women in the Middle East. If one bothers to look at the facts, reality looks quite different. The World Bank estimates that 13% of all firms in the Middle East are owned by women. And women make up 4.29 million of Saudi Arabia’s 6.5 million internet users!

And do you have a favourite show that could help people understand cultural issues?

Silvia Cambié: I love Russell Peters, the Indo-Canadian stand-up comedian (http://www.facebook.com/RussellPeters). His show Red, White and Brown is a must!

Do you have a book you could recommend to help others improve their cultural insights?

Silvia Cambié: I like “The Opposable Mind” by Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Martin believes that people have the ability to hold two diametrically opposing ideas in their heads at the same time. The result is what he calls “integrative thinking”, which applied to communications translates into the ability to consider two different cultural models without choosing sides.

Silvia Cambié – Part 2 – The Twitter Interview

This is an interview series of the people I recommend you follow on Twitter for the cross-cultural and international business insights in their tweets.

More Twitter Interviews

• Charmayne Paul – @psitutor
• Lucy Chatburn – @pocketcultures
• Doreen Iannuzzi – @DoreenatDMS
• Donna Jackson – @wisequeen
• Chris Cotter – @CotterHUE
• Jack Yan – @jackyan
• Bill Ward – @DR4WARD
• Thierry De Baillon – @t_de_baillon
• Seshu – @PicSeshu
• Neil Urquhart – @culturematters
• Klaus & Flavia Westerwelle – @transdomo
• Donagh Kiernan – @dkiernan
• Christian Hoeferle – @hoeferleconsult
• Caroline – @ohh_la_la
• Deborah Swallow – @DeborahSwallow
• Steve Roesler – @steveroesler
• Matthew Bennett – @matthewbennett

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

Twitter Interview With Silvia Cambié

Twitter Interviews – #CKinterview

Today’s Cross-Cultural Interview is with Bill Ward. You can also find him on Twitter: @DR4WARD.

The transcript of the Twitter Interview is below.

Bill teaches integrated marketing communications and 360 degree branding in the College of Business at Ferris State University. What I noticed most about Bill is how active he is in bringing the international dimension of social media with his students.

I’ve had some great international marketing insights from following @DR4WARD and hope you will enjoy hearing more about Bill as much as I know I will.

This is a 2 part interview:

• Part 1 – The Blog Interview to get to know Bill
• Part 2 – The Twitter Interview where Bill answers 10 Cross-Cultural & International Questions

Bill Ward – Part 1

Here is the first part of the interview with Bill.

Bill, For those who don’t know you, can you please tell us something about yourself?

Bill Ward: I was born and raised in the beautiful state of Michigan, but I have also lived in New York and Colorado. Though I’ve never spent enough time abroad to consider that I’ve lived abroad I have taken over 200 students on study away programs throughout Italy and France for up to two months at a time. Some of my other experiences abroad have been spent teaching international marketing to Chinese students in China, and as a delegate to the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival for a number of years. I have also been on a number of trips to Europe visiting friends and family, so I’ve been able to experience the culture from the more intimate setting in family homes.

I admire those who speak multiple languages, however, as a product of an American educational system that did not stress learning multiple languages I didn’t learn the value until later on. As yet, I am unable to claim speaking more than conversational Italian and polite greetings in French, Chinese and Spanish. Luckily, I have found that most of the people who I’ve encountered on these travels have been willing to work with my minimal language skills when I present myself as respectful and try to communicate in the local language, even if I fall far short.

The greatest skill that I’ve discovered while traveling abroad is the ability to laugh at myself while learning from my gaffes. I enjoy learning about all cultures but feel particularly close to the French and Italian cultures and their passion for life. When I am not teaching I enjoy riding motorcycles or snowmobiles depending on the season and also being in, on, and around the water as much as possible

How did you pick up your cross-cultural skills?

Bill Ward: I am curious by nature and have learned to spend time observing locals to understand about how best to conduct myself. I like to understand the similarities and differences between cultures. The more I learn the more I realize how little I know which helps me stay observant.

How do you use your cross-cultural skills in your job?

Bill Ward: Experience has taught me that there are many ways to reach the same end. When I bring students abroad I try to prepare them for a cross-cultural experience and encourage them to understand that they will have to learn things through their own experience and missteps. Sometimes, the best way to learn is first-hand.

Can you tell us about your blog and what you do online?

Bill Ward: I named my blog DR4WARD because when I searched online I found that there are more popular and famous people who I share my name with, for example the drummer for Black Sabbath. Once I realized I could not own my name on the search engines I decided to add my credentials to my 4Ward (“Forward”) philosophy of trying to look ahead and figure out what’s next, creating DR4WARD. I discuss topics related to 360 degree branding like marketing, advertising, public relations, and social media. I also share activities of my students, classes, and travels.

Is there anything new about your blog you would like to share?

Bill Ward: I am finding that more and more of my time learning, sharing, and creating is happening on micro-blogs like Twitter and sites like Posterous that help aggregate & link the ever growing network of social systems / life streams and media. These tools provide more opportunities than ever to connect with and learn from people all over the world so it is an exciting time for cross-cultural networking and learning.

Can you give us some deeper insights about yourself regarding your cross-cultural background?

Bill Ward: I remember watching James Bond movies as a child and being fascinated by all the exotic locations of his globe trotting adventures. There are so many places I have not been. India, Brazil, and Turkey are all places I would like to visit because they look like there is an interesting mix of the modern and the old.

The greatest insight that I could provide for those who are traveling abroad for the first time or the hundredth time is to be comfortable being a little uncomfortable. Traveling abroad is generally very safe and exciting, but still understand that the same risks exist abroad that exist anywhere. A little preparation will carry you a long way.

Have you come across any cultural stereotypes that bother you, or you find inappropriate?

Bill Ward: People who repeat cultural stereotypes that have never spent any time in the culture and who have no first hand experience with any individuals from that culture drive me crazy! Too many cultural stereotypes are based on comparing other cultures to our own and making incorrect conclusions. These misunderstandings are too often repeated by those too lazy or too afraid to try to understand why another culture does things differently.

One stereotype I hate is the rude French waiter. Someone from the U.S. not understanding French culture believes the waiter to be providing poor service citing slow service and infrequent contact. Someone understanding French culture will value the opportunity to enjoy the food & company and the unobtrusive service provided by the same waiter.

Do you have a favorite movie that could help people understand cultural issues?

Bill Ward: My two favorite movies for understanding culture issues are Lost in Translation and L’auberge espagnole (The Spanish Apartment).

Lost in Translation, with Bill Murray, reminds me of my first experience traveling abroad. I was supposed to travel with a friend but ended up traveling alone instead. Lost in Translation reminds me that you do not understand cultural issues by looking out a window, but by experiencing culture first hand in the streets.

L’Auberge Espagnole (The Spanish Apartment) can help people understand cultural issues by watching what happens when a cast of characters from different cultures all over Europe end up together in a culture they are not a familiar with and learn together. (A must see for any person studying or traveling abroad)

Part 2 – The Twitter Interview

This is an interview series of the people I recommend you follow on Twitter for the cross-cultural and international business insights in their tweets.

More Twitter Interviews

• Charmayne Paul – @psitutor
• Lucy Chatburn – @pocketcultures
• Doreen Iannuzzi – @DoreenatDMS
• Donna Jackson – @wisequeen
• Chris Cotter – @CotterHUE
• Jack Yan – @jackyan
• Silvia Cambié – @XCulture
• Thierry De Baillon – @t_de_baillon
• Seshu – @PicSeshu
• Neil Urquhart – @culturematters
• Klaus & Flavia Westerwelle – @transdomo
• Donagh Kiernan – @dkiernan
• Christian Hoeferle – @hoeferleconsult
• Caroline – @ohh_la_la
• Deborah Swallow – @DeborahSwallow
• Steve Roesler – @steveroesler
• Matthew Bennett – @matthewbennett

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

Twitter Interview With Bill Ward

Twitter Interviews – #CKinterview

Today’s Cross-Cultural Interview is with Thierry De Baillon.  You can also find him on Twitter: @t_de_baillon. This is a 2 part interview:

• Part 1 – The Blog Interview to get to know Thierry
• Part 2 – The Twitter Interview where Thierry answers 10 Cross-Cultural & International Questions

I met Thierry through some interesting cross-cultural discussions on Twitter.  Thierry writes a bilingual blog and is an Online Communication Manager at a big French IT services group.

Thierry De Baillon – Part 1

Here is the first part of the interview with Thierry – The transcript of the Twitter Interview is now below. You can find the interview on Twitter with the hashtag #CKinterview.

Cindy King: Hi Thierry, For those who don’t know you, can you please tell us something about yourself?

Thierry De Baillon: I am born in Paris, and lived in different places in France during my childhood. I began my career working as an illustrator for fashion offices. At that time, the words “innovation” and “creation” were synonym of Japan, and I left Paris for Tokyo in 1981 for almost a year. Back in Paris, I spent my time between as copywriter and “trends scout” for the fashion industry and helping brands to develop products and build their image. I “fell” into the Internet ten years ago, when, as Marketing Director for Creeks (a French casual fashion brand), I built what has been the first French fashion e-commerce website.

Since then, I worked in different companies to build national or multi-national corporate online strategies.

Cindy King: How did you pick up your cross-cultural skills?

Thierry De Baillon: Working for fashion offices has been an incredibly valuable training. Imagine yourself traveling all around the world for short periods of time, your mission being to detect emerging trends in all cultural fields (fashion, design, music, fine arts,…) and to determine in these trends what is and what isn’t applicable to other markets. Analysis, synthesis and commercial output, based on your sense of innovation and your ability to listen and decipher cutting-edge signals.

Cindy King: How do you use your cross-cultural skills in your job?

Thierry De Baillon: Listening is key while working in multi-cultural environments, so is the ability to build a common ground which doesn’t impair anyone’s identity. On the “human” side, brands are often much more powerful than they even realize, and taking care that they don’t crush customers’ and employees’ personal culture is even more important than building them from the corporate side of view.

Looking at the way people use technology like social media according to their culture is also an incredible way to drive innovation. First time I went in China, in 1981, I remember for instance having being stuck by the way people used phone handsets. Chinese people usually talk loudly, and, not to deafen their interlocutor while phoning in the street, instead of removing the earpiece from their ear, they removed the microphone from their mouth, holding the handset upside-down!!! Same technology, used in a totally different manner to accommodate with a different culture…

I also nurture this personal taste for innovation through personal research, which I -try to- express through my blog and my Twitter feed.

Cindy King: Can you tell us about your blog?

Thierry De Baillon: Blogging is the flip side of my other main online activity, on Twitter. There, I am able to develop scenarios and share long term insights. I began blogging five years ago, as I was unemployed for a couple of months. I would consider myself as a “sporadic” blogger, as I closed it two times already, but couldn’t resist getting at it again.

My blog’s title, “Sonnez en cas d’absence”, is a sentence I saw written on a shop’s window, which means “Ring the bell if I am away”, that is if something interesting happens, or if somebody wants to start a conversation, I am always ready to step in and take part.

As an interesting example: on last April, I hadn’t blogged for two years, when I found myself part of an online experiment: a French translation of a Chris Brogan’s post, with other French twitterers/bloggers (Emilie Ogez, Florence Meichel, Yann Leroux, Mario Asselin and Lilian Mahoukou). They then posted the translation on their respective blogs, linking to mine, thus ringing the bell again.

Besides that, this title has another (non obvious, but equally important to me) meaning: when you see this sentence on a shop’s door, you immediately understand it. You see nobody, so you ring. But it is all contextual; reading the sentence and thinking about it, you may well say “hey, if this guy isn’t around, how could he actually HEAR the bell ringing?” A lot of things do not make any sense when put out of their cultural context. This is, I think, a great lesson for us all to remember.

Cindy King: Is there anything new about your blog you would like to share?

Thierry De Baillon: Since I restarted blogging, I write in French and in English. I found out that most of the subjects I am talking about (social media, branding, enterprise 2.0,..) find a more logical and precise expression in English than in French. It might be related to the fact that there is much much more material available in English upon these subjects, but this might also mean that the mere concepts these subjects rely on (engagement, active trust,…) have a deeper rooting in Anglo-Saxon culture. Just an intuition I hope I will be able to dig in.

The blog and Twitter have helped me to connect with a lot of fabulous people all around the world, and great conversations often take place about subjects I am passionate about. As I am currently looking for a new position (scoop), this also helps me leverage my knowledge and, who knows, maybe find new opportunities.

Cindy King: Can you give us some deeper insights about yourself regarding your cross-cultural background?

Thierry De Baillon: I speak of course English and French, some Italian, a bit of German and Spanish, took Japanese lessons which I almost forgot,… and I would love to learn Arabic. Knowing that Arabic language doesn’t have a present tense – present is only intersection of past and future – totally fascinates me, as it induces a totally different perception of time. Languages are an crucial key to understand a foreign culture, as they relate to history, psychology, sociology, technology…

Cindy King: Have you come across any cultural stereotypes that bother you, or you find inappropriate?

Thierry De Baillon: All stereotypes bother me, and they are legion, as they are an expression of mental rigidity. Flexibility and openness are mandatory to be able to learn anything, and as the world is getting more and more complicated, and as things are evolving faster and faster, listening, thus learning, is a matter of survival.

Cindy King: Do you have a favorite movie that could help people understand cultural issues?

Thierry De Baillon: Blade Runner is a great tale about cultural blending and cultural misunderstanding. Even in future where a lot of different cultures have cross-fertilized (the little shops where Harrison Ford ask for an analysis of the scale he found, for instance, looks like a futurist vision of a Taiwanese market crossed with a Moroccan Medina), difference leads to misunderstanding, aggression, irrational behavior.

Part 2 – The Twitter Interview

UPDATE: Read what Thierry posted on his blog post after this Twitter Interview: Corporate Culture Is Infrastructure

More On International Business Ideas

This is an interview series of the people I recommend you follow on Twitter for the cross-cultural and international business insights in their tweets.

More Twitter Interviews

• Charmayne Paul – @psitutor
• Lucy Chatburn – @pocketcultures
• Doreen Iannuzzi – @DoreenatDMS
• Donna Jackson – @wisequeen
• Chris Cotter – @CotterHUE
• Jack Yan – @jackyan
• Silvia Cambié – @XCulture
• Bill Ward – @DR4WARD
• Seshu – @PicSeshu
• Neil Urquhart – @culturematters
• Klaus & Flavia Westerwelle – @transdomo
• Donagh Kiernan – @dkiernan
• Christian Hoeferle – @hoeferleconsult
• Caroline – @ohh_la_la
• Deborah Swallow – @DeborahSwallow
• Steve Roesler – @steveroesler
• Matthew Bennett – @matthewbennett

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

Twitter Interview With Thierry De Baillon

Twitter Interviews – #CKinterview

Today’s Cross-Cultural Interview is with Seshu.  Seshu is a professional photographer specialized in multicultural wedding photography. You can also find him on Twitter: @PicSeshu.

This interview is in 2 parts:

• Part 1 – The Blog Interview to get to know Seshu
• Part 2 – The Twitter Interview where Seshu answers the 10 Cross-Cultural & International Questions

Part 1 – The Blog Interview With Seshu

Here is the first part of the interview with Seshu – The transcript of the Twitter Interview is below. You can find the interview on Twitter with the hashtag #CKinterview.

Cindy King: Hi Seshu, I am really fascinated about how you use your cross-cultural expertise to create a unique niche in your profession. For those who don’t know you, can you please tell us something about yourself?

Seshu: Where do I come from has always been a difficult question to answer. I was born in New York. My parents decided in 1970 to return to the home of their birth, India, and so starting from age two to 13, I lived in Chennai. Going to school there meant learning Hindi. We spoke English, Tamil and Kannada at home. In 1983, my parents and I decided that it would be best if I returned to the US and so I stayed with friends of the family in Massachusetts and attended high school there before completing it in San Jose, California. After high school, I moved up to study at California State University, Chico, located north of Sacramento. Those were some of my most memorable years. I started out majoring in Business, but soon found myself enthralled in History and a new language, Japanese. I decided to study abroad, in Tokyo for a couple of years as I had been accepted into a graduate program at UC Santa Barbara, to study Modern Japanese History. But living in Japan, in fact staying with a Japanese family and interacting with people on a daily basis convinced me that I needed to pursue journalism upon my return to the US. I was accepted to Indiana University’s Ernie Pyle School of Journalism and lived in Bloomington, Indiana for a couple of years. Back in Japan, I had been gifted a camera by my parents who were visiting me. At IU, I found myself gravitating to the darkrooms and taking on more and more visual communications courses.

I stumbled across a poster for the Salt Center for Documentary Studies, a three-month program in Portland, Maine. I felt that an immersive experience learning visual anthropology was what I really wanted to do. So, I lived in Maine for several months. I noticed that MSNBC.com was looking for an intern and instead of mailing them an application, I invited myself to their headquarters in Redmond, Washington, for an interview. I got the internship and found myself living in Washington state, again a very positive experience. When the internship ended, I began work at Corbis, a stock photo agency, as a photo researcher. I found myself on the East coast again, in Boston, where I worked as a freelance photographer for newspapers and international magazines. When the 9/11 tragedy struck, editorial markets suddenly dried up. I remember this being a really tough time for me, but thankfully I had strong family support. My cousins in Boston provided me with a roof over my head and for that I’ll always be grateful. At the end of 2002, I met my wife and because she was still in school in Connecticut, I decided to move down to Hartford. Looking online, I saw ESPN.com was looking for a photo editor and so I applied thinking it will be a very long shot. My sports knowledge was pretty non-existent back then. But a strong portfolio, a solid background in photography, photo research and of course working at some of the top online companies, helped me get my foot in the door. After five years at ESPN, I decided to strike out on my own and started a documentary wedding and portrait photography business – Seshu Photography.

Cindy King: What you do in life and how are your cross-cultural skills related to your profession?

Seshu: I have really enjoyed traveling and meeting people from all walks of life. I have lived in India, the US and Japan. I’ve also spent a Summer working in London for a brokerage that sold Icelandic fish-heads to Nigerians. Yum!

The weddings I photograph are mostly multicultural. I more easily understand my client’s needs based on not only who they are, but who I am and what my experiences have been. As a part of the Indian diaspora that has made its home around the word, I feel very comfortable working with a wide variety of people. I think my mindset would have been different if I had stayed back in India.

What sets me apart are the opportunities I have had, to work in a variety of situations and with a diverse group of people. While most of my business is in Connecticut or New England, having an international presence is a natural progression. Last October, I had the honor of photographing a beautiful Indian wedding in Rajasthan, India. It was at the outskirts of Udaipur, at Devi Garh, a 18th century Rajput fort-palace that has been converted into a luxury hotel.

Cindy King: How did you pick up your cross-cultural skills?

Seshu: I am not sure if I consciously picked any of my cross-cultural skills. My language skills were bolstered thanks in large part to living in India, where one need only to cross the state’s border to experience another culture. I chose to study Japanese and live with a host family because that remains the best way to immerse yourself into a culture and solve problems; language or gastronomic. And in the US, call it a melting pot or a salad bowl, I am constantly in touch with multiple cultures.

Cindy King: Can you give us some insights into your cross-cultural affinities?

Seshu: As far as languages go, I would love to relearn Japanese. At one point during my stay in Japan, I was able to carry on a conversation in Japanese on the phone so convincingly that the caller thought I was Japanese!

While I am based in Connecticut, I do aspire to photograph multicultural or strictly Indian weddings in Hong Kong, Dubai, Antwerp, Delhi and Mumbai.

I am fond of Mira Nair’s movies – Mississippi Masala and The Namesake. They both tackle cultural conflicts and resolutions in a very interesting way. The main characters of both the movies are thrown into a cultural milieux that is somewhat alien not to them but their parents. So, there is this conflict between them and the parents and the questions that arise about who they are in the society that has adopted them.

Cindy King: Have you noticed any current cross-cultural trends either online or offline?

Seshu: I am seeing a great many more multicultural weddings taking place. The uptick is natural as more couples are finding each other online, through networking opportunities at work or through close friends. Rare is the couple who declare that their parents or relatives set them up. People are connecting using alternative means. And that usually suggests that there is more openness in the process.

Couples who are most likely to hire my services are well-educated, definitely well traveled, sophisticated in their outlook of life and society, tend to be progressive about their politics and involved in social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, to connect with their family, friends or colleagues. So it does make sense for me to also have a presence in these channels. Being active online gives me the opportunity to cast a wider but also more focused net. I really enjoy creating and sharing slideshows online. I am of the belief that the more I show, the more a prospective client will know about my work and me. Indeed, a photographer’s personality and portfolio are two very important distinctions that make her or him unique.

Part 2 – The Twitter Interview With Seshu

This is an interview series of the people I recommend you follow on Twitter for the cross-cultural and international business insights in their tweets.

More Twitter Interviews

• Charmayne Paul – @psitutor
• Lucy Chatburn – @pocketcultures
• Doreen Iannuzzi – @DoreenatDMS
• Donna Jackson – @wisequeen
• Chris Cotter – @CotterHUE
• Jack Yan – @jackyan
• Silvia Cambié – @XCulture
• Bill Ward – @DR4WARD
• Thierry De Baillon – @t_de_baillon
• Neil Urquhart – @culturematters
• Klaus & Flavia Westerwelle – @transdomo
• Donagh Kiernan – @dkiernan
• Christian Hoeferle – @hoeferleconsult
• Caroline – @ohh_la_la
• Deborah Swallow – @DeborahSwallow
• Steve Roesler – @steveroesler
• Matthew Bennett – @matthewbennett

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

Twitter Interview With Seshu