Good luck for the final...

Hey Team,

So happy we've done this project and thanks for each of your efforts. I do learn a lot from working with you.

Oh... btw I modify some part of that PPT due on Monday, please take a look at tho....

Good luck for the final and have a wonder spring break!!!

Project Presentation

I am so happy we are done! Thanks to all of you for your involvement in the project. We need a last effort to finalize our blog so i hope everybody will share their thoughts about our learning process.
We made our project presentation this afternoon, we were in the rush as we were running out of time because there was several presentation and it was the last class of the quarter. Maybe i am wrong but i think that there was not much interest in our work, and i was a little bit disappointed about that. Maybe it is due to the fact that we didn't have as much problems as the others groups or maybe it was due to the lack of time. Anyway, i really think that it is a good training module, everybody did their part of the work and we came out with a great wiki.

I can't wait to read your posts about this project...

i hope nobody objects but i have changed the name of our star. John Edouard is not a British name at all, well John is by the surname is not. I changed it to John Spencer. I hope that is ok

Reflective Thoughts

Hi all, i must agree with the majority of things Audun said. I wasn't sure how effective this cross-Atlantic team would be because in the past there has been difficulties within groups what are physically in the same place. I must say that i think we worked well together and that can be attributed to everyone dedication and hard work, so thank you all for making this project a success. I think we have as a team works better than a lot of the other teams. Thanks to everyone for the different roles you put upon yourselves to make things a success, i think this was a great thing about a team because we didnt have to force things upon people, so roles you took up were things that you were good at and did very well in, as shown by our groups work.

Thi is the first time i have ever been apart of a project like this, refering especially to the group format but im sure we will all experience this kind of necessary communication in the future so this was a vey helpful in helping us understand some of the things we should expect.

we are the best!!!

wow~~ look at our project!!!!!

sooooooooo fantastic!!!!!!!!!!!!

I knew we'll be the best one, haha~~

Cross Atlantic Communication

Hi all,

At this point most of our module seems to be completed, it certainly looks very good, so it is a good opportunity to look back and reflect on the processes we've been through.

For me personally, this project has been enjoyable. I was prepared for major struggle with timing, confusing messages and tasks and lack of communication, but our team has really done an effort to try our best to minimize the possible weaknesses of this long distance between us.

The project was a little difficult to comprehend in the beginning, what were we really to do? But I believe our Professors intentionally gave us much room for us to scope out our own project and goals, so that we would feel and face the struggle of making some big decisions between us internationally.

For being 9 team members I must say that we managed to have a pretty good communication between most of us. Imagine doing this just 10 years ago! Just phones, and faxes. I believe our team made the communication and decision making as easy as it could be because all of our member truly are knowledgeable of all the virtual communication technologies today. Skype helped a lot as always.

Via Skype we were able to have a few but very effective meetings. Most of the decisions, except for our democratic vote on which countries to analyze, were done over Skype. And that helped to make our decisions process very short. Imaging doing all our discussions over email with 9 people!

After figuring out what we were to do in our first meeting, we spent a week reading up on Malaysia and the UK. Articles, websites and blogs helped us with getting a picture of how doing business in this country would be like. The second meeting served as a Division of Labour-meeting, where we separated work load among ourselves and set some deadlines. With some tangles goals and deadlines - our tasks did no longer seem so diffuse. Communication also are much better and easier when clear goals and deadlines are set. It seems to me that the first part of all projects, the brainstorming, the searching is the most crucial and difficult communication-wise because we are all a little confused and worried.

Looking back, getting communication off ground a little earlier is an obvious thing we could have done better. And if we had managed to do that, we would also have been in a position to set our deadlines earlier, which in turn would have made it possible for all of us to spend more time going through each other's parts and make things look more united and not so broken into pieces. But I must say looks pretty good today as it is.

It was a pleasure to work with the French team, communication on Skype was really good. I can imaging that if we were not so similar in age or in knowledge of these internet technologies, our communication and project results would not have turned out so great.

We'll keep in touch!

Audun

hey everyone, i had another quick thought. So the last parts of our assignment are completing the manual and them the team blogs.
We do not really have a great deal of activity on our blogs so now that we are nearing the end of our quarter we should all post and write about our experiences and maybe things we could have changed to make things more efficient, if any! I think we worked very well together and efficiently but if there is anyone that can think of ways to improve we should write them down. Im sure we have a lot of experiences to share so please do. One idea was this, the American team had experienced within ourselves that the French team didn't know about and the French between themselves that we didn't know about so maybe we could talk about those a little? Just an idea.

Thanks everyone for all of your hard work.

That Third Culture Kid lecture we had was very interesting, to be honest i've never heard of the term TCK so obviously i didn't know what it was. After thinking about it i would say that pretty much the majority of people,especially in California can consider themselves in some way or another very cultured with all the different people from different bakgrounds we have here.
I for one lived in a largely Indian community in England and so when i came here it was a surprise. I mean it didnt take long to accept it and its a great thing but just something I noticed. My dad is from India, my mum from Tanzania, and I am from England and now America so I have the influence of many cultures.

Great job!

Hey everyone, i was looking over the various pats we covered and everything looks great. Our whole webpage looks great in general and very organized so that a good step to creating a successful manual for our traveling managers.

If there is anywhere we need to tweak then we still have time so don't hesitate to change anything if you think it can be improved.

matt

i know it's not really our subject, but i think you will like it:

perhaps you know this man, but in my case, i just know him since 1 week and i'm really jealous of this guy...

it's a man who go everywhere on the world and just dance infront the cam...

there is thhis famous video here:

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=49561724709&ref=nf

and his website: http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/

it's really amazing and if you don't know it, you should really like it!!

TCK effect

I like the topic "Third Culture Kids" we talked in last Thursday calss. I never think about the problems for TCK and I never know how alone the TCK feel and TCK couldn't even identify themselves.

Yesterday I went to a Bday party and I met a guy from Switzerland. From our conversation, I think he's a very typical "TCK" example. His dad worked in a Financial company and he was assigned to work in Germany, U.K., S.A. and Russia, so he can speak a little German, French, Greek and Russian. I asked him if you have TCK problems when you were a little kid. He said "of course" and told me that's a really tough time in his life. He didn't know who he was and what language he was supposed to speak. He had no friends coz he always moved. He was laughed coz of his accent. But he told me now he feels better coz he grows up and he also takes those differences as his strengths. He went to lots of countries, spoke different language and knew different culture. If all of TCK can think positively, then everything they experienced would be more useful and richful in their life.

Erica

Project Process and communication

To my opinion, the beginning of the project was really slow, but since 10 days things are going faster and communication is getting better between between members of the project. The project is more and more interesting as more group members are being involved in the project. We all have to manage a lot of stuff at the same time but nobody is complaining and we are all trying to focus on the success of the project. We succeeded in scheduling 2 meetings and everybody was present and involved, it is not easy to make people hear your voice when we are so numerous on Skype but we are all paying attention to each other to make sure that everybody agreed with every decision.

It is funny how a common language could be a source of cohesion in a group. You can spend hours trying to explain something in a language which is not your native language and just need 5 minutes to explain something to someone who speak the same language. I can spend a lot of time trying to explain something to one of my Californian teammates and just 3 minutes to explain it to a French teammate. Speaking French really helped me understanding our French teammates, not only the spoken language but also the unspoken language. In project like the one we have to do, an important trivia is the unspoken language.

update for the final project.

Hello everyone,

I am so surprised that our french teammates done their parts so quickly. Haha~~so far I've received Country Profile from Edouard and successful meetings and negotiation from Emmanuelle. Hu~~I like our team...efficient, peace and love!!! haha~~

Erica

Learning Process

Hi guys,

It would be cool if everybody participate and write messages on our teamblog.
It is a kind of journal which must serve us a diary, we have to explain our difficulties in the project, the blog must show our reflections about what we are going through to build this project.
The blog has to emphasize the process we are going through and contains some anecdotal items which illustrate our learning curve.