Just in time before the Easter holidays – Report from the conference “Does culture still matter” – Gypsy music in the Czech Republic
Absolutely yours: We get birthday congratulations and an idea for a new show.
Absolutely educational: Chris Saenger reports on some of sessions he attended at the ‘Does Culture Still Matter?’ conference hosted by the Intercultural Management Institute of Washington DC. First Chris recounts how an activity involving holding two water-filled cups of water can show you various aspects of how you react in an unknown situation. Later he tells us about how former US ambassador, Prudence Bushnell, adopted various strategies to enable a woman’s voice to be heard in patriarchal cultures.
Absolutely musical: On a recent trip to the east of the Czech Republic, the Rivus trio play traditional gypsy music in which the cimbalom or hammered dulcimer instrument (pictured) plays a leading role. This is not a music podcast but music can have an important role to play in culture.
The next show will be coming from Germany on April 20.
Are there any B-people in Second Life? And does culture still matter?
absolutely virtual
Second Life is a virtual world but is it also a new culture which we can explore in the same way we can come to new cultures in the real world? To consider some of these issues I talked with Helen Keegan of Salford University who first visited Second Life on Christmas Day, 2006 and Sus Nyrop, a freelance educational consultant in Denmark who has visited both Danish and other areas of Second Life. We wondered whether your appearance matters and if it helps to have cultural informants as a guide.
absolutely flexible
BSamfundet is a new society in Denmark promoting flexible working hours. The structure of the day and attitudes to time are aspects which vary greatly across cultures. B-samfundet means B-society and by catering to those who only come alive after 10 in the morning they maintain that this will reduce traffic jams and will help those so-called B-people who are only fully functional later in the day. But is this an issue that is going to resonate in Denmark where work starts and finishes early? To answer this question I took a straw poll of my colleagues in Grenaa and I did manage to unearth some shattered B-people.
absolutely important
Does Culture Still Matter? That’s the name of the annual conference of the Intercultural Management Institute in Washington coming up on March 15 and 16. We were very honoured to be invited to cover the conference in an upcoming show.
The next show is our one year anniversary show and will be coming to you from our German station on March 23rd.
Corporate Culture, bilingualism, business and the environment
Absolutely bilingual: We revisit the issue of bilingualism with comments from one of our listeners about her experiences.
Absolutely corporate: TrineMaria Kristensen of Social Square explains how companies define their culture around the stories they agree on and whether screaming with laughter in the A P Møller Mærsk offices is acceptable or not.
Absolutely Environmental: Peter Malbek of SCA Packaging explains why responsibility for the environment is built into the culture of SCA and also comes with news of this year’s trendy Christmas present; a bag of hot air.
Absolutely educational: We are very keen to hear about how listeners use our podcast in their teaching. The Leonardo Lancelot project plans to use one of our shows in their pilot course for training online teachers.
The next show will come from Germany on February 23 so … stay tuned!
The Host of this show is: Anne Fox Download Podcast-Feed iTunes-Abo
We are still waiting for Zanele Khumalo from Cape Town in South Africa to get in touch as the winner of our Frappr map prize.
Absolutely National: And we stay in South Africa to hear from Mark Anderson in Pretoria who explains the classification system of the old apartheid system and the beliefs this led to. Mark also explains how the Zulu culture may not be as old as we might think.
Absolutely Yours: Our feature on image projection in show number 21 struck a chord with Fernando from Spain who sent us an audio comment about what led him to discard almost his entire wardrobe of clothes when he had an internship in Germany.
Absolutely Educational: Anne has difficulty pronouncing Katarzyna Kubacka’s name. Katarzyna is a student teacher in Poland who was known as Kate during her time as a classroom assistant in Grenaa. Katarzyna was financed under the Comenius programme of the EU. Katarzyna talks about the differences in approach and mentions one thing which she found particularly shocking.
This show was sent out live through Worldbridges as a webcast. Guests included Jeff Lebow (thanks for all the technical streaming support) from Worldbridges who explained why Tibetans turn to English when discussing taboo topics.
We also heard from Helen Keegan at Salford University, England who revealed whether synchronous or asynchronous online communication reveals the most about national culture in the course of her ESMOS project.
Karsten Kneese, the producer of this podcast told us about adapting to the different conventions of formality in German and English. Karsten also gave us an update on our Frappr map competition where you can win a free trip to Germany simply by adding your pin to our Frappr map (at the bottom of this page).
Please add your pin! We don’t have a winner yet so please don’t hesitate and have a go.
Barbara Dieu (Bee for short) from Brazil talked about her experiences blogging with her high school students and the blog project exchange Dekita.org. She also talked about the early days of the Internet. Did she stay too long in the American internet? Listen and find out. Bee is also one of the people who nominated Absolutely Intercultural for the prestigious Edublogs Awards.
Please vote for us before December 16 at the Edublog Awards.
The next show will be coming to you from Germany on the 29th of December.
You will hear about The BOBs, the GO OUT campaign and what British schools and the army have in common.
Absolutely Fantastic: The support you gave us for The BOBs was absolutely fantastic and thank you to everybody who voted, commented and listened. We came third in the user prize category and that is solely down to your votes. Add your comments here or send us a mail or audio message to let us know how we can be number one next year.
Absolutely Mobile: Laurent and Karsten from the Fachhochschule Koblenz, Germany, give you some background information on the “GO OUT” campaign initiated by the German Academic Exchange Service, DAAD. During this week students can prepare themselves for a semester abroad, both, at a partner university or in a company.
Absolutely Personal: The show concentrates on two individuals who both went to work for a period in the UK.
First we hear from Dane, Tommy Søholm, who went for three years working for NATO in the UK. Life was not as regimented as you might think for Tommy the soldier, but on the other hand even his youngest child was drafted into the disciplined ranks of the British schooling system much to everybody’s surprise in the family.
Then we hear from Yogesh Bang, a software engineer based in India who has been posted abroad for short periods on assignment several times now. Hear what he has to say about the work life balance and the concern shown to him by his landlady in the UK as he went off for a weekend in Chester.
The next show will be coming to you from Germany on the 1st of December.
Until then…stay tuned!
The Host of this show is: Anne Fox
Using cultural informants from your own personal network.
Absolutely interactive highlights the Crossing Borders forum which aims to foster intercultural dialogue.
In Absolutely Personal we talk to Greg Houfe who had two French internships almost twenty years ago as part of his degree in European Business Administration.
Looking back did he think working at Moët et Chandon benefited him? Would he now employ a former intern preferentially over someone who had not had this type of experience?
In Absolutely Linguistic I talked with Gwen and Mia, 12 and 9, who are bilingual in Danish and English. Does this affect their identity? Do they mix the languages up?
And finally in Absolutely Confidential I talked to Tony Fox who was caught out in a conference in Germany recently.
The Host of this show is: Anne Fox
This is the Greenlandic way of referring to the ptarmigan bird. So how realistic is it that someone working in Greenland will learn Greenlandic? Jens Nyeland worked for three years as a scientific advisor regarding the sustainable use of seabirds and talks about the difficulties of the Greenlandic language.
You couldn’t go anywhere.
Regitze Nyeland describing the effect of the Greenlandic winters which she otherwise
found very easy to live with. How did she fare with the Greenlandic language in her
job dealing with youth problems in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk?
Picture credit: The Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) in Greenland by Jens Nyeland
The Host of this show is: Anne Fox
An intercultural university on a boat, how to deal with re-entry shocks and a great metaphor for culture.
!!! If you had any problems downloading this episode with iTunes or another podcatcher, please try again now. I made a mistake by including the wrong file in the feed, but I’ve fixed the problem. I apologize for the inconvenience and hope, you’ll enjoy the show !!!
Welcome to episode 13, which comes to you in parts from the NAFSA conference in Canada.
Curious things are happening around us and our show and we seem to become rather famous – or should we say infamous?
We had a rather serious research article of no less than 11 pages written about our first show by Fred Dervin from the Department of French Studies at the University of Turku in Finland.
Paul Braddock has developed a lesson plan, also for our first show. This is absolutely amazing! He has taken our show, transcribed it and developed several exercises, including listening comprehension and some games. Paul, thank you so much! We are really honored.
And another amazing thing has happened. Two good friends of us have produced a show for us. Thomas Berger and Theo Schenk both work for the intstitute inter.research in Fulda, and Thomas recently went to the NAFSA conference in Canada, where he recorded several absolutely fantastic interviews with:
Dr. Josef Orlander, captain of the The Scholar Ship, which is an intercultural university aboard a cruiseliner
Alice Wu, an intercultural consultant and teacher at Cornell University, about re-entry shocks, and how to avoid them.
And Charles Hodgson from Podictionary explains how the word “ciao” came into the English language.
We are also trying to answer one of our regular questions: What is culture? So let’s listen to the ideas of Rhiannon and Victor, two students from Canada and the USA who took part in the Hessen Global Summer Internship Program organized by the institute inter.research e.V. and the Universites of Hessen/Germany.
You see, the show is packed with interesting reports, and we really hope you will enjoy listening to it.
And speaking about conferences…Laurent, Thomas and other project partners from Sweden and Spain will be at the EAIE conference in Basel, Switzerland from 12th until 15th of September. So if you happen to be there, then why don’t you join our roundtable session in intercultural preparation of internships abroad at the EAIE on the 15th of September.
Our ninth show is coming to you from London, so let’s have a look at our absolutely intercultural stations today.
In our last show we’ve talked about “culture as the software of the mind”, and we continue our discussion about viruses in our column ‘absolutely theoretical’.
Right after that Thomas tells us for our column ‘absolutely personal’ about an important update he and about 60 millions Britains didn’t get…the introduction of the Euro.
For our column ‘absolutely educational’ Laurent went to International House to meet Jack Lonergan. He follows up our question whether culture can be taught or not, and he gives some examples of how small adjustments can make a huge difference if we pay attention to the cultural needs of minorities.
We end the show with a completely new column: ‘absolutely incredible…but true’.
And to save the best for last, Laurent is going to sing for us! So please stay tuned and do not switch off before Laurent starts. =)
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Our ninth show is coming to you from London, so let’s have a look at our absolutely intercultural stations today.