Building responsible remote communities
The recent (ongoing) events with the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the need to develop innovative new ways to engage with each other. It has been inspiring to see how companies and organizations have stepped up to provide online/remote training and webinars to those who are practicing responsible social-distancing.
Remote access to these resources and information is valuable but can leave out the human component. This is why we have started this global initiative with a focus on discussion and human interaction. Each session provides not only valuable information and insight but also an opportunity to experience the (remote) human contact that is absolutely critical to sustaining a healthy remote working environment.
Latest session topics
Hong Kong Handover: 25th Anniversary
June 29 marked the 25th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong to China after 156 years of British rule. SCMP has put together a great Hong Kong 25 microsite and Washington Post has put together a slide show of 25 years of China’s slow takeover of Hong Kong in pictures. It goes without saying…
Pride Month
June is Pride Month, and we’ll start the call with a look at Pride around the world followed by a handful of related news pieces: from 5 Of The Worst And Weirdest Corporate Pride Tweets to how China’s gay youth wanting to expand rights at home seek a different path to LGBT campaigners in the…
Gun Control & Mass Shootings
As much as I prefer to keep an air of levity to our calls, sometimes (read often) news happens that is not light. As much as we look at other cultures, we cannot ignore our own (for those of us who are from the US or have adopted the US as their home).
Global Accessibility Awareness Day
Did you know that Thursday May 19, 2022, is the 11th annual Global Accessibility Awareness Day? What is accessibility (and inclusion) and how do they intertwine and overlap with language services and localization? We’ll start our chat off with a discussion of this question both from a general perspective and specifically within your individual organizations.
May, Week One
It’s May. Spring has sprung, and this first week of the month has been chockablock full of a suite of holidays and celebrations of (quite) varying significance. We’ll start the call off with a look at these from a cultural and linguistic perspective.
The month starts with a look at the famous Justin Timberlake meme…
“Green Week” – 4/20 & Earth Day
This week we celebrate “Green Week” with Global Weed Day falling on 4/20 and Earth Day (as well as International Mother Earth Day) falling on 4/22. For the former we’ll warm up by having a quick look at why there are so many different names for weed, have a look at some common…
Russo-Ukrainian War
As the Russo-Ukrainian war continues, we continue to monitor the situation and news related to international business and geoculture. This week we will start with a look at the Consequences of the Unprecedented Rush of Companies Leaving Russia, How the Marketing Industry Is Responding to the Ukraine War and An anonymous Twitter account built 60,000…
Cultural Responses to War
One month after Russia invaded Ukraine, the war carries on and Ukrainians continue valiantly defending their country against the Russian invasion. This week, we’ll resume our focus on the topic, starting with a continued discussion on Russian censorship around the war. According to an article in the Washington Post, Putin’s prewar moves against U.S…
Ukraine
On February 24, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. When we met two weeks ago, the news was quite fresh and we were still processing the enormity of the situation. We’re certain that you, like us, have been glued to your news sources monitoring the situation since then, worrying about friends, family, colleagues, and…
Numbers
To celebrate the momentous occasion of what has become known as Twosday (2/22/22), we’ll start this week off with a look at the fascinating world of numbers around the world starting with a look at what Mental Floss calls 12 Mind Blowing Number Systems from Other Languages and then see what happens when…
Of Bannings and Burnings
On January 10, a school board in McMinn County, Tennessee, voted unanimously to ban the teaching of Maus (another article) in the district’s 8th grade unit on the Holocaust due to offensive language and nudity. The story began attracting attention only two weeks later on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day and was followed…
Chinese New Year
It seems like we were just celebrating the New Year, and now it’s the New Year once again—the Chinese New year, the Year of the Tiger. Let’s take this opportunity to discuss different calendars and different New Year’s celebrations around the world. And, while we’re at it, how we handle all the various holidays around…
Decade Of Indigenous Languages
Happy new year and welcome to the first session of 2022! Our regular attendees will know that 2022 kicks off UNESCO’s Decade of Indigenous Languages, and we’ll have a look at highlights from Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine’s write-up on making the most of the Decade of Indigenous Languages for Indigenous communities as well have a…
Airing of Grievances
In the spirit of Festivus, we shall begin this last call of the year with the traditional Airing of Grievances! First stop: the Netherlands for our perennial check-in with Black Pete. Next up—just a quick glissade and a couple of pas de chat away—we’ll visit the Land of Sweets, where Final Bow for Yellowface has…
A Variant By Any Other Name…
Only two more calls to go this year before our holiday break (the last call of the year would land on New Year’s Eve, so we’ll skip that one) and it seems that there has been half a year’s worth of articles worthy of our little geocultural and globalization discussion forum this past fortnight! After…
Great Resignation
First up is the Great Resignation (11 Shocking Statistics on the Great Resignation). We’ve touched on a related trend earlier this year when we talked about China’s tang ping, and the Washington Post recently published an article entitled The ‘Great Resignation’ goes global. We’d love to hear how this is playing out in your companies…
Sports
This week we move from arts and entertainment to the world of sports. A year after Chinese State TV resumed airing NBA games after the Hong Kong rift, a new NBA China controversy has emerged, resulting in Tencent dropping Celtics games after Swiss-born American-Turkish Celtic Enes Kanter called Jinping a ‘Brutal Dictator’ and slammed him…
The Great Chill
This week we’ll have a special Arts & Entertainment edition to discuss just some of the many interesting geocultural news items in that industry. But first things first, the big news is Microsoft’s announcement that it will pull LinkedIn from the Chinese market citing ‘challenging operating’ climate. In a similar move, Harvard is moving a top…
Facebook Blackout and Indigenous Holidays
What an interesting day Monday was with an hours-long timeout for all of us from Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. I feel like I got so much more done without the distraction of my main social media outlets. This week, we’ll discuss the outage and our reliance on social media as businesses and individuals around the…
Hispanic Heritage Month
Why does Hispanic Heritage Month start in the middle of September and why is called Hispanic Heritage and not Latino or Latinx Heritage Month? We’ll find out this week in our Globalization Group discussion. Then we’ll look at a what some corporations such as Mattel (Barbie, once again!) and Google are doing in honor of…