hightext

Saudi blogs

As I said in a previous entry, I doubt, despite what Jeff Jarvis says, that The Religious Policeman is the only Saudi blog in town. So here are some links to the 121 Saudi blogs on LiveJournal (yes, I recognise that many Western bloggers do not recognise LiveJournal as being a legitimate blog provider - tough). Many of the LiveJournal blogs claiming to be from Saudi Arabia are yet once more, ironic American teenagers living in Podunk, others are expatriate American teens living in Saudi Arabia. But here are the ones that seem to be written by real actual Saudis (OK some of them are still teenagers) in Saudi Arabia:
khalidz0r
manfoosha
sahira
rimosa
the cool guy (who also seems to be studying Japanese)
blessedwithyou

Most of them sound like teenagers from anywhere round the world, moaning about exams, friends and their parents, but with "oh another bomb went off" interspersing the hormonal agonies.

IT in Africa

No surprises when you think about it in this article from Fortune, about using IT in developing countries, specifically in healthcare in South Africa. Current successes include Personal Digital Assistants for doctors (PCs get stolen) to access up to date information and one clinic that sends out automated text messages to patients who don't even have addresses but have mobile phones, to remind them to take their medicine. But it seems that there are still big stumbling blocks - not only is it almost impossible to get hold of PDAs in Africa outside of South Africa, governments are obstructing wireless developments by protecting national phone monopolies and of course technical support is a huge issue, particularly for open source.
But as one of the interviewees said - "Our calculation is that 84 different countries worldwide have had their IT assessed more than 10 times." So no more assessments please consultants, now we need action!

More data on mobile usage in Africa courtesy of BWCS (no permanent link to the article - look for the link on the home page to 'Mobile Starting to Take Off in Africa', dated April 29 2004).
"Mobile technology is the Information Society in Africa," says Michael Minges, Head of ITU's Market, Economics and Finance Unit. "It is a technology that has permeated more widely than any other into new areas, and we must examine how we can utilise this technology going forward, to help narrow the digital divide."

Emotional attachment to a laptop

Apparently Europeans and Asians feel emotional attachment to their mobiles, but Americans feel an emotional attachment to their laptops.

I mostly felt antipathy towards my laptop - I never seemed to get it to work in any of the ways I wanted to, as it was configured by my then employer's IT department to be nothing more than a mobile slide carousel. Also I never really bought into the idea that it was portable - especially after packing all the other bits and pieces needed to make it work. Maybe whether you travel everywhere by car or use public transport is a factor in explaining differing popularities of laptops. In Tokyo you definitely want to keep what you carry to a minimum.

Cross cultural parking restrictions

From the Sega ad campaign I mentioned previously:

Sign says parking is only for those who are renting the parking spaces.

From my neighbourhood:

Our new residents' parking zone sign.

Saudis and their mobile phones

Jeff Jarvis has found a Saudi blogger, and seems to be implying it's the first (I bet it isn't - or maybe it's the first written in English, on a 'recognised' Western blog host) but anyway, as he says, it may be "the first crack in the wall".

There's a great post on it about how much Saudis love their mobile phones. Apparently camera phones are banned but are openly on sale. This story was particularly funny:

A Saudi was giving a presentation at my place of employment. Screen, PC projector, Powerpoint, the whole thing. Then his phone rang. He didn't switch it off, he answered it. Just as well, it was his Mother! We sat listening for 5 minutes while he explained why he'd not been to see her for two days. I have to say, some of his excuses were ingenious, I'll use them myself sometime. Finally he resumed his presentation, without an apology.

It's often said in intercultural research and texts that people from Arab cultures will answer their phone whilst having a meeting because they are polychronous in their attitudes to time - nice to have a bang up to date example to cite next time I need to explain the difference between monochronous and polychronous.

Selfish sharing

Olaf Brugman highlights a factor often ignored in knowledge management - egotistical motives for knowledge sharing. We don't like to see our actions as being selfish, or acknowledging that even our unselfish actions may be governed by the hope that we will receive a reciprocal kind deed in return. I remember having some good discussions about this when studying Thomas Hobbes' 17th century work 'Leviathan' at school (for History A Level - for Brits old enough to remember those exams).

Japanese companies are supposed to be good at knowledge management and knowledge sharing. I came to the conclusion that this was partly due to the seniority based lifetime employment system - seniors don't feel threatened by juniors, so are happy to share their expertise with them. Also, as companies with such employment systems tend to promote people through horse trading between factions, faction building - finding and being seen as a strong mentor - is important, and sharing knowledge is a way of building factions.

The Japanese education system also has something to do with it - the more academically gifted are encouraged to help the less able in class. And some "Japanese Uniqueness" people would start talking about village rice farming societies and the need to cooperate at this point but I'm afraid that's where I start to lose interest. I don't see that rice farming is any less collaborative than other kinds of farming in other societies.

Too complicated for Americans?

Tom Hume says it all really about an article in The Inquirer, in which the reporter claims that cellphone companies in the US are making their handsets too complicated. I'm sure American users will eventually find uses for their multi function phones, as the Japanese did and the Europeans are beginning to.

Ear benders

I couldn't remember in a previous posting where I had seen a study on why overheard conversations on mobile phones are more annoying and intrusive than overhead conversations between two people nearby.

The survey I was thinking of isn't this one - picked up by Jakob Nielsen - "Why are Mobile Phones Annoying?" Behaviour and Information Technology, vol. 23, no. 1, 2004, pp. 33-41, by Andrew Monk, Jenni Carroll, Sarah Parker, and Mark Blythe from York University. But it proves that mobile phones are more annoying than overheard face to face conversations (although not much more annoying than loud overheard face to face conversations) and suggests that this might be due to the fact that we cannot help paying more attention to a conversation when we can only hear half of it.

The comments on Jakob Nielsen's posting are interesting too - particularly:

Joseph Thoennes writes:
The conclusion of mobile phone conversations being annoying because you can only hear half the conversation is probably correct. A similar situation arises when two people are speaking together in a language that the listeners do not understand. I've experienced this effect when traveling.
Another similar experience is when you hear music but can't place it. Once you place it, you forget it.
I think it has something to do with the pattern matching portion of the brain. Not being able to match a pattern seems to produce a vague stress leading to fear. Probably evolved as a defense mechanism.

Takoku

Sega did a series of witty poster ads in autumn last year, each with the same sticker in various public places, saying "games should be played in a games arcade" next to other official notices about recycling cans, please watch your step, not flying kites near powerlines etc. Each one is visually witty too - the kite flying one shows an octopus (both octopus and kite are pronounced "tako" in Japanese, but have different pictograms) stuck on the overhead power lines.

The poster below, which was picked up by Gen Kanai and then Joi Itoh shows the notice next to the stickers you get on Japanese trains asking people to have their mobile phone conversations outside the train. I love the over the top decorations the girl has on her bag and phone...

The whole series pokes fun at the endless 'official' messages and reminders to behave properly scattered throughout Japan - in each photo you can see that either people have completely disobeyed the notice (the can recycling one), wouldn't be able to obey anyway (the queue with noone in it, the granny on a bicycle cautioned against speeding) or have obeyed, with disastrous consequences (ashtray on fire, sink overflowing) or have simply subverted it (toy car parked in a parking space). Who says Japanese people don't have a sense of irony!

Le mot pour les fenetres

From BBC Radio 4's The Now Show (April 9th edition, about 19 mins, 27 seconds in), a sketch on the development of the Entente Cordiale between France and the UK over the decades:

"In the 1980s, French national identity comes under threat, so the French decide to develop their own computer operating system, Le Mot pour les Fenetres, featuring a little paper clip that pops up and says 'you appear to be writing a letter, can I stare at you and offer no help at all? And just force you to ask for help and then pretend not to understand and then just grudgingly shake my head and go oooooggggghhhh?' "

Global M$ Glitches and Glories

One good thing, one bad I've noticed today about using Microsoft Office from an intercultural point of view:

A. When mail merging from Outlook to Word, it seems impossible to get the job title of the person into the address part at the top of a letter - which I believe is the polite thing to do in Europe. And when you enter it manually, the wizard makes it disappear if you turn your back for a few seconds. American egalitarianism at work?

B. When writing a letter in Japanese in Word, with the Japanese IME patch, a glorious series of drop down menus for greetings, for EACH month appears, as part of the letter writing wizard. For April there is a seemingly infinite number of permutations on the subject of cherry blossoms(lovely photo from Antipixel).

SIETAR Conference (2) Remote Cooperating and Learning

Another cameraphone picture:
Tram with the former East Berlin landmark TV tower in the background, near Humboldt University, where the conference was.

Henning Zorn and Marcus Hildebrandt's session:

Managers who are good leaders worry that they will not be able to recreate this in their online personality, so avoid using information technology. The point therefore is to coach them how to do this. In fact, computer mediated communication is sometimes hyperpersonal rather than impersonal (they cite J.B. Walther on this.

A community or user group is sustained by 'dynamic data' which shows where each member has visited, what their last ten postings etc were.

The competences for being a successful e-moderator or coach are:
1. Create a successful social presence online or in other screen to screen communication situations
2. Use intercultural and transcultural approaches for learning and coaching design

1. Social presence online comes in three categories:
(1) Affective responses (emoticons, humour, self disclosure)
(2) Cohesive responses (phatics and salutations)
(3) Interactive responses (reply features, quoting directly from transcripts, referring explicitly to the contents of other peoples' messages)

Create a transculture for the virtual team by first of all identifying the cultures present (how often people go online and how quickly they respond) and coming to a common understanding.

Being a successful online coach or moderator through creating an online social presence is hard work, so don't do it for half price just because you're at your desk.

Blended (50/50 online and f2f) is best for effective learning. Henning and Marcus disagreed on whether you can change behaviours through online interaction alone.

Some of the techniques they used:
1) Teleconferencing mixed with online chat - decisions are immediately captured in the chat stream
2) Results should be written and processes should be visuals. Don't mix the two because they are processed differently. Eg don't write 'tree' and show a picture of a tree.
3) You always need a private space in addition to the public group space for talking to individuals - preferably one that cannot be accessed by their managers
4) It's good to have push (e-mail) and pull (groupware, e-learning) on a platform. If you have people that are e-mail oriented, then use mechanisms whereby when they respond by e-mail, it is automatically posted to the public space.

The intercultural stuff - lots of complicated matrices followed, apparently they will e-mail this presentation to us (later note: the presentation is here). They chose the Power Distance, Individualism, Risk Avoidance and Masculinity/Femininity Hofstede dimensions as being the keys to analysing how to adjust online learning for various cultures. Interestingly, they seemed to have misgivings like me about the validity of the Masculinity/Femininity dimension.

Some examples:

Germany - individualistic, high achievement oriented, high risk avoidance, so learning should be self directed, on -demand, peer to peer, on the job, structured, have small early wins, focused themes and a personalised approach.

For US/Denmark - individualistic etc but lower risk avoidance, so self directed, peer to peer, multiple sourcing, possible to create own learning paths, less structured assignments, self evaluation, 360 degree evaluations

Arab cultures - high power distance, high risk avoidance, significant achievement focus, so needs to be a high profile project, with champions with high status, reward completion, supervisors are involved, structured learning path, provide small early wins, clear assignments, experts' visible involvement.

SIETAR Berlin conference 31 March - April 4

First, a photo of the picture hanging on our hotel apartment wall:
(My cameraphone was not good enough to capture the full glory - it's a textured picture, of a leather clad babe on a bike)

We were staying in an apartment the hotel sublet to us, on Oranienburger Strasse, one of the most multicultural parts of former East Berlin, with a synagogue down the road (heavily guarded thanks to the Afghan aid conference that was going on at the same time) and restaurants with cuisines from around the world - we had Anatolian on the first night, Singaporean on the second, Cuban on the third.

The SIETAR (Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research) conference at Humboldt University was very unwired, and I don't mean wireless. I was checking my e-mails on my mobile, or going to the student PC pool, but I don't think anyone else was doing this, and there was certainly no blogging happening either.

I did some traditional note taking with a pen and paper during the sessions on using IT interculturally however, and will turn them into blog postings over the next few days.