culture clash

Day 3 - May 23 - 6:20am
up & awake already...
mo will have korean with pom
so nice...

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seems lots of jokes about people of different countries

someone said: xxx used to have one big group for europe, middle east & africa
now xxx have two, the beer drinker and the wine drinker

another said, he's from the south but he drinks beer too, only cold beer
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the sponsor has been spending much time in europe
and he spent a year working/living in spain
and he said, he has never seen a meeting starting at 8am... as many people don't start dinner until 10:30pm... :)

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and many more...
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in the ap team, the aussies have lots of "air time"... :)
not a complaint, just a fact... :P

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and the event showed what happened in 2002
in fact, this event is more about networking than training
and it's more about intergration after acquisition of a s/w firm, rather than pulling the xxx folks together

and then there are jokes about xxx, which i heard before
acronyms, processes, etc.
"leverage"... a new joiner (individual, not from the acquired firm) said he heard and used that often now...

and our peer services leader G said something which was very familiar
i meant someone said before... :)
like don't ignore, processes won't go away because of you, get help to work around, etc.
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and then chemistry between my services unit and the peer services unit
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and between global team and geo teams and region/country teams
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and product roadmap
"any milestones shown here in the past won't change..." (something like that)
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how could we justify such a event?
someone said it's easy
it won't work if it's training
and it's not training
it's about integration and retaining people
the potential loss of 5 employees can justify the event... :)
good math
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why madrid?
short answer... some place special
long answer... it's one of the 5 places chosen
incl disney in france (which gave very short lead time for decision and u know what, the giant elephant can't move that fast...)
and comparing cost, etc.
it's not in ap as there are less people flying if holding the event in europe
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seems like a long way for people in ANZ (especially NZ)
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not easy to communicate in english...