A Full First Day!

I came home today and thought "wow, this did not feel like a day off of graduate school!" :-) I am overwhelmed by what I learned over the course of the first day. In my doctoral program, I spend a lot of time doing research and looking at the theoretical side of things so it was SO much fun to learn more about the practical side of the field.

I started the morning off the morning in the "Fun, Function and Fundamentals" session. To be honest, I was attracted to the session party because "fun" was in the title and I always need some fun first thing in the morning. This was such an excellent choice because of the great training techniques introduced through the workshop. It is interesting to see how a room full of training professionals navigate through training activities. My favorite activity we did was definitely the one where we were all given different photos from the Istvan Banyi picture book Zoom and asked to put them in order without showing anyone else in the room. We honestly, struggled as a group and due to time constraints, did not get to finish the activity how it was fully intended. Despite being cut short, the process of learning was excellent and I can see so many ways to implement this exercise with various groups.

After learning training exercises, I headed over to “Intercultural Communication, Business Negotiation and Promotional Effectiveness” with the hope of learning more about communication guidelines when working with culturally diverse climates. The speaker was engaging and provided extremely vivid examples of failed promotional strategies to further drive home the point. It reinforced to me the importance of diversity training in any international organization! I do not see how successful business can be conducted without sending an employee with the proper “tools” that are learned through these conversations.

Lunch was great and I’m not just talking about the food! Hearing Dr. Tromenaars speak was an opportunity I feel lucky to have experienced. After reading so much about cultural dimensions, it was interesting to hear his perspective of how it is not about the difference between values that is important but about where they are connected. I also appreciated his association between values and good leadership practices. Dr. Tromenaars is an amazing scholar and I look forward to reading more about his ideas and how I can implement them into my research.

After lunch, I attended “Intercultural Knowledge Management in Global Organizations”. I chose this session because it was something where I felt like I could truly learn about a topic in which I had little knowledge. I was extremely enlightened regarding how much my knowledge increased in the short time of the session. Although I was a little confused by the concept at first, after some time I was surprised how I had gone so long without understanding how important sharing knowledge is in the workplace. I most enjoyed hearing how other conference attendees speak on their experiences with this topic and their practical applications in the workplace.

To wrap up the day I attended “Extending the Reach: The Convergence of Technology and Cross-Cultural Training”. My research interest pertains to intercultural interactions and electronic communications so this session was of the upmost interest. The speakers provided an interesting case study currently being implemented with intercultural training of soldiers in the US military. I found the program to be wonderful and am extremely intrigued with learning more about topics like these! This session was the perfect end to a perfect conference day! I look forward to seeing what’s in store for tomorrow.