This is a Backstage Pass interview of Renee Blodgett, Co-Founder of Traveling Geeks and organizer of the trip to Paris for LeWeb, in December, 2009.
Renee writes at DownTheAvenue.
[Photo at left is by Beth Blecherman.]
Communicating in a networked world
This is a Backstage Pass interview of Renee Blodgett, Co-Founder of Traveling Geeks and organizer of the trip to Paris for LeWeb, in December, 2009.
Renee writes at DownTheAvenue.
[Photo at left is by Beth Blecherman.]
This is a Backstage Pass interview of Tom Foremski, from Traveling Geeks at LeWeb in Paris, December, 2009.
Tom writes at Silicon Valley Watcher.
[Photo at left is by JD Lasica, from the London 2009 trip.]
This is the first of my Backstage Pass interviews from Traveling Geeks at LeWeb in Paris, December, 2009.
Amanda writes at TechZulu and is happy to strike up a yoga pose almost anywhere (not in this video, but in the Traveling Geeks Flickr photos).
[Photo at left is by Rodrigo Sepulveda-Schulz (CC)by-nc-sa, one of the geeks on the Paris trip.]
It’s time to pick up your backstage pass for the Traveling Geeks tour. As the “geeks’ geek” I have the enjoyable task of herding the last few animals into the barn before the tour actually takes place. This means (primarily) that I’m handed the web site a couple of weeks before we take off and I make a ton of last-minute additions and adjustments—and have to debug various processes, sometimes over and over. For the Paris trip there were some new and interesting twists because of changes taking place in the social media scene. So let’s go behind the scenes with my recollections and introduction:
In my teens, on two different occasions, I spent a few months living in each of two countries (outside my native US), learning the predominant language and picking up the culture. Every once in a while it smacks me in the face that this makes me significantly different from many people in the US.[1] And it often affects how I react in both business and personal situations.
In northern Mexico, as a teen, I learned first hand how teenage boys functioned in a society that was moving from poverty and religious conservatism to modern urban life. In Québec City (Canada) I studied at the largest French-speaking university outside of France, and learned the pride a community takes in its native language and culture.[2] And I became aware of some of the movements working to preserve the language.[3]
So when one of the Traveling Geeks became somewhat stuck to the tar baby of how the French are going about world brand-building all wrong[4], I um kinda felt it in my gut more from the point of view of the French than the American. Robert might be right about what has to be done to build a world-wide brand, but maybe these companies weren’t about building world-brands, at least at this moment. [Read more…]