Welcome to TIRG Blog...There is No App for That

Welcome to TIRG Blog…There is No APP for That.

Communicating across cultures sometimes seems like a strange landscape, littered with cultural and communication bogs, bottomless wells, impenetrable thickets and poisonous plants.  Yet we all manage to thrive in our inter-cultural marriages, go to work, interact with colleagues and friends from other countries and get by—more or less.

The name of my blog arose from my belief that it is not currently possible to consult an iPhone or Android application that will guide one through the sometimes bumpy terrain of cross cultural communication. (It would be really cool, though, to be able to open an app like the NY Times Cooking App (cooking.nytimes.com) and choose a recipe for negotiating working hours in Korea or time off in Japan, or learning how to manage domestic help in India or on a Caribbean island).

It remains one of the ironies of our time that in a world filled with very sophisticated  pocket computers, really cool cell phone apps and web pages that can translate themselves, our personal software—our knowledge, perceptions,  spoken languages, attitudes, written and oral communication skills— remain relatively under-developed and prone to misconstrual.

I plan to use this blog to share some of my experiences of crossing cultures and to reflect on issues related to communicating, interacting and working with people of other cultures. Future topics will include discussions of issues that can arise while living, working or traveling in a country other than your own as well as issues related to welcoming visitors from other countries to your home or workplace.

TIRG stands for The InterCultural Research Group.  We are a consulting company that specializes in helping people learn how to communicate across cultures. Established in Ottawa, Canada in 1997, TIRG is currently completing its eighteenth year.

Our clients are people who are preparing for working visits to developing countries  for periods of between six weeks and two years.  People we have worked with include groups of college undergraduates heading out for six weeks of agricultural work in the tropics and high school students preparing for dancing and drumming workshops in West Africa to experienced teachers on sabbatical and retired couples preparing for two year postings as technical and policy advisors and trainers. We have also provided on-arrival briefings for Indian computer nerds and African economists undertaking twelve week study tours of Canada and the US.

As noted in the profile section of this page, I am Jamieson Campbell, the owner and principal consultant of the InterCultural Research Group. Assisted by team members, I design our workshops and other learning and teaching materials.

I welcome your comments.  While I am open to a good discussion— critical or otherwise— I will not publish comments that I deem to be inappropriate due to the use of offensive language, extreme views or racial, ethnic or gender bias. That said, I plan to be as inclusive as I can be. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

The InterCultural Research Group’s web page is currently being remodeled. I’m hoping to have it ready to publish within three or four weeks. When it’s ready it will be linked to this blog.

Thanks for stopping by. See you next time.