Ever going challenges; language and gender

It is easy to guess that language translation is critical to communicate to our clients.
That's big challenge for sure, in particular this kind of voluntary work.
We are volunteers, we are not to stop because they don't speak English.


However what about gender difference?
Ever imagine what difficulty the gender consideration in UAE will bring if it is such important?

What happens if male customer wouldn't take a car a female drives?
What happens if female customer doesn't want to take elevator with my male college?
What happens only female is preferred to make presentation to female students?
In addition to it, what happens if the presentation is arranged by male professor and if I don't have male colleague to follow him up?

These two, language and gender elements, are consistently challenges so far.

Go forward with keeping old belief

Although 'modern government' may be not long ago, their belief has been old enough to be a heritage. It can be seen the everywhere in UAE how hard they try to keep the belief against push of global uniformity.

Something visible like their clothing might be just part of the intransigence. Yes, way of clothing  itself deserves to be respectable; It's unimaginable for visitor like me to wear the long cloak and to cover from top to bottom in the humid hot weather of summer. However their efforts for the belief are every corner of life; from daily food like meat and alcohol, to the dazzling world leading venues.

They know they cannot stay forever in the desert with Bedouin spirit, so they built the man made city on the desert, they know they cannot keep the city running without people who produce, service and goods consumed, so they open the border to strangers and goods. Different belief comes along with them.

What newly came in challenges genuine; woman treated differently, individual comes first group, man and woman inter-wound without marriage, dismantled family in daily business etc. It is understandable what the leaders of their community might see through. And that worrisome makes the signpost of dress code and behavioral guidance put on the glass door of Dubai Mall - world largest shopping mall in Dubai.

Mall courtesy policy: No kissing or overt display of affection.

I wish their belief is preserved.
At least if some change is made I wish the change comes from themselves.

Full of tension and curiosity: kick off

Ironing blade edge on the pants, tightly closed jaw, full paying attention.
Yes this is kick off.

International dinner @ Deira City Center, Dubai

CSC UAE1 team sat together for dinner after long walking in old Dubai. We were hungry and exhausted but kept high spirit.



*14 member of team from 8 countries, 4 continents:

2 from Australia
1 from Austria
1 from Belgium
3 from India
1 from Italy
2 from Japan
1 from Swiss
3 from US

They are already establised; focus group interview with students of UOS;

First focus group interview was arranged with 2 hours notification. Although team was able to just manage to make it done it was too good to let go for perfect preparation. Thank to the school staff, we could meet around 50 young medical students in the auditorium style class room; widely spread seats and two folding screens for presentation. Female students outnumbered as we were introduced by many channels.

After overall introduction, I faced 6 of female students;l young, bright and focused.
Questionnaires went through as they are prepared; their awareness of the e-government services, its experiences and any difficulties if there were.

A bit of surprise was all of them have quite level of conceptual understanding of 'e-services', not only as web or internet but also as a social innovation and expected consequences like money, time, convenience etc. It seems they may have already well established level of  acceptance for any form of e-services and it is clearly a big challenge for the upcoming e-government services.

That means that just transforming services into e-services may be far behind from their appetite. It should be attractive to them with innovative form; they are already well exposed to FaceBook and Twitter and Mobile Apps ( they said 80% of students have smartphones; school IT said it is around 50%). Unless the new services are as attractive as those SNS, it may be hard to appeal to them.

Symmetry: W11 and M11

Sub team 3 comes to have a well equipped project room in the basement of this magnificent building. By centering this building left wings are women's school and right wings are men's school. Building M11 reflects a men's building and W11 is for women's one.

Except some commonly used resources they are very much symmetrical.

Slow engaging

If we want to learn a western culture about service purchase that might be clear separation of role between service provider and service receiver.
Also there is a bit of social norm that underpins the role and responsibility from both sides.

For example, that's house owner's responsibility to remove a furniture that blocks water pipe otherwise the plumber doesn't work or the owner will have no bargain price. So The contractual specification is very clear and usually most pre-work tends to be done before real work engaging. No wonder they think entering contract is a sort of finishing and a moving next.

In eastern culture, making a contract is considered a type of starting. It means we start now. So contractual obligation is hardly supported by its responsibility. And it sometimes contributes to weaken service provider's negotiation stance.

We had project kick-off yesterday and are supposed to meet counter clients today. A bit of slow engaging might be inevitable.

Stages of small-group development: must-have

 "forming," "storming," "norming," and "performing

Yes, we firstly met as a team today. I feel some assumptions and per-perception breaking away by all means.
However it seems we are also going through the development stages whether we'll pass them over quickly or not. Then some individual characteristics are factoring in; accepting uncertainty, takings risk, facts oriented or thinking oriented, etc.

That's fine. As a baby becomes grown-up if it needs to go stage by stage, so be it.
But the team all seems  keen on pulling themselves back when needed.
That's enough as today forming.

Touch down desert city.

14 hours flight brought me Dubai, the city built on the sandy desert.
Thankful modern technology allows air passenger to over look the ground through the camera on the beneath of the aircraft. Yes we call it desert. But very different desert from Arizona or NT . It is real sandy desert.
The first aired in smells sandy and sandy dust sky outside.

First or business class air service doesn't end at the immigration check point. There is fast lane for those passengers.

Now road to hotel, I am originated from 70's developing country. I am familiar with these massive constructions every where. Here is quite reminding that.
On the wide yellowish flat block of area, one thirds are tall buildings, another one thirds are half erecting buildings, last one thirds are high cranes twice as tall as next buildings. Enormous dust and sweaty workers. Very rare in betweens.

The driver says it is Friday, weekend holiday, so traffic is good.

Mosque is everywhere. It is said ine should be in 5 minutes walking distance for every Muslim man. All men are supposed to go and pray 5 times a day. So not unusual to see a single standing mosque in the flat construction block with no other buildings.

PS: No wonder to see a quran instead of a bible in the hotel room.

E-government service promotion

Our in-country assignment is a marketing type project;
- how to promote e-government service to university students in Sharjah,
- how to enrich the distribution channel to them.
- how to remove roadblocks

Many market variables are already given; demographics, ages, socioeconomics, etc.
Therefore more micro level marketing will be applicable.

I am opt to apply the norm; put yourself in their shoe.

By the way, revisiting a Philip Kotler's so famous Marketing book.

Graceful pausing

You will know how modularly performed your work has been when you pause it and switch to another.
The better designed and modulated, the more delegate will be made. Means less pain.

It was very hard to carve out for delegation, or reducing dependency.
Some tasks are still swirling in the brain.
It may depend on your job but mine becomes obvious with just a month away.

How to look to them?

Just to have some idea for clothing outside in Sharjah, I searched for Youtube video last night.

1. I guess i am allowed to wear short sleeve t-shirt. I thought all need to be long sleeve.
2. Maybe my clothing is having a bit of color although I usually wear plainly. That's because they are more sand friendly people near desert? :-)
They wear more plainly than I for sure.
3. Woman attire was much more non-traditional than I expected. They look quite modern. Niqab is hardly seen in the clip
4. Many expatriates are on the street. I won't be outstanding too much

In conclusion, I may be bring more business like clothing but not too much worry about it as long as i am able to mix to them.

PS: i haven't seen their shoes. That might evidence they just wear long pants. Maybe.

Bedouin hospitality

That's beautiful.

As it is said, olden days in the desert, even a fugitive or runaway was taken into majlis and treated as a guest of honor for OBLIGATORY three days.

People out there must be patient and endurance.

What they will bring?

14 members from 9 different countries across globe have prepared to to go to Sharjah. Before knowing what exact assignment waits for us, we studied what cultural differences mean, what implication it will throw.

Now a week away from real going, it's full of excitements and little nervous.

But that's ok. How come such an new endeavor can be smooth? We are ready.

Building impression of UAE

From some time ago, I found myself cautious to use term 'impression'. That's because building it is largely based on some assumptions that may be distorted, non-factual and wrong belief.

However when something new comes to you it's inevitable that an impression is built regardless your intention. So you try yourself to root on facts like observational facts.

I chose a book for building it. It's not general lonely planet style tour book.
Its audience is clearly those who will interact with people out there and do more than sight seeing.

I hope I am not falling into the author biased impression.

DOT: Digital Opportunity Trust

Clearly they are new form of NGO to me. They help IBM's corporate social responsibility (CSR) activity by playing a pretty much outsourced way.

They are expert for CSR. They seems to be able to;
Design it, align with the client ( in this case IBM), link to the demand ( Sharjah government In the case), perform it ( as a advisor for the action), harvesting it ( for next CSC activity of IBM ).
In that sense they may not be a totally new form because it retains all the competencies an excellent outsourcer does.

A company (including IBM) cannot be the best in CSR as much as they are in their field. It may be impossible because it is not their core competency. DOT is a good complacency for the company in that sense.

I know many of corporate world contemplate how to engage into society. Rather than getting their hands dirty directly, maybe hiring an expert firm is good alternative. Particularly if you are a new kid in town.

Continuously sunny Sharjah

I've been following the weather of Sharjah for a while. Not every moment but since i put the city next to Sydney, hardly ever seen it rains out there.

Not exception today. Always yellow with sunny small icon on the phone.