A Day in the Life: Global Misfits
Posted on Wed, Oct 21, 2009
Nathalie shares her thoughts on the business empathy in the midst of Localization World...
Tonight was a typical day in the life of a Global Misfit. I was at a fabulous event hosted by Lionbridge at Localization World (full disclosure, I am totally biased here, remember who I work for) . No matter how many years pass in this industry, I never cease to be amazed by the eccentric company I'm lucky enough to keep.
We celebrated in a great bowling alley space and the party was, at least on the surface, not unlike any other Silicon Valley conference... with one rather notable exception, in the form of an army of global citizens we had the privilege of hosting, such as:
- The Peruvian (photography hobbyist) from Adobe who moved here with every intention of going home after grad school and never left.
- The start-up CEO from New Zealand who speaks perfect Spanish (seriously, hardly any accent at all!) with a slightly South American flavor despite having lived in Guatemala.
- The Argentinian from Cisco who lived in Colombia, speaks Portuguese and likes to argue with his colleague from Cameroon about soccer and who beat who in the last world cup.
- The sales guy with a Southern drawl, who lived in Spain, sold industrial agricultural shipping containers in Guayaquil, Ecuador, now lives in DC and spends a week a month selling into Apple & Cisco.
As I walked around the room full of the wild cast of characters, I was reminded of an article I read yesterday on
Noreena Hertz. In it she says she believes "in a globalist agenda, but globalization isn't just allowing companies to trade freely all over the world. It's about what rights and responsibilities come with that."
And I couldn't help but wonder how one might go about bottling the collective wisdom in tonight's room full of multilingual, global misfits. If it's true that you have to walk in another person's shoes to truly have empathy, then no one understands better than this group, the rights and responsibilities that come with globalization. Most have lived it first hand, and live it every day.
And at the end of the day, reaching people in the global market is - at its very core - about connecting and understanding people's culture, language, and tastes... which is what empathy is all about, right?
All that to say, I realized tonight, I'm in the business of empathy! It's not about going global, it's about getting local... and empathy is the key to doing it, and doing it well.
Peace.