X-Culture: Better Than Anticipated

Guest Blogger: David Glenister, Nathan M. Bisk College of Business student

After hearing stories about the X-Culture project in the International Business class, I was unsure how I felt about starting the project. Now, I am a couple weeks in and I have already corresponded with my teammates. This has been much more exciting than I originally thought it would be. I have found it interesting learning about my group members interests as well as their work styles. I was also impressed at how committed my group members are. Even though we are all living in different time zones, everyone has done their part to work together and accomplish our goals.

Even though we only communicate through social media platforms such as Facebook, emails, Google Docs or Whatsapp, it is apparent everyone is equally excited to meet new people and collaborate on the project. I feel this has helped make my experience much better because if my group members were not interested or hardly interacted, it would make my participation in the assignment feel more like a chore rather than a rewarding experience.

My team consists of guys and girls from the Netherlands, India, New Zealand, Colombia, Brazil, and Malaysia. We have collaborated and created a Charter which has outlined each of our responsibilities, how we are going to communicate, policies for project deadlines, and other various team guidelines. We utilized a Google Doc to write the Charter, this way everyone could simultaneously edit the document.

Moving forward, I am very interested in getting to know my teammates better as well as excited to work as a group to solve a real companies actual problem. I feel this project will help me develop real world skills such as communication, cooperation, and having to overcome large barriers to meet deadlines which I will be able to apply once I enter the workforce.