X-Culture: Getting to Know You

Guest Blogger: Nicolas Clerc, Nathan M. Bisk College of Business student

Hello, my name is Nicolas Clerc and I am a native from Buenos Aires, Argentina.  I am a senior at Florida Institute of Technology, and currently, I am participating in The X-Culture Project for my International Business class. I am also a member of the men’s tennis team at Florida Tech. I have a strong interest in this project because we are given the opportunity to learn and understand different cultures around the world and are able to interact with many successful individuals and their companies. As part of this project, I am a member of a group of seven other classmates. My team members consist of people from around the world, such as; The Netherlands, India, New Zealand, Colombia, Brazil, and Malaysia. Spending time with them has allowed me to gain an insight to their cultures as well. Having many international team members as a part of my group will prove to be beneficial as we continue with this project. My favorite part of this project is being able to learn everyone’s background—where they come from, their way of living, their traditions and hobbies, etc. Our first communication came about via email. We exchanged email with each other and then decided to use Facebook and Whatsapp groups as our primary means of communication. In our first meeting, we discussed our team name ideas and compromised on ‘The Concept Crew’. For our second meeting, we reviewed our weekly availability and discussed potential meeting times that would best fit into each of our schedules to work on and complete the assigned tasks for our project. This class is inspiring me to work hard on all aspects of this project and effectively communicate and collaborate with the all the members of my team to produce a high quality final product. This project will take a lot of time, but I believe that my team will come together and reach our goal of winning this X-Culture Project. X-Culture Project is a great way to not only gain experience for the near future, but to learn about other cultures from all parts of the world. The only problem we are having is the time difference. For example: When it is 8 a.m. in NY, it is the middle of the day in India, or near 6 p.m. in Malaysia. Even though this is a huge challenge for our group, I do believe that we will succeed and make it together. So far we have communicated very well and we plan to keep making steady progress.