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Loading ...In response to Saul’s recent post, “Conversational Marketing and Language Barriers” and the subsequent discussion on internet culture, one of our readers, Mark Foreman, of aconnector.com asked if we here at Abraham Harrison LLC, are “typical Americans that expect the whole world to speak English”, the kind that “repeat the words much louder when the locals don’t understand you”. As I thought about how best to answer Mr. Foreman, it coalesced in my mind how amazingly international, cosmopolitan, and multi-lingual Abraham Harrison is, and thus, why it is so natural for us to communicate sensitively and effectively regardless of what internet subculture we find ourselves in conversation with.
We are a company of 15 people stretching across 14 time zones, and living in five countries on four continents. We are of four nationalities and six ethnicities.
Among us we speak not only English, but Spanish, Afrikaans, German, French, Hindi, Swahili, and Arabic. I don’t know all the countries that our people have lived in, but they do include the US, UK, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Liberia, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia, Germany, Spain, and Egypt. I don’t really know all the many countries our people have visited, but off the top of my head, I count 56.
In this highly international, intercultural, interlingual company that is Abraham Harrison LLC, we meet on the internet and operate primarily in English - and we live our daily lives both on and offline within the constantly morphing cultural boundaries that is our modern cosmopolitan world. It is our normal daily life that we order lunch in German while phoning with a client in English, then pause to ask a friend a question in Spanish - and navigating in real time the cultural switches that go along with communicating with an Austrian, a Canadian, and a Colombian within the span of 10 seconds .
Equally, and in a similarly cosmopolitan and adaptable fashion, we comfortably and naturally move between online communities of Ivy-League professors, Latino youth, snarky gamers, and growling no-BS New York businessmen - each of these groups has as unique an inside culture and as much protocol that we must carefully respect, as any culture defined by geographic boundaries or national language. It is this ability to comfortably, naturally, and sensitively move among cultures - both in the online and offline worlds - that make us here at Abraham Harrison so effortlessly able to communicate effectively wherever our clients need us to. We are cosmopolitans in the fullest sense, and the sensitivity and adaptability we employ in our daily lives and as we move around the globe for business, pleasure, or family, we bring to bear intuitively in our online conversation marketing.
15 people, 5 countries, 4 continents, 6 ethnicities, and 8 languages between us. That’s the team at Abraham Harrison. It makes me very proud of our company.
Filed under: Abraham Harrison LLC, Collaborative Intelligence, Internet Culture, Online Communities, Online Conversation, Real Life, Remote Work, Virtual Company, Virtual Team
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Mark was just over my house tonight. He’s a great guy, really knowledgeable, funny, and full of insights.
Michael
I’m sure he is - and I’m very pleased he asked the question as to whether we are “typical Americans”; it gave me a chance to note what an amazing and incredibly cosmopolitan bunch of people I have the pleasure of having in my company!
Good stuff-that should enable you to have a much richer level of conversation with many more people. I love ignoring boundaries myself.
Well, sir, you’re no slouch yourself!