All posts by Vas Taras
X-Culture Kids: A Parent’s Reflections After Week 5
It is Week 5 of the Practical Training Phase for my children in the X-Culture Academy program (affectionately known as “X-Culture Kids”). As you know, X-Culture is experimenting with allowing children ages 9-17 to take part in its international collaboration project. In addition to 5,000 university students, 100 kids ages 9-17 passed the four-week Theory Training and…
Summer Time and Time Zones
WARNING: TIME ZONES ESPECIALLY BAD THIS WEEK Dealing with time zones is a constant struggle for X-Culture. No wonder, students in over 40 countries take part in X-Culture every semester. But LATE MARCH is especially bad. This is when countries start moving to summer time. But not at the same time. …
X-Culture Kids: Update after 5 weeks of testing
After several very busy months of recruiting kids, preparing training materials, delivering the Theory Training and, most recently, forming the first batch of “kids” teams, I am ready to provide a brief update on HOW X-CULTURE KIDS IS DOING. So, we have received about 200 applications. Some chose to participate next semester, some dropped out,…
2018 Macerata, Italy
X-Culture and University of Macerata, Macerata Italy
is proud to present
Global X-Culture Conference and Symposium, Italy 2018
Does getting to know your team members really make a difference?
We are seeing some unusually good numbers in 2018-1a. The 2018-1a track of X-Culture is underway with about 1,100 students from 20 countries in it (4,000 students to join in 2018-1b in a few weeks). Normally, peer evaluations are around 4.0 (out of 5.0) and motivation, self-confidence, enjoying the team, and clarity is around 80…
This might actually work
The X-Culture Kids program starts tomorrow – and it looks like it might actually work! We have spent the past two months developing an X-Culture program for kids. The idea is that it would be the same program that our university students go through, but the participants will be kids ages 9-17. Obviously, we’ll…
The Fear of Errors
When you have 5,000 people in the project, making an error becomes one of your biggest fears. It’s not that I feel embarrassed or ashamed to make an error. Not at all. The problem is, if you make an error, you get more than a thousand emails telling you about it. Just deleting those messages…
Challenges of Cash Prizes
As we are launching the X-Culture Academy, a children’s version of the X-Culture competition, we had to revisit the very challenging issue of the winner’s prize. X-Culture is a competition. If it is a competition, there must be a prize. However, it is much more complicated than it may seem. Here is what we tried so…
New Locations for the X-Culture Global Symposium
As many of you know, our plans to hold the 2018 Summer X-Culture Global Symposium in Colombia have been revised. Turns out, the Department of State has an active warning against travel to Colombia. Pure politics, but most U.S. universities cannot allow that their students go to a country that the Department of State has…
Books That Changed Me
Not the books I liked or enjoyed. The books that contained real practical advice. The books that, looking back, changed how I think and how I do things. But first, on my romance with books. For about half of my life, I would not move in space without a book. This habit became a true…