Category Archives: X-Culture Stories
EXPERIMENTS WITH BOOSTING RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY This summer, we have tested three different ways of boosting research productivity. In June, right before the AIB conference, we ran a 4+3 Day Research Xackathon: https://x-culture.org/2018-research-conference/. It was a full-flagged Silicon-Valley-style hackathon, where we basically locked ourselves in a lab on a university campus (UWLX) for several days and did non-stop…
The Payment Challenge
Have you tried paying to or receiving money from 40+ countries? X-Culture receives payments from about 40 countries: universities paying for participating in the project; students registering for the X-Culture Symposium. Sometimes students don’t get a visa to attend the symposium, so we must issue a refund. Here is what I have learned so far:
Simone Dell’Oca to stay with X-Culture for 2 more years
VERY GOOD NEWS FOR X-CULTURE Simone Dell’Oca has received a full scholarship to do his MBA degree at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and will stay with X-Culture for two more years. Those who don’t know, Simone has been X-Culture’s Admin for three years. RECRUITMENT: An X-Culture Admin must have a very long attention…
X-Culture As a Client: An Unusual Experience
I had an unusual experience a few days ago. X-Culture was a client of a student project team. For all these years, X-Culture has been in the business of recruiting thousands of students around the world and, with their help, solving problems for companies. In the process, the students learn how to work in international…
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,…
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…