Thang Nguyen 555

Cultures on Collision Course

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With some short-term relief work in Asia/Africa and long stint in Telecom, Thang also earned a B.A. at Pennsylvania State University. M.A. in Communication at Wheaton Graduate School, M.A. in Cross-Cultural Communication at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, Boston. In addition, he earned a CELTA – classes taken in Hanoi for cultural re-immersion.

Tag: Apple

  • Underneath is Love

    Companies outsource Y2K tech work, then while at it, their software development. From manufacturing to marketing, R&D to customer care , jobs went overseas to cut costs. Then we tout culture-building, crowd-sourcing etc… The truth is, we did not care about our customers or corporate culture. Yet, it’s culture that reinforces brand. Weak corporate culture links to…

  • Culture decoding online

    The Great Gatsby got another round of remake, this time in 3-D. With help of steady cam, we are invited into his mansion of many rooms. This should give a feel for the place and Gatsby’s desire to revenge through success. We too ,with IT 3.0-enabled, can take our “Monte Christo” acts online. For years, we were passive…

  • Jobs’ off switch

    Steve Jobs hated the on-off  switch. Perhaps more so because it was a relic of electricity (Edison) and automobile manufacturers (Ford). He did not like old wine in the same wineskin, given our always-on Cloud Service in  A/C data centers. Apple chose North Carolina as a site to store music, video and the rest of its customers’…

  • Vietnam’s outsourcing factory

    I have heard about TMA Solutions new building in Quang Trung Software Park, but I have never got a chance to stop by, until yesterday. 1,200-strong, TMA begins to look like an army of engineers (my friend and guide showed me a beehive behind the building, after we had toured their lobby where Vietnam‘s historical artifacts…

  • Team building

    I invited a new classmate to join our volleyball team. Thought I kill two birds with one stone: we could use a tall guy, and I couldn’t bear seeing him unfriended during recess. Turned out he couldn’t play well, but we got to be friends for life. We pitched in to buy a professional ball.…

  • Strange sounds, familiar shores

    Instead of “I woke up to the sound of music, Mother Mary comes to me…” like Paul McCartney, I woke up to strange sounds these days: peddlers who use “low tech” au parleur (bull horn) mounted on bicycles or tri-cycles (selling boot-legged CD‘s). In fact, it was my first time got chased by pleasant sound from…

  • Faustian bargain

    Most of us don’t face life-and-death decision everyday (gaining the world but losing our soul). Leave that to Caligula or Gaddafi. Yet, a less wealthy Syrian, whose background had been oblivious even to himself, still got some press. Steve Jobs can still sell some books. Like you, I was curious. So I browsed his biography. One snippet about Steve: he…

  • 800-GOT-PCs

    Even the machine is toast. http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2091333,00.html I remember tuning in to CNBC last year to watch Steve Jobs live. The event: the I-Pad. Steve sat leisurely on stage, showing us on-screen all the touching touchy features. The Apple II inventor inadvertently declared the death of PC (not right away, but it’s the beginning of the…

  • Chinese CEOs are (also) quitting

    You know you got it right when others tried to copy your every move. An Apple-like store in China, a Sony or Microsoft retail store in the same mall (Galleria, Houston). Steven Jobs, the enchanter, is quitting as Apple has reached its apex, once surpassing Exxon (Google also had this Everest experience). Maybe some Chinese CEOs like…

  • Marketing genius

    Charlie Chaplin would keep filming until he got it perfect (100:1 filming ratio to get the ladder to swing just right etc…). In “the Kid“, the little girl would throw rocks at windows, while our handyman walks right behind to fix them. Gillette would give away razors just to sell the blades (HP has done…