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: Facebook

  • The tough gets going

    Steelers‘ number 33 and 34. Back to basics. One yard at a time to Super Bowl. On the field or off it, we have to retrench and defragment. USA Today cover story features “the faces of today’s unemployed”, showing a nuclear family, sitting in the back of  the family pick-up truck, with two beautiful young…

  • Green Fields are gone

    The camera panned jerkily (watch You Tube) as the Four Brothers sang away their classic hit, Green Fields. The comments section was led by “I miss my papa, this was one of his favorites”. The Greatest Generation, and now the Boomer Generation, are slowly but surely fading away. Gone with them are the many lessons…

  • Facebook prosumerism

    We have put in long hours, uploading, editing, “friending”, texting, in-mailing, posting, commenting, searching and even reading up on and seeing a movie about Facebook. A recession distraction? or tip of the iceberg in what is finally Personal Computing and Networking? At least, computer finally “think” out of its “computing” box. Now, it’s about lifestyle…

  • I want my Skype call!

    By now, we all know about our right to make a phone call when being arrested. That phone call usually is placed from a pay phone (soon to be a museum piece). Skype has been down (and slowly back up to full speed), and 26 million users worldwide felt the pinch. VoIP. Conversation chopped into…

  • A Face w/ a name

    A few years ago, TIME’s Person of the year got a face with a name. In fact, he manages to drag in a billion faces and names with him. The last time someone wearing pajamas in public yet got that much publicity was John Lennon (who invited the press into his honeymoon suite). Mark was…

  • Filter builder

    Building up our filtering capacity does not mean firming up our prejudice. But no matter what we do, we can only watch an average of 4 hours of TV and a few hours on the Web, mobile or stationary. So we rely on thought leaders. Two-step information flow. Except this time, information flow through a…

  • Act 2

    At the gym, I couldn’t help notice two guys with Mountain-Dew T-shirt. We can still have “black swan” scenario in our life time e.g. the US rises again from the depth of deficit (muscle memory), or someday a Hispanic president will seek a M&A with Mexico (will not be the first time the US offer…

  • Time to read

    There is a time to listen and a time to read. That time is now. At lunch or in line. The WSJ runs a a picture of an “early adopter” (old lady wrapped herself in a good book, digital that is). For her, what a lifetime that was: out of the house to go to…

  • Contagious innovation

    Last week, I installed a new Search engine (w/ a slash). Today, there is a whole new browser altogether. Rockmelt. It does improve Facebook quite a bit. Steven Johnson calls this phenomenon (of one bright idea led to another), the adjacent possible. It’s like my New Year resolution of hanging out with positive people to…

  • Against the tide of commoditization

    In Selling Professional Services to the Fortune 500, Gary Luefschuetz warns against mix and match people and rates of various service tiers, which will compromise the rate structure. In short, swim against the tide. IBM got it. Cisco follows suit. And HP is moving in that direction. The Economist takes an in-depth look at IT…