In message 48647258@qaanaaq, Andy Hall writes
On 2008-06-26 23:22:11 +0100, geoff said:

In message , Roland Perry
writes
In message , at 16:22:00
on Thu, 26 Jun 2008, Frank Erskine
remarked:
It seems amazing in this day and age that people have to travel
hundreds of miles (indeed any miles) to physically go to meetings when
they could be 'meeting' electronically, saving loads of money and
fuel.
I'm on my way back from a week-long meeting where one of the hot
topics was how to make "remote participation" in that meeting
better, and how to conduct better teleconferences and so on in
between meetings. It is an entirely non-trivial task, and has
defeated many attempts. One of the most difficult problems is
providing translation into six(ish) languages on a teleconference.
If you have any bright ideas, I know some people who are going out
to tender with big bucks to try to solve this.

Flying to meetings is often extremely necessary when someone else is
ultimately footing the bill, it becomes a much less attractive luxury
when it becomes an unrecoverable expense coming out of your own pocket

I think that that depends on the nature of the business and the
competitive pressure as well.

Most people who are high enough up in the business world tend to
have a sufficiently high level command of English that I'm sure that
the odd occasion when there could be a misunderstanding could be
flagged up and further explanation given

Logically one would think that. I've found it to be rather
different. Certainly in large organisations in other countries it is
typical that the very top management will speak good English if the
company is a multinational as well. Otherwise they can often be of an
age where they didn't learn English earlier in life and haven't needed to.

what, you mean even older than you and me ?


People who have or have had a technical role typically do speak or at
least understand English, but those who have had a role mainly
communicating with their peers may well not

It's not uncommon to have a situation where someone at senior level
does speak some English but whose juniors speak it better. He may
then choose not to do so for fear of showing himself up.

These are situations where it is even more important to meet the people
face to face to make sure that misunderstandings don't happen before
they even start. It can otherwise take a lot of time to recover,
reset expectations and continue on track.


I think a lot of it is making excuses not to change


--
geoff