Today (12th December 2013), Hanze University of Applied Sciences (UAS) hosted another successful event in its facilites at Zernikeplein, Groningen, the Netherlands. "Meet your IC Future" as mentioned in my last post, is an event targeting the 1st year students of Hanze's International & Intercultural Communication undergraduate course which aims to provide some insight about what students can expect upon graduation in what regards their professional life.
It is relevant to remark that this was the second time I received the prestigious invitation to be a speaker there. I believe "Meet your IC future" is a very good initiative because it proved once again that students are indeed curious about what they can do in the field of International Communication.
When we start a University degree we are full of doubts, uncertainties whether or not we have chosen the right road, what it is really about, if we will be successful in this profession and so on. Evidently, I approached what to expect from the course itself, how is the job market and what skills to develop. But also it is key to find out whether they like the course & profession or not. That is why I had an important message I repeated for all students attending one of my three afternoon sessions today, which was:
"Do things that make you smile. Find out if you are really passionate about International Communication, culture, networking, socialising. Because you will be doing that for the decades to come of your lives and it is really important that we do things that we like, we got to be happy!".
I think my message was well received and correctly decoded by at least some of the students. One of the students came to me after the last session and said that he felt I had truly spoken from my heart. Like the Dutch say: "Ja, dat is waar!". I truly did! I am passionate about communication, people and culture. That is something I genuinely love. So I am actually happy when I have to work. It really makes me smile :)
Getting back to the title of this post... Hanze and Sharism philosophy. For those who have lived the 1990's and early 2000's a lot were told at that time about the Information Era, how information was all-powerful and how important was to have it secured in order to create some sort of information capital. It is evident that information is still very important. However, the perspective has considerably changed.
Nowadays, it is all about who is more shared, liked and followed. We are living the #Sharism Era. The more we share, the more we are shared and, consequently, the more we are, indeed, important in the digital world. But to be liked, shared and followed you have to be relevant. It is all about creating relevant content for your conterparts in the social sharism universe. It is about the person who shares, how it is shared and to whom the information is shared.
It was so pleasant to see people coming all the way from the South of the Netherlands and even from Germany, leaving their jobs on an end-year time where everyone is busy. But they came. They came to share, to share with young minds that in a few years will be part of the international communication industry.
It is central for us - junior & senior professionals - to share the best practices and talk about the skills required to be a good intercultural public relations professional, this way we are directly contributing to the development of the communication world.
As I mentioned in my last post, professor Geert Hofstede in his lecture at Hanze UAS, last November, pointed to the main characteristics of a world-citizen. I do believe a good PR professional working in an international scale do require to be such a citizen of the world.
I would say Hanze UAS is in the right direction stimulating the sharism philosophy through their digital University world where students & teachers can interact and exchange assignments/reading materials/grades through a state-of-art intranet.
On top of that, the well prepared staff behind the International Communication course makes events like "Meet your IC Future" which clearly demonstrates how important it is to share - and they do find people that follow the same line of thought... as I do and the many other professionals that took the nearly the whole day off to share!
On top of that, the well prepared staff behind the International Communication course makes events like "Meet your IC Future" which clearly demonstrates how important it is to share - and they do find people that follow the same line of thought... as I do and the many other professionals that took the nearly the whole day off to share!
Many thanks to Ellen Koen and Hanze UAS for the opportunity of sharing & for the gifts. I love Dutch hospitality!
~ and keep on smiling :)
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