2006 20
Stop Begging
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
I present FON twice a week on the average around the world. In the last weeks it was Taiwan, Korea, Japan and Finland. In Helsinki I ran into one of the best looking foneras, Anina who picked up on my beggar story in her blog.
What happens to me is that I get bored with myself if I tell the FON story the same way in every place, so being in Finland I figured I could express myself with more freedom than in other countries. And it was there that my presentation centered around two themes: Stop being a wanker and share your WiFi using FON’s social router and stop being rich at home and a WiFi beggar everywhere else, join Fon and travel with your WiFi signal. It worked and we are getting many foneros in Finland.
Personally, I love Europe for presentations. Somehow, for different reasons, in America and Asia I am concerned about offending people. In America sex is offensive. Yes they produce South Park and Family Guy but, somehow when I speak in America many times I have the feeling that I don´t run into the people who make those cartoons. In Asia I simply don´t know very well what can be offensive, so I am much more careful with humor. The biggest paradox was Korea. The crowd was poker faced and I thought they were totally bored with FON. And then they bought so many routers that they depleted our global supply!
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hombrelobo on June 21, 2006 ·
My experience in Asia is that you have to either know very well your audience or simply forget about jokes completely. I lived in Singapore for one year, and you have to remember if you have in front Indians (no leather gifts or beef for lunch, holiday is Deepavali, you can shake hands with women), Chinese (number 8 is a lucky number, they eat everything, Chinese New Year, many are Christian), Malay (Muslim, only halalh food, no pig skin goods, Hari Rayah and wait for the women to shake hands) or white (Europeans or Americans, with all the variables, and on top of that many are married to a local, so very sensitive towards one of the local races). And so on and on …. there is not one reality, but normally many realities mixed together, so you can have a Chinese muslim man and a Malay women with short skirt. The best way is always to be respetuous and to learn and learn and learn… and never ever let the Chinese guy choose the food !!! 🙂