NewWOW’s fifth symposium was held July 13 through July 16, 2008 in San Jose, California. We explored the impact of culture on best practices for distributed work groups. Our keynoter was Professor Pamela Hinds of Stanford University, who also wrote a research paper on the subject for the Symposium. Her research helped us understand how culture could affect perception and acceptance of distributed work practices, and by implication, whether different work practices would be needed when distant teams included people from different cultures.
In addition to panels, breakout sessions and deep discussions, the attendees were treated to a personal tour of Dr. Renate Fruchter's new PBL laboratory at Stanford University. PBL in this case stands for Problem-, Project-, Product-, Process-, and People-Based Learning. At the PBL Laboratory, multidisciplinary, geographically distributed teams work on projects.
The final day of the event was devoted to NewWOW committee reports and membership business. Three committees reported their project status. These were:
- Sustainability Calculator Team Progress
- Benchmarking Committee
- CEO Guidebook Project
