Intercultural sites

In "The voice of choice", in the current issue of Business Spotlight, you'll find recommendations for blogs on a number of different topics, including intercultural communication. I think that as people get more used to blogging — I’m learning my way too — there is a lot of potential for the blog as a medium for sharing perspectives on different cultures.

At the moment, there are also a number of more static, traditional sites on the internet that you might find useful if you are interested in intercultural issues, especially in the business context.

For facts

You might be surprised to hear that one of the best sites for purely factual information about specific countries is kindly provided by the CIA. It's known as the World Factbook.

For general information

Some commercial providers of intercultural training are using their sites to give tips on doing business with other cultures as well as providing information about their courses. Generalizations about behaviour can be misleading, as they don't take into account the situation you are in, but some of the sites are still very useful. They are:

• www.kwintessential.co.uk
  
• www.executiveplanet.com
  
• www.cyborlink.com

For professionals

If you are an intercultural training professional, I think you’ll find two sources indispensable. These are: 

• The sites of the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research:
  www.sietar-europa.org and www.sietar-deutschland.d

• The highly informative site provided by the Delta Academy: www.dialogin.com

• A publisher specializing in books on intercultural matters: www.interculturalpress.com

These are just a few sites that I personally find useful; if you find any other blogs or sites that you like, I would like to hear from you.