Time Travelers

If you're like me, you probably have a few tricks and tips that you rely on for what I like to call "time travel." What do I mean by time travel you might ask? Well, I am referring to how we do business today across different time zones, countries, languages, currencies and social norms.

For me, I always want to make sure that meeting times are correct - that the time I am planning to be on the phone, on a skype call or in a physical meeting room corresponds with the rest of the meeting. For the remote meetings we have across time zones, my "go to" website is TimeandDate (Edit: another site that is more accessible can be found at TheTimeNow.com)

Second, when work takes me on a plane to another country, a couple of things I do before heading to the airport:

1. Register with my country's Embassy website (for US citizens - go to Travel US State Dept)
2. Consult website of the CIA WorldFactbook for a brief overview of the place(s) that I'm going to visit to get a brief overview of history, economy, politics, and other vital statistics, etc. World Factbook

For language translation (remotely, not in person) - Google has a fast translation site (see Translate). You can plug text right into the website and there is an instant translation into the selected language (often best to consider this translation a rough approximation.)

For money - and figuring out money equivalencies, a quick currency converter website we use is Currency Converter . You can conduct historical currency calculations as well as today's rates.

Finally, social norms are covered in books like Lonely Planet, Rough Guide or best of all, meeting a GWLN member and finding out from her a real perspective of the social norms for the country/place you are headed.

Catherine (WOCCU)