The Work Experience Travel Market and the IAPA Annual Conference seminar programme presents topics ranging from industry and sector specific concerns to tools of the trade educational workshops and discussions.
Delivered by leading industry experts and invited guests, the seminars target the unique challenges and needs of the work experience, au pair and cultural exchange markets.
For a look at the seminars presented at the 2010 conference, please see below.
SEMINAR PROGRAMME from 2010 show 
Wired to Care
Connecting with Your Customer
Speaker: Dev Patnaik
When: Wednesday, 17 March 2010
Time: 14.00-15.00
Introduced by Geoff Watson - President of Intrax Cultural Exchange
What’s the difference between Nike and every other shoe company on the planet? Why do some airline executives continue to insist that air travel is great when we all know better? Dev will tell the story of how organisations of all kinds prosper when they tap into a power each of us already has: empathy, the ability to reach outside of ourselves and connect with other people. Unfortunately, today’s business world has systematically driven out this most human talent, putting companies profoundly out of step with the outside world. But our instinct to care can be restored to business – and it can even be made into a widespread source of new value across entire organizations. People are Wired to Care, and many of the world’s best companies are, too.
Patnaik is a globally renowned speaker and author on "innovation." Drawing from his book, "Wired to Care," Dev will walk you through real world examples of how businesses innovate by building more meaningful relationships and creating greater empathy with their consumers.
This year’s keynote address promises to provide an engaging and eye opening look at how you can make your business prosper by doing what really should come naturally: connecting with your customer.
A frequent speaker, Patnaik has addressed leading global organisations like Nike, Google, NBC, Kimpton Hotels, and many other top companies and was recently a featured guest on "The Business of Innovation," a series on CNBC.
His articles on innovation and strategy have appeared in several publications including BusinessWeek, Brandweek and the Design Management Review.
Discover more on Dev Patnaik
More on Dev Patnaik
Dev Patnaik articles published in BusinessWeek
His company
 Dev Patnaik's new book: Wired to Care
“Dev Patnaik’s Wired to Care maps a path to innovation fueled by ‘seeing the world with new eyes.’ On numerous occasions, Dev and his colleagues at Jump helped us break through to those most critical insights.” BETH COMSTOCK, Chief Marketing Officer, GE
Buy the book
What’s Going on in Washington? 
Exchange Programs
and the Obama Administration
Speaker: Michael McCarry
When: Thursday, 18 March 2010
Time: 12.15-13.15
Introduced by Goran Rannefors - President Cultural Care Au Pair (EF Education)
Download seminar presentation as a PDF
Connecting teenagers in Kansas and Cairo; matching Muslim students with internships in America; sending 100,000 American college students to study in China. President Barack Obama and his administration have proposed some big ideas for exchanges. But in Washington’s bitterly partisan political climate, how are exchanges faring?
Michael McCarry, executive director of the Alliance, will discuss opportunities and challenges for exchange programs, like regulatory trends, and visa policy.
Speaker: Michael McCarry
Michael McCarry joined the Alliance for International Educational and Cultural Exchange as its executive director in 1994. The Alliance, an association of 78 U.S.-based organizations that conduct exchange programs of all types, is the leading collective policy voice of the exchange community. As part of the Alliance’s mission to promote policies that support exchange, McCarry has led delegations of Alliance members to over 40 U.S. embassies around the world to discuss the role of exchanges in public diplomacy and visa policy and practice.
Previously, he spent 18 years with the U.S. Information Agency as a Foreign Service Officer. He served as Cultural Attaché in Beijing in the years immediately following the Tiananmen Square events of 1989, and led negotiations to restore the Fulbright program and Peace Corps after their suspension by the Chinese government. He also served in Thailand, in both Bangkok and Chiang Mai. He speaks Mandarin Chinese and Thai.
McCarry also has worked as a Congressional aide and as a journalist.
He received an M.A. from the University of Texas (Austin), a B.A. from Notre Dame, and studied at Melbourne University in Australia as a Rotary Graduate Fellow. He recently qualified as an apprentice mahout at the Royal Thai Government’s Elephant Conservation Center.
One Goal, Many Tools
Speaker: Michael D’Abramo
When: Thursday, 18 March 2010
Time: 16.30 – 17.40
Introduced by Steve Caron - General Partner of Sindbad Travel International
Download seminar presentation as a PDF
What makes this generation of young people so unique? This session focuses on the macro trends for 18-29 year olds. Michael D’Abramo will look at demographic trends to pinpoint where they are coming from, and how birth rates, the Internet and education changes have all made this generation so unusual: Trends and data that will provide you with invaluable insight into their maturity levels and motivations for working abroad.
What makes this generation of young workers so different? In this session, we will examine research as it pertains to attraction, including how young people use online tools, strategies as well as the basics of retention and satisfaction.
The session will include a social media primer as well. We will examine the tools young people use to communicate with one another, how these tools all fit in with one another and how you can use these tools to successfully connect with your target.
A question and answer session will follow.
Speaker: Michael D’Abramo
Mike is one of the founding members of Youthography, a leading North American communications agency specialising in understanding and interacting people under the age of 35.
As a director, Mike has worked with major corporations like Carlsberg, Comcast, Nintendo and Motorola as well as several government and non‐profit organisations including the BC Government, Girl Guides and the Canadian Cancer Society. He has contributed to Youthography’s development of groundbreaking panel research in North America ‐ being among the first in the industry to use this now seminal approach and contributing to its innovative application. He also conducts over 100 research groups face‐to‐face with young Canadians every year throughout the country.
With regard to youth culture, Mike’s topic specialties include sports and recreation, media evolution, consumer technology and political behaviour. As a former high school teacher and college lecturer, he also has a fondness for education issues.
An accomplished public speaker, Mike has made numerous appearances in print, on radio and on television, including the Toronto Star, the CBC, MuchMusic and Maclean’s Magazine. He has a degree in Political Science & History and a degree in Education, both from the University of Toronto. He is also an experienced public speaker with over 100 engagements and numerous media appearances in the last 2 years.
Mike’s life‐long dream is to replace Alex Trebek as the host of ‘Jeopardy!’
We’re Not in Kansas Anymore…
Examining Culture Shock
Speaker: Dr. Gary Weaver
When: Friday, 19 March 2010
Time: 11.30 – 13.00
Introduced by Michael McHugh Program Director - InterExchange
Download seminar presentation as a PDF
When you are living and working abroad as part of a cultural exchange program, you expect to experience varying degrees of culture shock.
As a sending or receiving organisation, have you prepared your clients for the shock of living abroad in a new culture? How about when it is time to go home, are your clients ready to return to their own culture?
Culture shock is not simply the stress to adjusting to different foods or a new language. True culture shock occurs when your internalized cultural beliefs clash with those of the new culture in which you are living. Stress increases as you find that your cultural cues, expectations and assumptions no longer help you navigate your way through personal interactions. That being the case, most people do not expect to experience culture shock when returning home after living abroad. But the truth is, reverse culture shock can be more severe and last longer than it’s more commonly discussed counterpart.
Dr. Gary Weaver will explain this often overlooked part of the living abroad experience using engaging stories from his own extensive experiences living abroad and as an expert in the field of Intercultural Relations. With his hands on experience, you’ll learn tools and strategies to counsel your clients and help them to make the sometimes difficult adjustment back to their own, as well as, new culture.
Speaker: Dr. Gary Weaver 
For forty years, Gary Weaver has been a member of the faculty of the School of International Service at American University, the largest school of international affairs in the USA.
He has created and directed various academic programs including the Seminar on Managing a Multicultural Workforce, the Fulbright Pre-Academic Program, and the Community Studies Program. He has also taught courses on multicultural management in the National Training Laboratory’s (NTL) American University graduate program.
In 1999, Weaver founded and continues to serve as Executive Director of the University’s Intercultural Management Institute (IMI), a program for training executives for international relocation and multicultural management and is publisher of the Intercultural Management Quarterly.
He is a frequent speaker on topics ranging from working in a multicultural workforce to cross-cultural negotiation and multicultural childcare.
Professor Weaver received his Ph.D. in International Relations from American University with studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the Psychoanalytic Institute of Mexico and post-doctoral studies at the Washington School of Psychiatry. He is a Fellow of the International Academy for Intercultural Research, on the board of Directors of the Center for Asian Organized Crime, and he was the editor of a 2004 special edition of The Journal of International Communication entitled "Intercultural Relations." Among his publications are "This Cutthroat College Generation," "American Identity Movements," "The Melting Pot Myth vs. the Cultural Cookie Cutter," "Police and the Enemy Image in Black Literature," "Law Enforcement in a Culturally Diverse Society," "Understanding and Coping with Cross-Cultural Adjustment Stress," "The Process of Reentry," Readings in Cross-Cultural Communication, The University and Revolution, and Culture, Communication and Conflict. He recently completed a book with Adam Mendelson entitled America’s Midlife Crisis: The Future of a Troubled Superpower.
Listen to, download and review the seminars presented in 2009. |
