Prague Journal

Friday, December 17, 2004.

We were all up early this morning, Dick to finish grading his exams and get the grades sent in on time, me to dash off to the Hilton Hotel for a conference that started at 7:45, and Rick to start thinking about math, as usual.
The Hilton Hotel, which is the largest conference property in Prague, hosted the “inaugural World Diversity Leadership Summit...the first major effort to drive thought leadership related to global corporate diversity practices.” It was hosted and attended mostly by Americans, but there were several people from other countries (and a few Czechs in attendance also). Some of the panels were quite interesting, others old hat. The opening plenary session was a panel discussion about some of the challenges facing multi-national organizations. Nancy Carter, who is now a VP at Catalyst, was one of the panelists and I was pleased to be able to see her again and to tell her how impressed I was with the research she (and others I know from USASBE) had been doing about women’s advancement and employment issues, much of which I had recently read for the book chapter I have been writing for VŠE. The most interesting panelist was Ken Dubin, who is currently directing a “public administration strategy solutions” group in Madrid. He had been a professor at Berkeley and visiting professor at the University Carlos III in Madrid and had studied the legal and political issues surrounding cultural, ethnic and gender issues in Europe and Asia. Another interesting woman on the panel was Mary-Francis Winters, who runs a consulting practice in Maryland.
The second panel focused on the role of the “Global Diversity Officer” in a multi-national corporation, which was not as interesting to me, although several people on the panel had some very interesting things to say about their companies, in particular about Kraft, Sun Microsystems, Coca Cola, and MTV Networks. The luncheon speaker was Frans Johansson, an African-American Cherokee Swede, who currently lives in New York, and has written a book “The Medici Effect,” which talks about cross-cultural innovation teams. I was not happy to miss the afternoon panel on legislative and country environments and the economic impact of diversity practices, which conflicted with the Fulbright meeting scheduled for 3 p.m.
I raced down to Zizkov to the Fulbright office, arriving late to the meeting but well ahead of most others since many were coming to Prague that afternoon from Brno, Olomoc, Český Budejovice, etc. after their Friday morning classes. Most of the one-semester people had just finished their assignments and were headed back to the US this weekend. The meeting started with a show-and-tell from all of us about what we’ve been doing and how things were going, along with suggestions for new grantees. It was nice to hear about everyone’s experiences, and to get a chance to chat. After a short bit of official matters from Hana, we went en masse, on two tram connections, toward the Poet’s Pan restaurant (U basnika panve) for a very elegant Czech meal together.
I had expected Rick and Dick to take in the town by mid-morning, they didn’t leave until after noon. Fortunately, they enjoy similar rhythms, so they had a nice afternoon at the Castle before meeting us at the restaurant for the Fulbright dinner. We introduced Dick to Hana and some of our Fulbright friends, and continued our discussions throughout dinner, and on our walk to the metro station toward home.

posted by JWinn @ 10:39 PM