Nine specialised workshops at International Government Communication Forum

Nine specialised workshops at International Government Communication Forum The ninth edition of the International Government Communication Forum, IGCF 2020, to be held on 4th and 5th March, at the Sharjah Expo Centre will host nine workshops targeting students, journalists, photojournalists and government communication employees. Bringing together 64 leading global thinkers, top government officials and communication experts from the Arab region and around the world, the region’s leading forum on government communication is centred around four key pillars: Embedding a culture of engagement in government; Technology as a community enabler; Communication through culture; and Holistic well-being. The nine workshops at IGCF this year follow on from its vision of enhancing government communication in the UAE and the Arab world and developing communication channels between governments and communities. Day 1 of the event will commence with two training workshops for students. ‘Innovation in the field of Government Communication’ will enable participants to create distinguished government communication programmes and activities and develop their skills in drafting impactful government communication messages. ‘Analysing Communication Research Data’ conducted by Dr Ahmed Farouk, Faculty Member at the Public Relations Department, College of Communication, University of Sharjah, will introduce participants to the tools and methods of analysing data…

IGCF 2020 to focus on advancing skills of communication professionals, students

IGCF 2020 to focus on advancing skills of communication professionals, students The robust agenda that forms the framework of the ninth edition of the International Government Communication Forum (IGCF 2020) to be held from March 4–5, at the Sharjah Expo Centre will host nine workshops targeting students, journalists, photojournalists and government communication employees. Bringing together 64 leading global thinkers, top government officials and communication experts from the Arab region and around the world, the region’s leading forum on government communication is centred around four key pillars: Embedding a culture of engagement in government; Technology as a community enabler; Communication through culture; and Holistic well-being. The nine workshops at IGCF this year follow on from its vision of enhancing government communication in the UAE and the Arab world and developing communication channels between governments and communities. Day 1 workshops Day 1 of the event will commence with two training workshops for students. ‘Innovation in the field of Government Communication’ will enable participants to create distinguished government communication programmes and activities and develop their skills in drafting impactful government communication messages. ‘Analysing Communication Research Data’ conducted by Dr Ahmed Farouk, Faculty Member at the Public Relations Department, College of Communication, University of…

How the English language’s disproportionate influence skews global narratives

No one questions English’s status as the world’s go-to language for business, tech, tourism and academia, but that popularity has also made it disproportionately influential on news. In a chapter of Hostwriter’s Unbias the News: Why Diversity Matters for Journalism, journalist, writer and managing editor of the Global Investigative Journalism Network Tanya Pampalone looks at how English’s prominent status can lead to skewing of entire narratives. We break down an excerpt of that chapter published for GIJN and look at how this inequality also means missed opportunities for interactions between the non-native and non-English speaking world, creative or otherwise. By the Numbers Kai Chan, a distinguished fellow at the INSEAD Innovation and Policy Initiative, put together the Power Language Index in 2016, which measures which languages in the world hold the most influence based on five key factors. (G)eography: countries spoken, land area, tourists (inbound) (E)conomy: GDP, PPP, Exports, FX market, SDR composition (C)ommunications: Native speakers, second-language speakers, language family size, tourists (outbound) (K)nowledge & Media: Internet content, feature films, Top 500 universities, academic journals. (D)iplomacy: United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Supranational Organizations (SNOs). Based on these factors, Kai presented the world’s top 10 languages, their respective number…

Interview Kai Chan & María Ortega García

The below is an interview I did for the 2019 edition of LangFest (a polyglot conference) in Montreal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr79TLO2bX8 Kai L. Chan Bio: Dr Kai L. Chan is a Distinguished Fellow at INSEAD. Previously he was a special adviser to the UAE federal government on competitiveness and statistics, where he focused on that country’s positioning on global performance indices. Prior to his stint in the UAE, Dr Chan served as an associate and the in-house economist for a consumer finance merchant banking firm in Manhattan. Before that, he worked in the Singapore office of a global management consulting firm. Chan’s expertise/research cover education, income distribution, migration, government & policy, and performance measurement. He is the creator of the Power Language Index, Gender Progress Index, and Intelligence Capital Index. Dr Chan holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto and PhD from Princeton University. Kai grew up in Toronto, Canada, but currently resides in Montreal. He speaks English, French, Cantonese, Mandarin and German, and is currently learning Russian. Kai L. Chan, PhD est chercheur («Distinguished Fellow») à l’INSEAD. Il a été conseiller spécial en compétitivité et statistiques auprès du gouvernement fédéral des Émirats arabes unis, fonction dans le cadre de…

WEF: AI-powered automation will have an ethnic bias

Kai Chan Distinguished Fellow, INSEAD Innovation and Policy Initiative The Fourth Industrial Revolution, with artificial intelligence (AI) as one of its principal drivers, promises big changes. AI automation is expected to lead to, among other things, large disruptions in the labour market. A 2013 Oxford study estimated that almost half of employment in the US is at risk of computerization. Similarly, a 2017 McKinsey report suggests that by 2030 one-third of work activities could be displaced by automation. Some countries, industries and professions are more susceptible to these risks, which means these changes will lead to redistributive effects. That is, AI is expected to lead to increased economic inequality both across and within countries. But this is not the first time that a technological revolution has threatened jobs and to upend society. The First Industrial Revolution generated similar concerns and was the catalyst of the "Great Divergence" in cross-country incomes; nations that industrialized became rich, while those that did not were left behind. The gap has grown with each successive jump in technological progress. Although AI automation will bring about significant productivity gains for society as a whole, it will nevertheless spawn winners and losers. Economists usually speak of such…

LangFest: Dîner LangFest: Kai L. Chan

The below is an interview I did with the LangFest organisers. Le dessous est mon interview avec les organisateurs du LangFest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn_2piPkaK4 #LangFest19 #LangFestConferenciers www.kailchan.ca Кай Л. Чан

PAW: Measuring mobility

A letter to the Princeton Alumni Weekly (PAW). July 10, 2019 (Volume 119, Number 15) The article on economic mobility (Life of the Mind, May 15) seems to confuse economic mobility with economic growth. Most economists measure economic mobility as intergenerational movement along the income-distribution ladder (rather than by absolute incomes). That is, to what extent do offspring track their parents’ position on the income distribution ladder at similar age profiles. The fact that 90 percent of children born in 1940 ended up earning more money than their parents was a result of a post-war economic boom whose gains were broad across the population. That only 50 percent of those born in the 1980s earn more than their parents is largely because median income has stagnated since about 1980 in spite of growth in average income, due to increasing income inequality; i.e. growth has been mostly captured by the elite. Yes, economic mobility is lower now than before, but this is expressed through what economists call the income beta: how well an offspring’s position in income distribution is predicted by their parents’ standing. A higher beta (lower mobility) — what we see now relative to the past — means (broadly…

The 10 best languages for business

Savvy business owners understand that there is a multitude of opportunities in targeting foreign audiences. After all, native English speakers only make up 4.9% of the global population. But translation strategy is more than producing your content in various languages and sending it out to the world in hopes of attracting new audiences. A plan for prioritizing the languages you target will lead to quicker returns and better efficiency. First, if your research shows that you have a strong demand in specific locales but haven’t yet translated your content for them, then you have some low hanging fruit to pick. But what if you’re launching a new product or you’re already established your in primary foreign markets and aren’t sure where to target next? In this post, we’ll provide the ten best languages for business and why you should consider targeting them for translation. The Most Useful Languages for Business When researching which languages to target, a common approach is to focus on the world’s most popular languages. While this is a good starting point, it fails to consider cultural and diplomatic factors that directly correlate with the translation ROI of a language. Dr. Kai Chan of INSEAD has published a report that tackles…

Exploring the world’s top power languages

The dominance of English worldwide as a lingua franca is well documented, but there are other languages that can also afford their speakers more power than others. Speaking a language can help you unlock a host of opportunities, whether it’s to travel overseas or perhaps connect with another language group in your own country. Some languages have the ability to unlock more opportunities than others, and speaking certain languages can positively alter an individual’s life prospects quite dramatically. So how do you measure the power and importance of a language? One obvious way to do that is to count how many people speak it. But that’s less helpful than asking who speaks that language. Languages gain power if they are used by powerful groups, whether that’s measured in economic, political or military terms. In colonial countries, it’s common for a small language group to dominate over a much larger language population. So the number of people speaking a language is less important than the power that group holds. Sharing a language with a relatively powerful group empowers the individual and tends to open up a greater set of opportunities for them. Measuring power in language The Power Language Index (PLI)…

Ces 8 pays affichent de meilleurs résultats scolaires que la France sans dépenser plus

BUSINESS INSIDER FRANCE Chisato Goya 24 Mai 2019, 14:23 NB: Text below changed from article to reflect that spending on education is expressed per capita (par tête), not per student. https://www.businessinsider.fr/classement-pays-meilleurs-resultats-scolaires-que-france Dépenser plus ne garantit pas forcément de meilleurs résultats. Cette affirmation est vraie dans différents domaines, dont l'éducation. Kai L. Chan, professeur émérite de l'INSEAD Innovation & Policy Initiative, a classé différents pays en fonction du retour sur investissement en matière d'éducation et a partagé les résultats de ses calculs dans un article publié sur un blog de l'école. Il en ressort notamment que les Etats-Unis sont le pays qui dépensent le plus d'argent par étudiant en études supérieures ce qui n'empêche pas, dans l'ensemble, qu'ils ne soient classés qu'en 42e position pour le GMAT, un test standardisé en anglais qui permet de mesurer les compétences jugées importantes pour l'étude du management. Selon des chiffres fournis par Kai L. Chan à Business Insider France, plusieurs pays ont obtenu de meilleurs scores au classement PISA (évaluation visant à tester les compétences des élèves de 15 ans en lecture, sciences et mathématiques) et au test GMAT par rapport à la France alors qu'ils disposaient d'un budget public par étudiant inférieur à…