Students of International and Corporate Management program at the InCulture Fest-2020 festival: the inside view

14:20, December 3, 2020

International cross-cultural festival InCulture Fest-2020 has been held for almost a month between 12th October and 6th November and gathered 23 students of 5 educational programs from 7 countries

This year the festival was dedicated to cultural characteristics of countries selected about which participants should have told in a five-minute presentation. In the final of the festival seven teams presented the international jury with beautiful videos.

It was the first time when the festival took place online that made the organizers make some changes. For each team a tutor was assigned. Every day the festival participants listened to online lectures of tutors about how to create video presentations and improve communication skills. In the final stage, experts from BeBrand Advertising Agency held a master class for participants; they told about innovations on the market of high-quality video content production and gave some tips on how to grab your audience attention.

Bachelor students of the International and Corporate Management program and Master students of the International Management program took part in teams presenting Azerbaijan, China, Vietnam and Indonesia. Within a month together with foreign students and students of other educational programs they had an opportunity to practice their cross-cultural communication skills and communicate with experts.

An eventful month of the festival is behind. The results are summed up, and we asked our students to share impressions to find out how the festival has been like for participants directly.

Nga Nguen, Bachelor student of the International and Corporate Management program, the Vietnam team:

«What did you remember most: “For me it was a good chance to practice English while we were recording a voice track for our presentation. Generally, it’s difficult to highlight only one thing: I liked the atmosphere of the festival and teamwork. Of course, it’s unusual that everything was online. For instance, the final conference was conducted via ZOOM and the quality of video was not so high. I would change the format a little bit. It’s not the first InCulture Fest for me because earlier I had participated in this festival in the nomination for “Dance” but it was interesting to try a new topic».

How were the roles in a team assigned:

«We tried to assign roles so that all members of the team had an equal amount of work. At the third stage, when we wrote content for video, each member did his own part and then presented to others to receive comments from every member of the team and make adjustments. In the result all members should have approved the final version of the video».

If you were the member of the jury, to which team would you give a victory:

«I would choose our team. We tried and wanted to win».

Sahila Nabieva, Bachelor student of the International and Corporate Management program, the Azerbaijan team:

«What did you remember most: “I was fond of the master class from Be Brand. Firstly, it’s an acquaintance with the company for me and it’s really plus for my speciality. Besides, I learned a lot of useful information.” 

How were the roles in a team assigned: “There was no clear distribution. I initiated the participation in the festival and offered girls from other programs to take part. But later all of them supported the idea with great enthusiasm. We really enjoyed both the participation and the festival although we missed live interactions with other teams».

If you were the member of the jury, to which team would you give a victory:

«Honestly, I don’t know, I liked all videos».

Zhang Xianyang, Bachelor student of the International and Corporate Management program, the China team:

What did you remember most: 

«I appreciate the opportunity in itself to tell people about the Chinese culture. I hope guys from other teams got deeper understanding of my country thanks to the festival and hope we succeeded in conveying this in our video».

How were the roles in a team assigned: 

«I was responsible for recording and audio track editing which was supposed to be overlaid on the video. But in general, we had the leader, Ju Yun, who coordinated the work of team members». 

If you were the member of the jury, to which team would you give a victory: It’s hard for me to choose.

Participants have told about cultural characteristics, traditions and mentality of different countries in their final videos. All these videos are available on YouTube Channel of InEU — a perfect opportunity to feel the atmosphere of the festival, rate all videos and compare your choice with the jury choice. It is worth noting that the jury gave the victory to Azerbaijan team.