InterNations Blog

Hmm, who twinkled me last night? Was it my friend from Moscow, who’s become so busy at her job that I haven’t heard from her in weeks? Or the fellow skiing enthusiast I recently chatted with at the latest local Get-Together? Was it one of them who also sent me a PM? Get the answers to these questions simply by checking your e-mail inbox.

Thanks to our IT team, the first stage of our revised email notification system has now gone live. According to those InterNations members who’d like to keep informed about their contacts and communications, they would also prefer to receive longer notifi- cation e-mails. Therefore our notifications for private messages, contact requests and twinkles now include the full name of the person getting in touch with you and the entire text of what they wrote. Full-text notifications for our official InterNations Events will be coming soon.

Filed under: InterNations on February 25th, 2010 | No Comments »

Since we highlighted a few of January’s most popular or outstanding events in the last blog post, our many dedicated Ambassadors around the world – and some extraordinary community members who offered their support in finding a venue and organizing a get-together – certainly did not remain idle. In Hong Kong and Lisbon, they celebrated the new Ambassadors who had decided to join their respective team; the ladies in Singapore and São Paulo treated their guests to an evening in a stylish setting evocative of nostalgic 1940s and 1950s décor or in a truly lovely bar with a breath-taking view; and the InterNations events in Amsterdam and New York City were dedicated to charity fundraising, either to disaster relief in the wake of the recent Haiti earthquake or to the AFS international scholarship foundation. In the middle of all the commercial glitz surrounding Valentine’s Day, this was another way of showing some lovin’. And, to come back for a moment to the last entry, we would also like to point out that there’s now even a short video from the previously mentioned Les Diablerets InterNations Skiing Trip available on You Tube.

Filed under: Events, InterNations on February 18th, 2010 | No Comments »

Even though the year is still relatively young, our Ambassadors all over the globe can already take considerable pride in their achievements. In the last two weeks alone, they organized far too many events worldwide to list them all here: Not only did our more general get-togethers in well-established communities such as Vienna’s Shanghai-style bar night and Munich’s “beat the winter blues” indoor beach party or fast-growing locations like Lyon, The Hague, and the Rhineland do extremely well; but the more specialized skiing mini-break in Les Diablerets attracted sportive InterNations members from Geneva, Bern, Zurich, even Paris and London: More than 100 people gathered for a fun weekend in the Swiss Alps to enjoy skiing slopes, romantic sleigh-rides and cozy fondue evenings togethers.

Moreover, we were very happy to hear that the Zabgreb Community got off to an excellent start at their first meet-up (an international pub night) and will be connecting global minds in Croatia from now on. What surprised us most, however, was the completed unexpected success of an international dinner in Kabul, of all places. We’d like to give a special shout-out to our Ambassador Pat Hawkins for his decision to bring together about 20 guests for an intercultural expat evening in Afghanistan’s strife-torn capital.

Filed under: InterNations on February 1st, 2010 | No Comments »

After the disastrous earthquake in Haiti, many people are left without their homes, without food, water or medical care. Many of our members have made forum posts about disaster relief or asked us directly how to support the people of Haiti. We recommend our users to support our Charity Partner AFS International with donations.

AFS in the Dominican Republic and their partner, the Fundación Parque Cibernético de Santo Domingo, have decided to act decisively to provide relief to Haiti in the aftermath of this devastating natural disaster. They are in a unique geographical and strategic position to channel your donations where they are needed most in Haiti, a scant few hundred kilometers from the AFS office in the capital city of Santo Domingo.

AFS in the Dominican Republic has cooperated in the past and will now work again with the Jesuit relief organization El Centro Fe y Cultura Roberto Bellarmino. El Centro works together with more than 14 schools and social services in Haiti, and has been doing so for the last 15 years. As such, its staff is uniquely positioned to make sure that 100% of your donations will be used to alleviate the suffering of the Haitian people.

Make your contribution to AFS International now.

Filed under: InterNations on January 22nd, 2010 | No Comments »

Starting in January, quite a few new colleagues have joined us at InterNations headquarters here in Munich. Soon we will have to expand our office space to accommodate us all.

In the areas of community management and business development, Nathalie, Stephan and Evamaria are offering us their joint support. Nathalie, who graduated with an MBA from the University of Augsburg, will act as a Manager of International Relations to take care of our local communities in the Americas and Asia-Pacific, their growing memberbase and social events. Having previously lived and worked in Granada, London, and Vancouver, she obviously loves travelling and counts skiing, tennis, and rollerblading among her other hobbies.

Stephan and Eva, however, will only be with us for a number of months. While both of them have already gained impressive international experience, from vacation work in Colombia over internships in Madrid and Paris to studying in Mexico, they are still enrolled in degree programmes: Eva’s reading international business in Nuremberg, and Stephan is preparing for his master’s in management at the London School of Economics. As interns, they will be involved in implementing internal controlling measures as well as various marketing and branding activities. They, too, are probably glad about the recent onset of extreme weather conditions all over Germany: With their interest in snow-boarding and ice-skating, they can at least appreciate the sudden frost.

“Behind the scenes”, two former free-lancers are now part of the product development team as full-time employees. Lukas — a martial arts enthusiast with a bi-cultural German-Czech background — and Dima from Ukraine will provide us with their graphic design skills and their PHP coding experience, respectively, to keep improving and enhancing the features and look of our online platform.

And maybe, since the wintersports fans now definitely outnumber the odd “couch potato”, we can make up for what the rainy days of December denied us and get to know each other better during a tobogganing afternoon in the Alps.

Filed under: InterNations on January 14th, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Established in spring 2009, the relatively new website Planet BPM — Berlin – Paris – Madrid in bits per minute — seems to be an interesting complement to InterNations. With a European rather than a global approach and a younger target audience, its blog and its community focus on students and entry-level professionals who move freely between various European metropoles: Spending an academic year in a university exchange programme, speaking several foreign languages fluently, or applying for an internship abroad is business as usual for lots of twenty-somethings from Vienna to London. If you would like to meet other young, mobile, urbanite academics or if you need to exchange more information on living conditions, especially for students, in Europe’s hotspots, then BPM might be the ideal site for you.

Filed under: Websites on November 30th, 2009 | No Comments »

As our most recent global partner, we are proud to welcome the International Herald Tribune on our site. The traditional broadsheet is firmly rooted in the history of the U.S. American press and its news coverage abroad. Its illustrious 19th century forebears could boast listing one Karl Marx as their foreign correspondent from London or financing adventurer Henry Stanley’s expedition to East Africa in search of the lost British missionary and explorer David Livingstone. Today, the International Herald Tribune — now also the global edition of the New York Times — embraces its prominent position as one of the most widespread international papers. The reports and analyses of politics, business, society, and culture all over the world are read in about 180 countries.

If you, too, want to better understand the fast-changing globe of the 21st century, you can make use of their special offer for InterNations members: Save 50% on the usual cover price and enjoy the free forwarding service to your local address, wherever you are. If you would like to find out more about the International Herald Tribune and this unique opportunity, just have a look at the InterNations Partners Lounge.

Filed under: InterNations on November 26th, 2009 | No Comments »

Unsurprisingly, the Event Calendar is one of the most popular parts in the InterNations webspace. To make it even more user-friendly and give it a sleeker, clearer look, our IT team has been working on a major coding effort. The event entries are now boasting a new layout with improved navigation and usability for event organizers and attendees alike. The guestlist – which seems to pique everyone’s curiosity – is also about to undergo some big changes. You can already see all nationalities of the diverse crowd at a glance, but the list will soon emerge as a multimedia picture gallery. So you may look forward to our release of more great improvements!

Filed under: InterNations on November 24th, 2009 | No Comments »

October has been quite a busy month for the InterNations team: After a brief stint in Chicago, where Worldwide ERC, the biggest global workforce mobility association, held their annual symposium for interested service providers and researchers, we were also well represented at New Horizons 2009: At this conference, our partner ICUnet.AG assembled influential companies and experts in the field of intercultural management from all over Europe.

We are very grateful for the unique opportunity of introducing our vision to a wider audience in the keynote speech, of attending informative lectures on topics like innovation in a global crisis, and of participating in some best-practice workshops on strategic business development or global ideas for international assignments. This quick refresher course in the myriad challenges that HR departments and their expat employees have to face has certainly provided us with new perspectives on the needs of our own expatriate memberbase.

Filed under: Events, InterNations on October 29th, 2009 | No Comments »

This day holds a special occasion for all of us in store: In mid-September 2007, exactly two years ago, InterNations.org went online, and a brand-new virtual community saw the light of day. In the course of the past 24 months, the niche networking site geared to expatriates and other people interested in international mobility and foreign cultures quickly grew into the biggest social community available to Internet-savvy expats everywhere.

From our humble beginnings, when family members, friends, former colleagues and business contacts of the founders flocked to the site in order to share their own expatriate and globe-trotting experience, we have been constantly developing the network into a highly professional, top-quality online platform: We have been vastly expanding our memberbase, adding numerous new features (InterNations “veterans” might, for instance, remember the days before there was even an event calendar), and improving the general user experience.

We also introduced official InterNations Get-Togethers in many locations, ran last year’s Summer Reward Program, began a successful and ongoing cooperation with several renowned Partners, and we relaunched a completely redesigned site in spring. So we may justifiably pride ourselves in our achievements: InterNations now features more than 120,000 members coming from and living in virtually every country around the globe; our Ambassadors organize monthly events in over 100 cities worldwide, which approximately 55,000 guests have attended and enjoyed. For a small start-up company, whose team still fits into ca. five office rooms, that’s an excellent reason to feel like true high achievers and networking pioneers and to pop out the champagne.

So, in anticipation of tonight’s event(s): Congratulations, InterNations!

Filed under: InterNations on September 11th, 2009 | 1 Comment »