On Sep 11, 2009, at 9:13 AM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
We're not talking about culture, we are
talking about lunch. They are
human beings, the same as we are, they have the same needs when it
comes to food.
This, in fact, is one of the great fallacies of international
organizations. Failure to notice and work within the context of
cultural norms condemns an organization very quickly. In Italy, I was
far more likely to take business partners to long elaborate meals than
I would be in California. Please, can we at least acknowledge that
it's not as simplistic as you present it here?
It is that simple. If we were talking about having lunch with people
outside the Wikimedia movement, it would be different because we have
to comply with what they expect. We can expect people within the
Wikimedia movement to change their expectations to fit what is best
for the movement. It is not best for the movement to be spending money
of their lunch when they are perfectly capable of getting their own
lunch (as evidenced by the fact that they would be eating if they
didn't go to the meeting). Either buying Wikimedian's lunch is a good
use of money, or it isn't, culture doesn't factor into it.
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