China and Africa

When we put a person on the ground in a particular country, he or she CAN localise for the language he knows. When this person is not part of that countries language(s) and culture(s) he is likely not to be as effective as could be.

When we put someone on the ground in a multi-lingual country, then it should be one of his/her objectives to remove all the roadblocks that exist.. Finding people to localise our software is one of the more obvious ones.

The notion that these approaches are in competition is not that wise; as we understand the processes that promote editors to edit and readers to read, it is only natural to have a person on the ground make those the priorities. Thanks,

Fair point, Gerard. Many software companies put people on the ground to understand these obstacles, as you point out. This is something that should be included as part of the boots-on-the-ground experiment.