Amelia Walter-Dzikowska's wroclove.rb 2023 talk. Opens with the question 'is your office a global village?' using the IKEA-like global chain-store analogy — offices can look identical worldwide but still fail to be truly global. Surveys the everyday friction points: time zones (Poland–US; an engineer working nights to overlap with India), work and lunch hours (Poland 7–4 vs France 10-ish with a 2-hour lunch), remote work hiding facial expressions and non-verbal signals, unequal work/promotion paths when HQ stays in Western Europe and outsources help-desk/maintenance to Central/Eastern Europe, and mismatched employment conditions when opening a foreign office. Shares a personal story: difficult communication with a French project manager improved dramatically after a few days of in-person meetings in Paris — eye contact, coffee together, many small things combined. Introduces cultural-value spectra (individualism vs collectivism — illustrated by the fish-tank perception experiment and American portrait vs Japanese full-silhouette photo preference; power/hierarchy vs equality — a European manager frustrated with Indian reports' respect for hierarchy; cooperation vs competition). Language section: speaking English doesn't mean speaking the same language — walks through 'with all due respect', 'by the way', 'please think about that some more', 'I'm sure it's my fault' as indirect British phrasings that foreigners miss. Compares pros/cons of native-English teams (authentic accent, sophisticated vocabulary, but slang/Proverbs) vs international-English teams (simpler, clearer, reduces emotional and cultural layer). Warns against opaque abbreviation soup ('this doesn't look like BAU what is the POC and ETA for the fix find the RCA ASAP will it be up by EOD' — POC alone means proof of concept, person of color, or person of contact depending on context). Recommends the 'no hello' rule: write your issue directly in the first message instead of 'hi how are you'. Closes with Nonviolent Communication (NVC) as a 'REST-like architectural style for communication' that can be taught company-wide, and recommends one book on international cooperation (Erin Meyer's The Culture Map, translated into Polish, with YouTube videos from the author). Summary: travel to meet your team, learn cultural values, agree on common communication rules.