The World is Shrinking!

With the world becoming more global than ever before, it’s no surprise that advances in technology have spawned great successes in connecting and sharing communities from everywhere imaginable. Collaborators from all over the world share ideas together in ways never before imagined from big to small. A conversation between China and Florida, speaking of events happening in Europe. Australia video chatting with Spain, showing each other products originally made in Canada. These are occurrences that happen every second of every day. Historians used to call the “The World Shrinks” period when explorers traveled the earth, colonizing new lands and bringing brand new cultural influences to each other – but it could be argued that these days, the world is shrinking faster than ever.

Whether it’s music, science, sports, education, news, or any interest, people from all over the world have found new ways to share them. Bands like OSI collaborate on their music worldwide between Turkey and New York. European soccer leagues contain brothers in arms from Africa, America, and Argentina simultaneously. In the world of online gaming, it’s not uncommon to see Brazilians, Koreans, Americans, and Europeans teaming up to take down a computer-powered baddie.

Each of these instances, even though they are broadly different, contains the exact same absolute core philosophy – they are multinational, multicultural collections designed to come together to accomplish a common goal. They have realized the strength that diversity brings, with different perspectives and insights to share. The differences present in this diversity only prove to make a stronger alliance, exploring unique perspectives and creating entirely new shared perspectives. When cultures interact in ways they do, the world permanently changes. People become closer than ever before, they learn new things and drastically different perspectives enter their mainstream. To them, the world seems a little less expansive than before – and a little smaller, a little more familiar.

At OurPangea, we want to help inspire that same sort of global connection to you. We want to inspire you to seek out someone far across the world, and share with them the handshake of global friendship. We want to help you feel like the world is getting smaller, because you have explored the mysteries that intrigue you, and everything that used to be so far away is now immediate, familiar, and right in your backyard. We want to create this global community, individualized for you and you and everyone, so that we can better help to understand, connect, and share with our peers – whether they are streets, cities, nations, or oceans away from us. Because if our world shrinks enough, and we find such great diversity within the world community we now call our backyard, we will discover that the world, as small as it is, is still bigger than anyone could have ever possibly imagined.

From You To All Of Us

Culture means a lot to us – but not just “us” as in OurPangea, but to everyone. It means a lot to you, it means a lot to everyone who’s ever lived. Whether it is in sports or music or travel, education or food or fun, everyone has their own personal expression to contribute to their culture. It’s the expression of our innermost thoughts, feelings, desires, and emotions. The most beautiful thing about art is that each work of art, each song ever sung, every game ever played has a deep emotional core that resonates with anyone willing to open their heart to listen. Sometimes that’s the best way to speak – it is the universal language, after all.

That’s why culture is so important to us at OurPangea. Every expression you make is a little window into your life, and what you bring to your community. We want to help you make your culture, and share it with your community and your world. But it doesn’t stop there – you will also be able to experience art and culture from the world over, bringing people from nations afar into your backyard, and bringing your backyard across the world.

Your art, songs, and games can connect in whole new ways with others – maybe even collaborating using OurPangea to create totally new types of sports or music, or finding new places to travel. You can educate yourself about others, discover new restaurants, and find new ways to have fun you’d never have thought of before. With OurPangea, we want to find a way for your personal expression to create a world that you can work and play in, surrounded by those who share in your innermost thoughts, feelings, desires, and emotions. We want to set a path for you to connect your culture with community, and connect the community’s culture inside of your own. It’s our own way to express ourselves. Our big dream is helping you to create yours, and to share it with the world. We want to be the springboard for your ideas and the inspiration for your creativity, so that you can share your culture with us and the world to follow.

Using OurPangea Within Our Small Communities

Among the easiest ways to construct a community is by sharing a living space. This can be abstracted all the way out to cities, states, and nations. But it’s not uncommon also for smaller communities to be the most saturated with thriving culture and identity. With OurPangea’s innovative system of networking hyper-local communities, these shared living spaces can connect and interactively these individual cultures together.

I grew up in a small neighborhood called Lamar Park, just off the edge of Corpus Christi Bay, in South Texas. My neighborhood consisted of friends, pets, families, events, adventures and everything one could ask for in a small community. We had community Christmas caroling, 4^th of July barbeques, garage sales, carpools, and much more. We created our community based on our shared living space. Every community in the world has the same story. Each of them has created their unique cultures and traditions based on the communication and connection of the people within them.

But a neighborhood is only one way of sharing a living space. More structured living spaces with offices and front desks would have the perfect opportunity to utilize the community organization OurPangea brings. An apartment office could coordinate its communities for the events and social gatherings they hold and the notices they send. Residence advisors could use OurPangea to connect and foster an environment of collaboration for students. An apartment complex or a university residence hall could quickly use OurPangea to create a sense of belonging and networking to the residents within by sharing their common ground with one another. In all cases, OurPangea acts as a springboard for community discussion, gathering, and connection.

The foundation of any community starts with a shared characteristic among its members. OurPangea’s organizational system will organize its communities by these traits, helping individuals come together and share in these communities. Neighborhoods, apartment complexes, and residence halls are the keystones in OurPangea’s vision. By creating communities of shared locations, shared interests, and shared topics, we will create “neighborhoods” that transcend our traditional notions of what a community should be, while at the same time bringing together and sharing all the communities that are.

Collaboration and Multiculturalism in Problem Solving

Even though we take great pride in our country’s rich history as a “cultural melting pot,” birds of a feather can still tend to flock together. Collaboration, the act of working together toward common goals, is one way that we as Americans can really benefit from our nation’s diverse history and customs.

When we work together, whether it is in school, at a community event, a volunteer organization or at work, we are often teamed up with people who come from different backgrounds and life experiences than our own. As many of us know, this can sometimes lead to disagreements, but more often than not, it can lead to unique and well-rounded conclusions that would have been far more difficult to reach on our own. In openly discussing and collaborating on a task, challenge, project or issue with several people at once, we are given an opportunity to see things in a new light. We just have to go into these discussions with open minds and open hearts.

Working together with a group of people often allows us to get to know those people on a much more personal level than we would have otherwise. In discussing issues facing one’s group, we can gain useful insight into who our partners are and how they see the world. These discussions can provide powerful insights into our group’s members’ values, perspectives and personalities. It is insights such as these that can lead to the most complete and perspective solutions to the tasks at hand. It can be difficult to reach such conclusions without a certain degree of diversity in a collaborative effort.