Porada to Jones at ChaCha Search

INGO PORADA 韻 悟

鳳 雷 多

POSTFACH 11 02 45, 97029 WÜRZBURG, GERMANY telephone: + 49 931 45462765 (fixed) & + 49 152 01371640 (mobile) |

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Mr Scott A. Jones 1150 West 116th Street Carmel Indiana 46032 United States of America

1 March 2011

Dear Scott, I am addressing these lines to you in an endeavour to explore how I might make a contribution to your company ChaCha Search. It was during a scholarly commitment of mine at Meiji University’s Institute of Humanities in Tokyo, some seven years ago, that I have first learnt of ChaCha Search. At that time, ChaCha Search still had a web-based chat functionality, which I have myself found very rewarding to use on a number of occasions. In the intervening years, my own professional development has taken me in turn to India, to South Africa and to Germany, where I am now still based. During that recent period, I have become a mostly self-taught specialist, innovator and professional coach in the publishing field , and I have developed a particular interest in the dynamics and trends of the ongoing integration between the traditional media and the new media on the one hand, and - on the other hand - the hardware and design developments in which those processes are reflected.

At one stage I have applied to ChaCha Search, from South Africa, to become a ChaCha Guide, but was thereupon advised by one of your colleagues that such opportunities are open only to United States residents. I have immediately queried that information and policy with your colleague on the ground that, especially for a task of this very nature, such a geographical proviso runs counter, altogether, as much to the aspiration of the media and technologies on which the ChaCha concept is piggy-backed, as also, even more profoundly, to the spirit of knowledge-sharing itself, with which ChaCha identifies categorically, and which eo ipso is not exclusive. Your colleague sympathised with my sentiment and analysis and undertook to bring it directly before you for your personal consideration. (Incidentally, I was surprised to discover recently that the new SMS-based ChaCha platform even does not process questions from outside the United States either!)

Since then I have awaited that the thread of this communication would be picked up again from your side - i. e., perhaps by your colleague with whom I have corresponded initially - but I imagine that, as ChaCha Search has subsequently been transformed from a web search service to a mostly SMS-centered answer service, my enquiry has perhaps lost actuality before the background of your new priorities in that context. At the same time, though, I have learnt that

a letter of 1 March 2011 by Ingo Porada to Mr Scott A. Jones ChaCha Search has lately advertised positions for content moderators / strategists / analysts with a background in languages and humanities, and I am therefore today making contact with you again, with a view to finding a new basis for cooperation with you before that background.

In the first instance, thus, I may now introduce myself a little further by highlighting, with reference to my here hyperlinked resume, some especially noteworthy stations in my academic and professional development. You will observe that, while much of my previous work has been in the field of education, that dimension of my career was only contingent upon my more widely-scoped and advanced media, editorial, research, academic consultancy, public relations and project management work. Over the past fifteen years in particular, I have become very active in editing, writing and materials development work – for newspapers, journals, general publishers, as well as corporate publicity operations – and also, as I came to be based in different countries and continents, and to be active in different milieus, in applied research in the area of cultural diplomacy.

Of my consultancy assignments and study commitments over the years, I consider those in which I was repeatedly engaged in India to be the most significant not o nly in themselves, but also for the subsequent career initiatives of mine which they have spawned. For example, one dimension of the modern media ‘scene’ at which I have hinted above, namely the dynamic integration of print forms and digital forms not only on the technological plane, but also, which I consider to be a far more momentous aspect of this tendency, in terms of the ontological status of their content, is now the backbone of a publishing and media instruction initiative of my own, whereby representative short works of literature will be made available online with hyperlinks to current news, as well as to promotional content of a commercial or / and cultural nature from their own settings, from which then a social networking process with an educational emphasis, and involving local institutions, would proceed. In this connection I would like to direct you to this small video clip, wherein I talk about my media and educational work somewhat more generally.

To conclude with a few words on the scope that I see for a cooperation of myself with ChaCha Search specifically, I can say that I would gladly support you in existing processes of the service, and I would equally gladly work with you in developing and adapting it for possible presentation within changed parameters, for example integrated with other services or / and targeted at different audiences, perhaps extending beyond its present geographical purview. I am of course willing to relocate to the United States. At the same time, the ChaCha service is indeed so uniquely suited to ‘internationalisation’ - not only by way of content, but also logistically - that much work could be done online. In this latter respect there might well be a potential for developing a cooperation not only between ourselves individually, but - on the corporate level - between ChaCha Search and German companies that are active in similar fields, such as SMS Guru, Netzclub, Mach Connectivity, et c. Not only could I offer inputs in such a possible context, and would be pleased to negotiate for you with a possible German partner, but - further - public funding, as well as industry sponsorship, could perhaps be attracted to such an initiative.

I am confident that you will find my lines of interest. Meanwhile I remain with thanks for your attention and looking forward to receiving your valued response.

Yours sincerely ii