Meet Josh Rashkin

At the Bonnier Mountain Group in the U.S., Josh Rashkin, 29, is a web producer interactive developer, and at Lithuanian business daily Verslo Žinios, where he is on a three-month exchange with GROW, his title is interaktyvūs web programuotojo, which means interactive web developer. "So pretty much the same name in both places, however the skill set employed in each is slightly different because the systems that we use are not the same," says Rashkin, "but, like math, the web seems to transcend language in many ways."

But as opposed to Boulder, where there's more possibility to buy and adapt existing solutions, in Lithuania things are built more from scratch, says Rashkin. And the approach is quite different as well. "The cardinal sin of e-commerce back home is to try and sell directly to the consumer, the assumption is that no one wants to pay for stuff on the web since so much of it is free," he says. "Here, with such a small population and fewer advertising dollars to go after, the products themselves are sold directly to the consumer more often than not."

The heart of GROW, however, is the people, according to Rashkin. "There is so much about this experience that I am enjoying, but far and above everything else are the people I have met," he says. "There are so many that I couldn't do them justice with anything less than a novel on each of them." From the chief web editor who has become a fast friend, to the managing director who took him on a helicopter ride to see the city from the air, to the Russian cab driver who went to great lengths to get him back a credit card he'd left in the cab, Rashkin has plenty to bring back with him when he returns to Colorado.

As for anyone contemplating the GROW experience, Rashkin has this advice: "The farther outside your comfort zone you go, the more you will get out of it, so apply to that place that sounds scary - you will love it."