Big Brother – and millions of television viewers - will be watching every move of a group of outgoing, yet house-bound South Africans again in January 2014. M-Net announced that its proudly local brand, Mzansi Magic, will produce another South African edition of Big Brother, and this time the show will aptly be called Big Brother Mzansi.

At the official launch of the Qatar UK 2013 cultural programme in December, the talk was of mutual understanding of Arab Islamic and Anglo-Saxon cultures, building bridges between the two nations, and aims of long-term partnerships in the fields of education, sport, science and the creative industries.

The Empowering Women and Girls through Sports Initiative aims to increase the number of women and girls involved in sports. From June 17- 27, the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) will bring ten teenage field hockey players and two female coaches from Pakistan to the United States for an international sports exchange. This program builds on the U.S. global commitment to advance the rights of women and girls around the world.

We saw how well the concept worked in Cairo at a critical time in Egypt's history, and we hope to be equally effective here. The partnership emerges from the core mission of the Open Hands Initiative, a non-profit organization that supports unique projects around the world that promote what its founder and chairman Jay Snyder calls "people to people diplomacy." Snyder, a successful entrepreneur and philanthropist, is a passionate practitioner and generous supporter of public diplomacy who will join us later in the journey.

As Israel engages in a tumultuous debate over what to do about African migrants, other conversations, more personal and friendly, are taking place between Israelis and asylum seekers. As part of a social art project called Sihot Mitbah (Kitchen Talks), which takes place every weekend in Tel Aviv, African migrants give cooking workshops to groups of curious Israelis.

From June 16 to 23, the city of Shanghai will be host to the 16th annual Shanghai International Film Festival, an international platform for foreign filmmakers to connect with audiences in the world’s fastest growing film market. The festival’s main programs will include an awards ceremony, a professional film trade gathering of international producers, distributors, and buyers, a forum featuring lectures by industry professionals, and international film screenings.

Both efforts need to bring us into the 21st century by also allowing our foreign service to use social media. If the foreign services of our U.S. and European allies can use the tools of public diplomacy – to blog, tweet and speak out in support of their national interests – why can’t we? Today’s foreign service long ago embraced the tenets of guerrilla diplomacy, exchanging pinstripes for a backpack.

This soft-power deficit could prove a big headache for the new Chinese president because there is increasing international concern, suspicion and even outright hostility as China's international role expands. In the U.S., for example, the public's favorable attitude toward China fell by more than one-fifth in one year — to 40 percent in 2012 from 51 percent in 2011 — according to Pew Global Research Projects.