Amazing day in Isha school and Yoga Centre

Tuesday Oct 27th was the first day we had opportunity to visit Isha Vidhya school - our partner's location. We knew it will be emotional and it really was.
But before we went there we had to go through Coimbatore city where we faces little traffic jam:

Our the route there are also nice temples of various colors:

Just when we entered the school we got very nice introduction of principal (on right), teachers and kids:

After briefing in principal offices we started tour visit by under-kindergarden class - kids in age of +3,5y:

Some of us had chance to dance a bit with the kids:

Just before the lunch there is yoga session:

After all kids gathered and have nice surprised for Amanda who had birthday. She got bouquet of flowers:

After that we had lunch - the same meal for everyone:

And the meal was good:

After that we had unique chance to visit Yoga center where we also took part in traditional meditation procedure.

Wednesday we work whole day in hotel on statement of work and we also started  some pre-analyses. On Thursday we go again to Isha school to perform interviews as part of data gathering and also we will observe workshop for teachers.

#ibmcsc India 12

First meeting with our client

Today was one of the most important days of our assignment. We met our client Isha Vidhya representatives who shared with us their vision about what they want to get delivered from us. Isha Vidhya is part of  Isha Foundation - the organization promoting yoga. Isha Vidhya is NGO providing education to rural children. And our task should be architectural design ensuring teachers are trained remotely to save cost on logistic and also with expansion of schools the amount of teachers is growing in the way that it's going impossible to coordinate it. Session was very inspiring - many ideas were put onto the table from which we did 6 areas. Under circumstance that in our statement of work we have just 1 we will put the others as second priority.

Tomorrow we will visit those schools in order to better understand whole concept.
As the today's meeting went well we went to good restaurant serving fish food:

Some of us will remember this dinner for quite long time like Ben on the picture :-)
Weather condition is still ok - not to warm.


Photos of my colleague Mercedes here

#ibmcsc india 12 

First traditional food

Today we decided to take lunch in one of the traditional restaurant close to our hotel. We took the rickshaw and appeared in the restaurant where lot of people were waiting for the table. Actually it surprised me also yesterday that people here wait in the waiting hall of restaurant to get a table.
When we entered restaurant it was quite overcrowded like this:

1 hour later it was quite empty:

  

The biggest challenged for me was to eat by my hands :-) when the person is child then is getting strong order to not do it but now it was opposite case. At the end of was ok - there is sink just in the restaurant room so we could wash them. Tomorrow we should have meeting with our partners so we have short preparation brainstorming tonight. Fingers crossed it goes well.

#ibmcsc India 12

My travel and warm welcome

After 2,5 hours in the bus, 8 hours in the airplane and 20 minutes in the car I've reached the hotel in Mumbai where part of my team surprised me (and Sverre who joined me in Vienna) by warm welcome in lobby - even it was 11pm local time. We tasted a bit of local food and went to sleep around 1am.

The first impressions are fine as everything is like supposed to be according our preparation sessions (part of CSC program). Yeah humidity is a bit higher, cars are using horns more than in my country (at least this pushed me to woke up before my alarm started:) and different time zone (+3,5h) but due to my morning flight I could sleep like a baby. So overall it's good.We will leave current hotel in 1 hour to airport for flight to Coimbatore where I plan to post more stuff.

Some pictures from travel:

Novomlynska nadrz

#ibmcsc India 12

How I got in?

Recently it's quite common for me to explain people how I got in CSC program. Initially my response was - read IBM newspapers. In my case is was link.me, now called Delivery Centre CE.me, where I found information about CSC program which was sent out during February 2010, this was my first time when I applied. That time I wasn't selected and my time came this year - 2011.

To make it simple - check CSC home page where are stated conditions about who can apply,  very useful FAQ, info about application process etc. I'd recommend to think in advance about individual strengths, weaknesses, what you can offer to CSC, situations when you faced difficulties and how you resolved and also who will cover your 1 month absence. Additionally there is 1 month pre-work to prepare everybody to certain level of culture awareness, work in the team, info about destination - market, IBM activities there etc. There should be also 1 month post-work which I will describe once I went through it.

Today we will have our last pre-work telco and I can say there are already many good signals of remote team cooperation. For sure it will strengthen once we meet face-to-face, so let's see :-)

#ibmcsc India 12 

Additional benefits for going on CSC

Another benefit why going to CSC assignment is pressure on  closing all my open points. Obviously it's case of all such big events like audits, upliner change, team change etc. when person needs to show current states and of course wants to mitigate all problems. Especially in the case of team transfer (and this is not my case now:) old manager doesn't want to spend time by explaining why so many things are open, moreover successor doesn't want to accept it.
In my case I found incoming CSC assignment as very strong trigger on closing all my open points so this week I'm doing things which I had no time for or I didn't want to do so I can sit in the airplane with clear mind.

CSC aggregate still not accepting my blog on  tumblr.com so I created testing blog on blogger.com

#ibmcsc India 12

Two weeks to go and new challenges coming

Until 5pm last night my CSC mission had been going according initial plan - we were working on our SOW about e-gov, brainstorming questions, studying various materials. All in the sudden we got mail from CDS about change of our partner due to elections in Coimbatore.

A bit shock in the beginning but understanding the reason behind, knowing CDC did what was required and on the other side on top of my current knowledge about e-gov (initial project) I’m going to study e-learning topic :-) Maybe coincidence ‘cause this was topic for my bachelor thesis several years ago so it should be such big problem to recap all details and gain background.

From logistic perspective everything is ready - air tickets, transport to airport, hotel, insurance, visa etc so I can fully concentrate on the new SOW.

CSC aggregate is till not gathering my posts so I need to check what has to be done.

#ibmcsc india team 12