A Nice Review of What to Expect Through the Assignment

Tonight in our preparation we were treated to a presentation by Stanley Litow,  IBM VP of Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs and Nancy Greco, Distinguished Engineer in IBM Research working on Next Generation Platform.

Stan spoke of the importance of the Corporate Service Corps and its value as a humanitarian endeavor.  Of course, IBM wins when the relationships make progress in the emerging countries. We live in a global economy, now, and IBM feels that we need help develop business in these emerging markets. Stan shared that the benefits to both the sponsoring country and IBM are immense.  He described the lifelong relationships both in country and outside that could be made in the engagement.  He said that eh Executive Service Corps is a development opportunity of a lifetime.  Having done several mission trips with my church and Hurricane Katrina relief, all of those experiences are character shaping in many ways.

Nancy, a recent participant in Chengdu China, described the importance of creating recipes in what we propose to the Chinese people.  The Chinese value manufacturing in a way that no other country does.  It is, frankly, a great way to create jobs for their people. History shows that every major government change occurred  when there was famine in the land.  The government is wise and knows that bringing the people into urban areas is the best way to make sure they are fed and have meaningful work.

The skill that the Chinese demonstrate in being able to quickly scale and build after seeing the "recipe" for a project is just amazing.  Nancy recommended that they will quickly get the benefits in what we share with them.  Concepts are fine, but by the end of the engagement they are ready to take something and run with it.

Nancy described and reasserted how important it is to prepare the scope of work that we might be undertaking ahead of time.  With a broad proposed scope, she felt that they ended up with some long nights in preparation of their final presentation when some advance work would have helped immensely.  Nanjing has communicated that the areas of interest for them are in Smarter Cities, but mostly focused on the Youth Olympic Games and Social Media, improving education, and a third area where Nanjing wants to become the "New Bangalore" of Chinese software development.  All of these topics are relevant and important to the city.

On a more personal note, Nancy described that we might consider bringing roles of toilet paper as the "toilets" are really just holes in the floor and typically have no amenities in them.  She mentioned that anyone with knee surgeries (me with surgeries on both knees) will struggle to adapt to this new required skill.  Here is an article about how to use a Chinese Toilet.

We got to hear about both Doug and Ron from their ESC profiles which was really great.  They seem like very dedicated individuals who value teaming and have great families.  We closed with discussion about how to have a "meet and greet" for the team.  I mentioned that I have been experimenting with Google Circles and Google Hangouts which might be a way to have a "virtual video wall" for our six team members.  The team seemed open to trying it out.  We will see how this works.  The excitement for the trip builds.