Rumours

Now that I have returned back to North Carolina, I have learned that there is some question as to whether we actually did any work when we were in Tanzania, or if we were out drinking and carousing and playing all the time. While it is absolutely true that we tried to maximize our time on the weekends to explore the country, and each evening we had dinner in town or in our hotel courtyard - during the days, we did work. Some would say we even worked hard! So let me share some things about work and play!

Work

I didn't share alot about our projects or our daily work because I didn't think it was necessarily interesting to all of you and I didn't feel right sharing details due to privacy concerns. While that will always be important, I can share more than I have to date. (some might be repetitive - but it should give some context).

We were working with the University of Dodoma, in Dodoma, Tanzania - the capital. UDOM opened in 2007 and intends to grow rapidly to have 40,000 students in just a few more years. Providing university level education is one of the key elements to growth for Tanzania and specifically for alleviating poverty. UDOM is also intended to be the Information and Computing Technology (ICT) Center of Excellence for Tanzania - and will provide ICT services outside the university.

Our teams were there to begin to enable UDOM to achieve their rapid growth and achieve their vision. We had four projects. Our projects were focused on cloud computing, online education, systems to support university functions, and systems to be deployed outside the university.

Most of the work we were doing was new for each of us. Our teams were new for each of us. We had to understand the projects, determine how we were going to approach the projects, build our project plan, and execute and provide final deliverables that could stand on their own for the continuation of the projects. For my teams, this was a new area for all of us - so we relied on our collective knowledge, our files/presentations/consulting guides we researched before we left - hoping they would help, the help of the masters students we were working with, and creativity. We did alot of interviewing - learning in detail the current state of their processes (which were very comprehensive and completely manual), documenting these processes, validating them with the people we interviewed, and defining requirements for the systems to be built in the next steps. We also tried to transfer our skills to the team to enable continued work and repeatable processes. We also had a prototype of one of the systems built. I include this photo as evidence of our working!



Drinking and Carousing



While it is true that there were many references to beer or wine in this blog - I will now add some context. Dinner - whether it was at a local place or at the hotel, took a long time. Our gathering place was in the courtyard of the hotel. Gathering 10 people, deciding what the plan is, and then getting everyone moving was no small feat. While our efficiency improved over time - there remained alot of opportunity to socialize in the courtyard prior to dinner. Many times, we had dinner in the courtyard. Ordering, waiting, and eating meals normally took around 2 hours. We do not know what logistical challenges caused this to be true no matter how simple the request - but it was simply how it was. It was terrific time to socialize and get to know one another - catch up on our projects, and make plans for the following weekend. You should note on the table that there is little drink - looks like a bottle of water, a bottle of beer, and some ketchup and chili sauce!. Certainly later, you might find a different configuration -...maybe! We all had to get up and work the next day, and it was all social and tame. As all the beer and wine was different from what we might normally see - Ndovu, Serengeti, Kiliminjaro, Safari for beer, and Dompo, and Dodoma Presidential for wine - it made for a little local commentary in the blog (little did I know that you might all interpret it as a nonstop drinkfest!).

We had a terrific team - our time together was great - and I will miss it very much. I enjoyed our working together - in person - something we rarely get to do anymore in this virtual world - and I enjoyed the time we had outside of work.