THE BIG KICKOFF!

The day we've all been waiting for was finally here. Our day to kick-off our projects and getting to know our clients we will be working with for the next four weeks. The entire team met in the lobby before leaving for the equivalent of Solo City's City Hall. I must say we clean up quite nicely.

At City Hall we took part in a program that included greetings from IBM Indonesia, Pyxera, our local NGO and most importantly, the mayor. Originally, we were going to be greeted by the vice mayor. However, the mayor decided last minute to postpone a trip to China so he could welcome us. Pretty cool. He seemed quite personable and I look forward to seeing him more while we are here.

The other big part of the kick-off was hearing from our four clients as they described their businesses to us and what their needs are. When the kick-off was over my team (Donnacha, Aban and me) had a casual lunch with Bapak Sumadi, the head of Solo Technical Park (STP). After lunch he drove us to the campus. We were given a tour and then went to the incubator building where we have a room set up for us for the next four weeks.

We had brief meetings with three other employees of STP - who we will be working with closely. They introduced themselves to us and vice versa. We asked them a few questions and got an initial schedule set up for this week as we learn about and discover them as a business. It's important we spend the first week focused on consulting - getting to know them and finding out from them and their stakeholders what the business is like and find out what they enjoy and think works well and what doesn't seem to be performing as greatly as it could.

On the way back to the hotel the person driving us back graciously took a detour to take me by a convenience store so I could buy some Diet Coke for my room. Sadly, but not surprisingly, there was none. I'll keep trying.

We went to dinner as a group and had more delicious Indonesia food. Then, we went to a performance of an Indonesia opera. We were the special guests of the mayor and had front row seats. Of course, we did not understand a work of the opera, but we could still pretty well understand the story of love lost and love won. It really is fascinating how culturally diverse theatre can be.

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