New beginnings.....

As I sit here on the 15th floor of the Xi'an Sheraton Hotel and look out of the window where the sun is greeting a new day, seeing the tall buildings and listening to the traffic sounds below on the street I am thinking back on the past 30 days. This has certainly been a life changing experience for me, I will never forget my IBM CSC month in China.
As you know it is always about the people for me, therefore it is also the meeting with the different people coming from various different cultures and backgrounds that I will be one of the things I will treasure and carry with me in my heart forever. Although I have not been able to speak with them all without our translator being present, it has been truly amazing to get to know so many different people.

The last week has been incredible busy, we have been working on our final presentation that was due Thursday 10.09.2015. We have been regulary checking and aligning the work with our client so our findings and recommendations was no surprise to them. Still, our final was received very positively by our client as well as their stakeholders. In fact they responded that they will start working on the Development Roadmap as soon as possible after presenting it on the coming October Steering meeting.
Mrs Ban is a very powerful women in the community with an incredible large network in all circles (including media), however she needs help from the many resources around her to carry out this plan and meet their goals. Therefore it is extremely important that members from the Committee agrees to the plan and can see the benefit in this. Several vice chair persons attended the presentation on Thursday and on the closing event yesterday several more. They were all very enthusiastic about the task set ahead of them and willing to do the work. 

In the office, presenting

Our last 'thumbs up' picture in the RPVA office

As Mrs Ban said:"We never send away guests without offering a final meal"

Friday morning we all (meaning the IBM CSC team, IBM China represented by Yasmin, VSO, (Shen Shuo and Paul) all three clients including their stakeholders) met again to do the closing event. Every group (client and CSC team) presented themselves, what was the objectives, approach and methodology and high level recommendations for each of the three projects. Each group (client and CSC team member cooperatively) came up with their view and top three take-a way from the past four weeks.
I was interviewed again, this time by a local Shaanxi Television station. I am amazed and honored by the fact that anybody would want to hear what I have to tell about my experience in China and my work here.

Friday closing event - everybody!

RPVA, stakeholders and CSC team

RVPA CSC Team from left: Andy (IBM Australia), Xie Chao (translator China), myserlf, Donna (IBM US)

 

After a final dinner Friday evening it was time to say goodbye to everybody. People have different flights out of Xi'an - James from UK left Friday afternoon, Cecilia from Sweden early Saturday morning etc. Although we seem very happy and cheerful at the pictures is is also somewhat sad to have to say goodbye to such an amazing bunch of people after such an intense period with hard work, but also after having so much fun.
We have promised each other that we will meet somewhere in the world next year  - and of course if anybody travels to one of the other CSC team members country we will try to get in touch and meet. I am forever thankful to have been part of this amazing adventure and I will definitely try very hard to  keep in touch as much possible. I wish all my CSC team members and translators the best of luck. We will meet again!!!

I am not traveling home just yet -  my vacation has officially started. Two more day in Xi'an - G-train to Beijing, where I will stay four days and fly to Hong Kong for another four days.
#ibmcsc China30

Workshop day

My fantastic team (Donna, Kris and Andy) and I have spent the last three weeks gathering data (including 10 different interviews with approx 50 (!) different stakeholders), analyzing and validating these.

The key issues and hypotheses emerged from that and through constant validating with our client we have now a set of various findings and recommendations for them.
We discovered that the client's issues can be summarized into four inter-related categories; Organizational Strategy and Road map, Promotion and Funding,  HR and skills and Organizational Management.  

Today we did a workshop together with our client at our hotel (we need to drag them away from their usual environment, so that we could all concentrate on the workshop). We have created several work products for them to take away and make use of in the future - some of the recommendations can be implemented as soon as possible  - some of them will have to wait until more funding has been obtained.
Our client are fantastic people, we are learning a lot just by spending time with them. We are extremely happy to see that they are really enthusiastic about our recommendations so far - this gives us a lot of energy to proceed into the final week with the final report to be delivered on Thursday morning.
#ibmcsc china30

From right: Mrs Zhang, Mrs Jin, Donna, Mrs Ban, Xie Chao (Andy slipped out of the picture)

Some of the presentation from today

The fantastic Mrs Ban with likewise fantastic Xie Chao (our translator)

Without food nobody function, so of course we went to our nearby local street food pusher for our 8 yuan lunch (=DKK 10)

Hua Shan

Actually I should have written this last night to tell you about this amazing adventure we had yesterday, but I was simply too tired when we finally came back to the hotel after 4 hours in the car.

Before I left Denmark I had read on Pinterest and YouTube about the 'most dangerous hiking trail in the world' in a place called Hua Shan. These famous mountains are known in China as  'The Number One Precipitous Mountain under Heaven' and are one of the five sacred mountains here.
Please watch this video www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIQrgUV8wAE

After that introduction I definitely wanted to visit those mountains, so did my CSC team mates. And we did yesterday!
#ibmcsc china30

 

Almost the entire team (Doug and Jung Peng missing)

Nice little cave with a sun terrace on top

No wonder the water is triple in price in Hua Shan

Pretty scary!

Wonderful nature....