It was scheduled to begin at 9am (which we realistically knew wouldn't happen, as we're on Brazil time!), but there was a mix up with our collection that morning and we didn't arrive until just after 9.15am - not a ideal start! Then to cut a long story short, after a few postponements and a booking conflict with the projector we eventually got everyone in the same room at the same time by 2.30pm!
The audience was about 50/50 in terms of their command of English, so we had the slides in Portuguese and then one of the staff, Malu, kindly translated the spoken part of the presentation as we went along. Myself and Karin split the responsibilities of presenting and it went pretty well overall I think.
It was actually a little difficult to sum up 3 weeks work for a collection of people who've had varying degrees of involvement in all the work we've done together during that time, but ultimately it did prompt some lively discussion at the end of the whole thing and it was really positive to see the teams talking, interacting and trying to figure out how they can best proceed with the plan and tools we've developed together with them.
They've such a strong team of people in the organization, I know they can run with it from here onwards. Like every NGO, the challenge of doing more with already stretched resources is a tough one, but they see the value in our ideas, tools, processes and recommendations and know that if they invest the time in it, then their workload on their website development and maintenance processes (for all of their partner org's and project's websites) will reduce over time and allow them to do more in other important areas.
We're still wrapping up a few small things, handing over all our files and trying to invest our time in working as closely on next steps with some key people in the organisation, but today sadly is our final day with the client team :o(
Its been a really great working experience, and its such a pity we can't keep going with the project for longer - I think we'd be open to the idea of staying in Belo Horizonte for a few more weeks!
We've still one big overall presentation to give tomorrow (Thursday) for all the NGO's, their partners, IBMers etc so still a lot going on this week on the work front!
#ibmcsc Brazil
No comments:
Post a Comment