What to say about my 1st week in Halifax?
October, 5th 2018, it’s Friday night and we are now doing last minute arrangements for the upcoming long weekend in Halifax. On Monday, the Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving day.
Twelve of us, including myself, decided to drive up to Cape Breton Island to explore that amazing part of the Nova Scotia province. It was not easy to book hotel and cars for all of us for this busy weekend in Cape Breton, but after a lot of research we could finally make it. Definitively, our group’s experience will at least be fun.
But going back to this post’s title, if you asked me to summarize what my first week here was like in words I would say amazing and intense, due to all CSC activities with clients, the local community and CSC1Can teammates.
And now, some highlights to explain what I meant by that.
CSC Welcome Ceremony
Actually, before this opening session, my sub-team had a welcome meeting with the executive board of Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC), our client, as mentioned in my previous post.
We all left the meeting thoroughly impressed by their involvement and awareness on this important accessibility-for-inclusion agenda. That is what our CSC project is about. In the following posts I will try to share a bit about the challenge NSCC team is willing to solve.
More importantly, we could see how engaged they are in supporting us on our mission, which made us feel even more motivated and confident.
Then, we all headed up to the COVE site for the CSC opening session. There, we could joined other CSC sub-teams mates, their respective clients and DOT. team.
We also had the honor to receive Mr. Stephen McNeil (Premier of Nova Scotia) and Mr. Michael “Mike” John Savage, the Mayor of Halifax, among other important people from our clients and the local community and IBM Canada.
It was a memorable session and we could feel the warm welcome and the kindness of the Halifax community. Having said that, I was able to pinpoint one similarity between Halifax and Brazil people, meaning the hospitality, and that made me feel a bit at home.
Following, each sub-team then went to their respective client's site for the official project kick-off meeting where we could have the first face-to-face interaction with the client’s team for introductions, team setup and planning.
All I can say so far is that my sub-team is fortunate to have such special team from NSCC to work with!
Treaty day celebration
October 1st is an important date here in Nova Scotia — it’s the annually celebration of Treaty Day.
Our CSC host and DOT Program Manager, Liesl Mulholland, kindly invited us to join a Treaty Day celebration at the Mi’kmaq Native Friendship Centre. It was very nice to have the experience of seeing and learning some of the local history and interacting with the local community.
CSC Projects get started
After all the celebrations, networking and pictures, in the following days my sub-team which is composed by Manvi Sachdeva, Martin Kenseley and myself, started effectively working with NSCC team. Full of energy, our CSC sub-team is ready to face the challenge which is not simple and bring each one's best to collaborate as a team and make our mission a success on behalf of our client.
The amount of information we had to digest was huge. However, with the several interviews, meetings and the first Design Thinking workshop we could get a better view of the problem to be solved by understanding the stakeholders, current scenario and pain points. More of those interactions are still being planned for the upcoming week. We also have a plan of visiting other NSCC campuses to observe and get more context.
The week was very productive and we ended it with the achievement of our main goal — an agreement to the Statement of Work (SoW) with NSCC project team.
Yes, we are on track!
Birthday parties
Finally, to make the week even more special, two of our mates celebrated their birthday at the same date, October, 4th.
We could not let them have no celebration on their special day; thus, there were not only one but several birthday parties for them, all of which featured cakes, gifts and brigadeiro, a Brazilian staple dessert traditionally served in b-parties. I made the brigadeiros myself and the feedback I received from the team was that it was delicious! Yummy
Thanks for being with us Ana Paula Vedovato Maestrello and Danish Contractor for your birthday parties. Wish you both all the best!
Well, we have a plan of work in place and the upcoming week will definitely be busy as well. I’ll keep all of you updated. Stay tuned!
