Florianópolis Final Week: The beginning of a new journey
SAP Social Sabbatical Floripa team knew this week will eventually come, but we did not anticipate how emotional it will be. Sadly for every beginning there is an end, but for our journey it has just started. A journey of personal development, an inner-self discovery, cultural and life discovery, friendships that crossed borders, and career networking.
Social and digital entrepreneurs were not on the top of my list for the topics to learn or to read about. With SAP Social Sabbatical, I learned how essential entrepreneurs are to the social ecosystem and economical development.
This week started by Mathias Braje from SAP Social Sabbatical sub-team FUCAS inviting me on Monday October 30th to present SAP products and services at Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina (UDESC) in front of a graduate class. This was by far the best opportunity to promote SAP Social Sabbatical and be once again SAP ambassador on a global level. I was happy to be part of the team and to talk passionately about SAP.
In Brazil and in Florianópolis in specific, there are Federal universities, State universities, and private universities. Being accepted in a federal university is a prestigious status that is very hard to be enrolled in.
Mr. Mathias Braje started by talking about SAP in general, how we run simple and the overall digital transformation. Ms. Ana Moncayo talked about SAP Social Sabbatical program and its impact on social economy development and how it is improving people’s live. I, on the other hand, talked about SAP products and services on technical level and how SAP is engaged on global level to resolve business challenges. Topics covered: Acquisitions, Competitions, Products, Services, Big Data, IoT, Machine Learning, CRM, BW, and others. Graduate students were very much involved with their questions and SAP is on the top of their list as a future employer. I sent couple of referrals already, and had a lunch with Mr. Omar Omar who was one of graduate students attended our session.
On Tuesday, October 31st, it was a Halloween day, or “Hubween” which is a combination of Halloween and Impact Hub! I had a sweet gum in the shape of a green watermelon which is seen in the picture below!
This day was still a normal working day for our sub-team at Semente Negócios. We were finalizing the deliverable documents and placing them on the Dropbox for the extended Semente’s team to read. Coming from cold, snowy, windy, and, at times, icy city like Montreal, I was still fascinated with the coconut palm trees and tropical weather at Floripa. I had some pictures taken:
By the time we came back to the hotel, we had our weekly and final recurring 2 hours debriefing session with PYXERA Global. It was the time for our SAP Social Sabbatical sub-teams to share their updates on their progress. For the evening dinner, I went with our extended team for seafood. It was delicious, although expensive, but worth every penny.
Here worth to mention a nice story we had. We were four walking and got lost on the way to the restaurant due to having no internet for the GPS. With the help of a firefighter, he drove us with his firefighter red truck to the restaurant and informed us to be careful not to walk around at night due to security concerns. He was very nice and we were lucky with him!
On Wednesday November 1st, this was the big day for our sub-team and for all sub-teams. I started the day with a nice breakfast and relaxation moments at the roof of the hotel. The hotel roof top is overseeing the main historical bridge of Floripa (Hercilio Luz Bridge). Floripa is the local name for Florianópolis.
In the morning, Ms. Anna Wypior, Mr. JP Finnell, and I presented our final deliverable documents to our Semente Negócios main contact Mr. Marcio Jappe. He was very happy with the achievements we had done during the four weeks on site. He asked us as well to present the same to Semente’s extended team on Friday’s weekly call. We also scheduled followup call in December 2017 to touch base on Semente’s progress with our recommendations.
In the afternoon, we had our closing event for SAP Social Sabbatical Brazil 7 at Florianópolis. It was an executive presentation with all SAP Social Sabbatical sub-teams and their host organizations. It was a panel-type delivery format which was informal but very dynamic and fun at times. Each team presented their insights and clarified what they had achieved during the four weeks on site. Questions were asked about our assignments, what impact we anticipated, and any anecdote or something that surprised us.
Later on, we had a group picture and a closing cocktail event. I had the time to capture fine moments with my colleagues.
By the evening, together with Mathias and Ana M. we went to the market place to have seafood. I will really miss the quality of seafood in Floripa, it was awesome!
On Thursday November 2nd, it was our free day. I had the time to go to the beach in the morning, did bodysurfing, and drunk a coconut.
In the afternoon, our sub-team was invited for BBQ party at Ms. Julia Fulco’s house. I met Julia’s boyfriend who is a software developer as well. We were connected right away talking same language about web design and software development ! :)
Mr. Marcio Jappe was the main chef, while Alline’s boyfriend was the second in command. Thank you all for the great food.
In the evening, I captured some sunset moments with the beauty of Floripa rivers and palm trees.
On Friday November 3rd, we had an exciting final day. Worth mentioning here is that when we arrived to the office in the morning, there was a consultants conference by “Empreenda Consultoria Empresarial” with live music opening event seen on the right in the picture below.
Later on in the morning, we presented our deliverable to Semente’s extended team on the weekly call for 2 hours. The extended team from different Brazilian cities were attending the call and engaged on what we identified. Members provided their insights and gratefulness that we were part of their team for 4 weeks and they were supersized with the amount of work that was done in short time. Officially after this call, our work with Semente Negócios has ended. We had warm hugs and kisses for good bye, but as said before it was the beginning of friendship.
In the afternoon, we had our final BBQ party hosted by Ms. Fernanda Scur (Regional Pro Bono Program Manager Latin America). Thanks to Fernanda’s husband for handling the BBQ and Fernanda for taking care of all logistics. We had great time :)
On Saturday November 4th, SAP Social Sabbatical Brazil 7 team members started to leave Floripa one after each other back to their home countries.
Thank you SAP for offering and PYXERA Global for handling pro bono Social Sabbatical program. It really works! We have made a real change to the lives of 4 hosting organizations.
While I was in São Paulo airport transiting back to Toronto and then to my city Montreal, I came across SAP advertisement. I could not resist only to be proud of being SAP employee and to capture once again this ad with my Samsung s7 mobile.
Finally, here are the 3 final musketeers in São Paulo airport: German, Russian, and Canadian colleagues with common goal for SAP to run simple!
