Florianópolis here we come! First arrival…
After months of waiting and 6 pre-work sessions, we all arrived to Florianópolis, Brazil.
I was so happy to be chosen for SAP Social Sabbatical with short-term volunteering assignment where I can work in highly diverse teams to solve strategic challenges for NGOs in different markets. When I knew the location to be Florianópolis, Brazil, I was even more excited and looking forward.
Traveling from Montreal, Canada, I connected through Toronto, São Paulo, and finally to Florianópolis with 23 hours flight duration. Some of us had even more with 36 hours flight duration from Manila!
The economy of Florianópolis is heavily based on information technology, tourism and services. Local officials say their aim is to be the Silicon Valley of Brazil, with beaches of course!
Upon arrival on Saturday’s night, I had to get ready for Sunday’s Orientation kick off meeting at 9:30 AM. The first thing I did is to iron my shirts in a common service room!
We received the agenda for the kick off session, but I did not know how exciting the material would be until we started to work on it.
It was a mix of team building activities, Human Bingo, Architects & Engineers to team up to build Airplane and Shark prototypes, and CSR@SAP overview.
In Human Bingo we gathered human facts like “How may languages you speak”, “Have more than one nationality”, “is the only child”, and we had to complete a bingo by entering names of colleagues to each fact.
Architects & Engineers activity was about listening, visualizing, and refining the prototypes. The team of architects were given prototypes of Airplane and Shark that they had to verbally explain to the team of engineers, so that they would be able to rebuild it with their set of Lego pieces. Team Shark did well! :)
Part of pre-work for week 6 is to complete Myers-Brigg Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment (http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp). It was an interesting activity for us to discover our own personalities and for the different types of people in our group.
Then, we had lunch and a neighborhood tour.
Later on, details were given about the CSR strategy @ SAP from our mentor Diane Pereira. The overall goal is to “bridge the digital gap” with local organizations.
By the evening we had a sea food dinner with lots of cheese! It was yummy!
Tomorrow Monday it will be our first day with the local clients. Looking forward to meeting our client Semente Negócios.
