The time is so close now you can feel it! I am 15 days away from departure. My mind is still in this kinda blur-like state. At our team preparation meeting yesterday we went over our logistics guide, which is a pretty detailed assessment of everything we need to know when we land and how things will be organised. It also had a checklist of what items to bring and some other information which I found in the guidebook that I bought, but it was nice to get confirmation from another source.

Our NGO partner, CDC Development Solutions, has been fantastic in helping us get prepared for the assignment and because they have someone on the ground already in Nigeria, we also get a dose of reality when our imaginations run away with us — or when they they fail to 🙂 And the IBM team has been great as well. We get all of our questions answered – no matter how strange they are. And we get a local perspective as part of our intense cultural preparation.

Last weekend, we had the pleasure to get initial correspondence from our client – and you can feel that they are as excited to work with us as we are with them. Our project team also met for the first time last week (it’s 3 of us on our sub-project) and reviewed our statement of work, asked some questions, and assigned some tasks to be completed. And since two teams are working on two projects with the same client, we will look for synergy. Our really international team (over 12 countries) with our really different cultural and job backgrounds will mesh nicely.

Well….15 days! That is all that remains until departure. And as I type this, I realise that Relaxed Rodney must give way to Planning Rodney. So the first order of business tonight is to take all of these guides and checklists, map out what I need to accomplish to ensure I am prepared (separated by 5 day blocks), and then simply work the plan. Yeah, it is as over-bearing as it sounds. But for a trip like this (Nigeria, plus some time exploring Tanzania), those who are best prepared probably have the best experience 🙂

Until next time.

#ibmcsc Nigeria

This week is a fantastic week in terms my IBM Corporate Service Corps project assignment in Nigeria! Not only has my Nigerian visa been sorted out, but we also received our Statements of Work (SoW) today! The assignments will be working mostly with the regional government, but with some non-governmental organisations as well. I am really excited to read through the material and then to meet with our sub-team to go through the approach. So at the moment, I don’t really know what to think since I am in that rather euphoric moment where everything just feels surreal 🙂

So now that I am essentially done with the personal logistics, it feels good to be able to focus on the logistics of my assignment (which is what the SoW about) as well. We have our primary project assignments and then of course we should support each other on the other projects that the team of 15 is working on (we are divided into sub-teams to focus on our projects).

We also finished the last set of presentations on cultural adaptability. And again I have to congratulate my colleagues of putting together such a great set of presentations and materials. I for sure I have saved all of this to my iPad so that I can refer to it whenever I want.

So now it really feels real! Life between now and the next 3 weeks will be busy with my day job, busy with my assignment prep, and busy with my personal prep. But as we get closer, I am only looking more and more forward to the opportunity!

#ibmcsc Nigeria

So we are now done with another week of preparation – and one week closer to departure. It’s hard to imagine, but there are only 4 weeks left! Times does really fly!

On our call today we learned that we will get to know the clients we will be working with next week and I am really excited for that! We’ll also get more documentation and information about these clients and other matters next week. I can now imagine myself on the plane on the way to Ado Ekiti because we are so close to the departure date! For me, the milestone to achieve this week is to try and get my visa fully sorted out – hopefully this week! Then at least I know that there is nothing impeding my departure in terms of formalities.

In today’s meeting we went through some more very important administration issues, heard some more presentations on the different topic areas relating to cultural adaptability in Nigeria to help give us an overview (thanks to the team for awesome preparation work!), and we also got a great overview of our Corporate Citizenship Programmes taking place in Nigeria. Every time I hear about the ways we stayed engaged in our communities around the world, I always feel a source of great pride.

I feel as prepared as I can be for Nigeria at this point. But I also know that the next week and the weeks thereafter are going to be a lot of work right up until the point where we arrive in Ado Ekiti. I feel like next week I will be posting about how unprepared I feel, which is something I am looking forward to because it means we move to the next step of preparation before our arrival!

Every day I am looking more forward to this experience than the day before! \o/

#ibmcsc Nigeria

So this week commences was the eight week of prep for my #ibmcsc Nigeria assignment (please forgive the tags, they are needed for aggregators, etc) and I have to say that with each passing week it begins to feel more real.

This week the members of our team presented on more topics that they did research on in order to give us background and knowledge as a team. The presentations were well done – as usual with the team. We also got some more preparation information and of the course the usual reminders about the preparation work and admin. For someone like me (who wants to normally jump right in when I am enthusiastic about something), the prep work has been very helpful to help pace me. I was a bit behind all of the prep work last week, but now not only am I caught up, I am happy to say even a bit ahead of schedule 🙂

Outside of our group meetings, I finally got everything right in order to submit my paperwork to the Embassy today here in Stockholm. I had to go in person which was inconvenient but a small price to pay for what will surely be an adventure! \o/

It’s hard to think that in 5 weeks from now I will be in Nigeria on my assignment. I feel mostly prepared, but the happy panic will set in around 2 weeks. There is still a bit to do to prepare for Nigeria as well as the trip after Nigeria to see some more of Africa.

Anyway, that’s enough for now. Wishing all of you a happy and healthy 2013! <3