Day 4 Project Kickoff

Entering the pavillion at the Ministry of General and Economic Affairs.   This is where we held our kickoff meeting.

Getting setup for our meeting and beginning to make informal introductions.

The man in the middle is the Minister of General and Economic Affairs, Guessous Abdelmounaim.  He was the host of our formal kickoff meeting.

We felt like we were in a United Nations meeting.  :-)

This is our team for the Ministry of Agriculture.  Mohammed Kamili is on the far left and next to him is Jamila. They work closely together on the existing system we will reviewing.   Rahul, Andrew, and myself are the IBM team members on this team.

This is the team for the Moroccan Women's Network of Mentoring.   Karen and Tracey are the IBM team members on this team.

Today was the first official day of our one month project. Even though our group of ten IBMers are working on four different projects, we all met as a group with our clients for a full day kick-off meeting. The meeting was held at the Ministry of General and Economic Affairs which is one of our four clients.

We met in a glassed in pavillon type structure in the center of the Ministry and we sat in desks in a circular format where we each had built in microphones. It reminded me of a United Nations type meeting and it was very impressive. The meeting was lead and hosted by Guessous Abdelmounaim who is the Minister of Economic Affairs. Each of the four projects were introduced and presented. We had translators interpreting the presentations since much of the conversation was in French. Of our four clients for this trip, two are for governmental Ministries and two are NGO's (non governmental organizations). They include the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of General and Economic Affairs, the ARDI Foundation, and Moroccan Women Network for Mentoring. I'm part of a team of three IBMers who is working on the project for the Ministry of Agriculture.

The Ministry of Agriculture project is a fascinating project. We will be working to define requirements and provide a recommended framework for an application that will disseminate farm pricing related information. While the primary focus of our project will be to determine how best to disseminate this valuable pricing information to farmers, this application has the potential to provide statistical and analytic information that can also be utilized by individuals, organizations, universities, researchers, banks, and investors. The primary goal of the project is to increase the income of farmers by pro-actively providing pricing related information based on the farmer's specific needs. It is particulary challenging project because most of the farmers do not have access to traditional means of communication such as the internet. Our hosts from the Ministry of Agriculture were extremely gracious and open with us. We spent the afternoon listening and learning about their perspective on the business challenge, history, stakeholders, etc. 

Afterwards, our larger group went out to dinner to a very good Chinese restaurant and spent almost three hours talking about each of our projects. I think the highlight of my day though was when I was about to skype with my family and talk to them for the first time since I arrived. It was nearly 1am when we had a chance to talk because of the six hour time difference but it was great to 'see' and visit with them. It was a very memorable day.