Day 18 and 19: Back to Work

Our 'mini vacation' to Fez was a nice memory as we returned to our office at the Ministry of Agriculture on Monday and Tuesday.    This is a very busy week for our team since our goal is to complete the first draft of both the whitepaper and the Executive Presentation by the end of this coming weekend.   We are hoping to get the initial draft completed by this Friday so that we can spend the weekend 'polishing' it but we will have to see how it goes.   We want to be able to get the first draft to our Ministry of Agriculture team by next Monday so that they can help with an revisions before we present this to the executive team at the Ministry of Agriculture either next Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning.

I have to say that we have an awesome IBM team working on this project and the three of us definitely bring individual talents for a pretty 'balanced' team.   Andrew is very, very technical.  In his job at IBM, he actually writes and tests software code that goes into the hardware chips that power our P series boxes.   He is focusing on the first draft of the technical architectural diagrams, use cases, etc.   Rahul is a Technical Lead in GTS and commonly works on very large, complex RFP responses.   He has been owning the Table of Contents and has been the 'catcher' for the information that each of us is creating.  My background is Consulting and Project Management and both have come in very handy during this assignment as we capture, organize, and prioritize strategic information and recommendations for the final deliverable.

We are trying to wrap up the remainder of our interviews so that we can focus on the final deliverables for next week.   You can see from the pictures below that we still have a few interviews scheduled this week that we were not able to fit in last week.   It is definitely going to be a busy week.  :-)

Meeting with Mohammed and Jamila in her office.   Jamila was walking us through the project of how they create an online survey to capture pricing information for different food, livestock, and input (e.g. fertilizers, feed, etc.) information.

Mohammed and Jamila working together to create a new survey.

After we get back from the Ministry of Agriculture of Agriculture each day, we typically work in our 'second office' in the upstairs restaurant at the hotel.   It is usually pretty quiet until the dinner time crowd comes in.  This is usually about the time that we head out to dinner with our IBM team.

Rahul, Tracey, and Andrew enjoying a cup of mint tea in the lobby before we head out to dinner.

We walked to a very authentic Moroccan restaurant.  At the entrance, they provide water to wash your bands before entering.

Karen and Austin showing the menus that are individually handprinted on leather scrolls.

This salad was very delicious.  There was one made of spinach, one of carrots, and one of eggplant.   This is something that I will miss when I head home.

Cup of very traditional Moroccan soup.   Notice the handmade wooden spoon.  The group decided that this was one of the best soups that we had on this trip.

Group picture eating underneath the tent at the restaurant.   It's hard to tell but we were eating on the roof in the open, chilly air.