I am still alive!

It has been a while since the last posting, but since arriving in Belo Horizonte there was simply no time to sit down and write a blog post….

So what are my first impressions about Brazil, Belo Horizonte and the team? Let’s start with the team – it amazes me that 15 people  from 12 countries (Hungary, New Zealand, Korea, Italy, USA, Lebanon, Ireland, Australia, India, Spain, Canada, Austria) that never met before with a different cultural background get along that well within a few hours. All we really had in common that we work for the same company, but now we are working together as part of the #ibmcsc brazil team. Daniel from CDS and Bruno from IBM Brazil did an outstanding job tying the team together, thanks from my side!

Brazil itself is amazing – the Brazilians are friendly and open to the gringos and really try to help wherever they can. The food is great, and the local drink from Belo Horizonte is really tasteful and refreshing. The city of Belo Horizonte itself reminds me to be a mix between Barcelona, San Francisco and Beijing – I like what I saw so far. What was a bit eye-opening for me is the fact that the state of Minais Gerais is almost as big as France - Brazil is HUGE and has therefore different dimensions and also issues that it has to solve.

Which brings me to our client Rede Cidadã, which is a very well organized NGO that up-skills youth to find better-qualified jobs. They operate in various states in Brasil and have grown a lot over the past years. And because of the amazing growth in some areas the structure of the company was not able to adopt to the new requirements of the larger organization. The sub-team for that client that I am part of will hopefully provide some solutions in the project management area.

So the first few days passed very quickly, with lots of impressions, even more fun and great colleagues from around the world!