1st day

1st day in Casa has passed so quickly! 9am, we had breakfast (which was huge! I need exercise, definitely). From 10:30am, we had a informal meeting with Nabil (IBM Morocco) and Imane (DOT program manager) to get brief overall explanation, introduce each other and exchange souvenirs. Here are the souvenirs from all over the world!

I'll post about my souvenirs from Japan later ;-)

After the meeting, Imane took us for walking tour around the Casablanca city. We dropped in nice restaurant to have early dinner and then took rest with ice cream..., etc. We've got more than 10km walk!! After that, we went to a nice bar in the center of Casa and finally we had a girl's party at hotel.... I've got a plenty of experience in a day :-)

Today, we went to a city tour again and then ladies went to a hamam (Turkish bath). I'd love to go but a bit tired, so I decided to stay in a hotel.

From tomorrow, our assignment gets started!


 

My textbook in Casablanca

("Sustainable Tourism in Protected Areas" Guidelines for Planning and Management by Paul F.J. Eagles, Stephen F. McCool and Christopher D. Haynes)

Our client here is in tourism industry, but...
I'm not a specialist for tourism, nor consultant, nor French speaker and even English is non-native..., what should I do for this assignment!?

Finally I just start reading this book to learn about the client's industry as I did when I started my sales carrier in IBM :-)

 

1st photo in Casablanca

(on the way to supermarket)
Concierge told me that it took only 5 mins to Carrefour, but eventually I couldn't find it...

カルフールって言われた気がしたんだけどな・・・。英語で聞いてもときたま返事がフランス語な気がします。

Perfect sunny day here! 

Our code of conduct

As the first team developing activity in the pre-work, we discussed and set our "Code of conduct" which is the guidelines for a set of mutually agreed upon behaviors. I think this is really useful approach especially in diversified team to have a baseline agreement proceeding a project. So I've implemented the same approach to our team (which is not cultural, but generational diversity ;-)) in Japan. 日本のみなさん、忘れずにちゃんと守ってね！

Here are the Code of conduct in Morocco 5;

• Mutual respect for each other and our cultures
• Stay open minded
• Trust the decision you make together and stand behind it
• Actively listen to each other & seek clarity
• Be open to constructive feedback – and don’t be shy to give it in the culturally appropriate way and in the right place/time
• Be punctual and dependable
• Do what you say you will do – and don’t be afraid to ask for help.
• Participate at a level you are comfortable with
• Honor your trust in each other’s privacy  
• Stretch ourselves & get out of your comfort zone
• Leverage the collective 15

Begging of a new experience...

After 18hours travel, finally I arrived at Casablanca, Morocco yesterday night to join IBM Corporate Service Corps (CSC) until May 24th. The following links explain the detail of this program;

IBM site : http://www.ibm.com/ibm/responsibility/corporateservicecorps/

IBM Japan : http://www-06.ibm.com/ibm/jp/company/society/corporate_service_corp/

We've already completed 3 months pre-work to apply skills such as consulting, cultural adaptability, new media and communications, global teaming, and corporate social responsibility. During the pre-work, we had a teleconference per week (sometimes 4 times a week... basically it was started from 9 or 10pm in JST! I deeply understand why Japan is called "the Far East";-)), so tomorrow will be the first day to meet with Morocco #5 team members! Soooooo excited!!

Here are our team members; 

Ana Paula (Brazil), Brittany (USA), Cathy (USA), Dany (Canada), Duki (Slovakia), Gerry (Switzerland), Grant (USA), Lauren (Puerto Rico), Laurie (USA), Michael (Israel), Patrick (France), Prashant (India), Ram (India), Susan (USA) and me (Japan)!

Blogging is a one of the important tasks in Morocco to broadcast our activities internally and externally (I'm not good at blogging though and also not a good correspondent...anyway). From today, I'll try to keep posting our daily activities here in Morocco as much as possible :-)

P.S. Inflight movies, "The Little House（小さいおうち）" which was directed by Yoji Yamada and Hana Kuroki won the best actress in Berlinale International Film Festival, was amazingly wonderful! I was crying in a airplane...

倍賞美津子さんの演技がとても素晴らしかった！オススメです。