So much can happen in a week. I went from a state of overwhelming uncertainty to a place of more comfort and resolution with the chaos. It was a great week. Don't get me wrong, I am still navigating through waves of confusion and fear, but I feel much better about it somehow.
I focused this week on getting to know my coworkers. I set up hour long interviews with everyone to get a grasp on who they are, what they are looking for in life, and where they see the company going. All of this is to help me best see where I can fit in. It's a little complicated though, because I am not designing a 6 month project just for me, but a longer engagement that another fellow would pick up with wherever I leave off. So it gets tricky. I need to choose something with research, design and a series of iterations, but know that I will probably only make it to the design phase while I am here. After the interviews, I felt way more in tune with the team. I know more about their experiences and more importantly, their aspirations for the future. It was good to just listen and be, it was an exercise I found a lot of appreciation for and will probably use in future new engagements.
This week the team went to visit a program that is sponsored by Cisco, HP, Intel, MIT and the Boston Children's Museum. It is called Children's Lovecastles Trust. These guys have been doing distance learning for 10 years, they have their system mostly worked out and it is impressive to see. The teachers translate state regulated subject curriculum into 30 minute lessons. Each lesson contains a digital presentation that the teacher creates with supplementary learning videos if necessary. All communication is done through Webex. Each classroom is outfitted with a camera, screen, and internet cable. One teacher uses video conferencing to go through a lesson with an average of 5 different classrooms at the same time. The teacher skillfully pairs classes against each other and facilitates interactions between the students across different classes. This approach obviously relies on a lot of donated technology and a stable internet connection to the schools, so it isn't completely scalable, but it is an amazing case study for distance learning.
There is also an afterschool program attached to the facility that allows students to play at different workstations. Each station has a different set of programs installed on the computers. The kids are then free to play at whatever station they like. There are no rules, no defined structure, just a playspace for creativity and fun. It was impressive to see the soft skills they were learning- collaboration, trial and error, pride for the artifacts they created. It was inspiring to say the least.
On the non-work front, I decided the best way to people's hearts is through food. And, since I will be celebrating Christmas this year without the usual triggers of sights, sounds, smells, and tastes, I decided to bring it to me. The most Christmas of all objects, besides a pine tree, is gingerbread. So I organized a gingerbread making event with my coworkers, but who knew how difficult it is to find brown sugar in these parts. Everyone pitched in and brought different ingredients, while I was assigned to the more difficult ones... the gumdrops, decorations, molasses (which doesn't exist here) and the mysterious brown sugar. I ended up going to three different stores searching for brown sugar to no avail and decided the best approach was thievery.
Karnataka grows coffee beans, and makes pretty good coffee actually, so there has been a rise of local coffeeshops in Bangalore. There are also a few expat shops, like Costa Coffee, Au Bon Pain, and Starbucks. So I devised my plan of thievery around 1 section of Koramangala. There is a loop that inlcude 3 different cafes. 3 cafes with copious amounts of brown sugar packets for the taking. I went out one evening, did my job and hustled the neighboorhood, successfully procurring enough packets to fill 3/4 cup. Success!
The other success was in the making and baking. The girls loved it. I was so happy. Everyone got involved in the process, from grinding the spices to pounding the dough and cutting out shapes. It was great. Even better was their faces after tasting the batter and the final product. I fully support food as a conduit to friendship. It works.
My other big win for the weekend was going to Hannah's house for a Christmas party. I met a lot of people from different design and engineering companies in the area. It is interesting being on the India side of international work. In San Francisco, I took for granted the amount of hard work and dedication that our Indian counterparts were doing for us. I didn't realize the consistently late nights and early days they agreed to put in just to talk with us. I thought we were sacrificing a lot of our personal selves and lives for communication but I realize now how naive that thinking was. These guys travel atleast an hour each day in miserable traffic to just get to work. If there is a late night call, which is consistent and frequent, they either have to travel back to work or arrange for connectivity in their home and hope that there are no blackouts and nothing goes wrong. It is much more difficult here than I ever realized.
But I digress from the warm and cozy feeling I was previously reflecting on. Hannah's was rad. I made mulled wine and cooked a dish of paneer, dates and mint. It turned out well and felt so nice to have a kitchen again. We all had an art swap, under the rules of a white elephant, and I ended up with a beautiful hand carved block print. One of the designers at the party had been working with some local craftsmen to see if there was a potential business model for using these craftsmen in commercially produced goods. Rahul spoke for a while of his learnings in this space, mostly that there is a delicate balance in this eco-system. Disrupting one piece affects many, and mandating craft, or regulating it through government grants, may be stifling creativity and growth. The artists are not allowed to veer from traditional product. No use of non-traditional tools, and no incentive to explore. Not that many of these want to do that, but some do. And for them, there is tension. Rahul no longer works with his group of craftsmen, he says he needs time to digest what he has learned, but I commend his attitude for trying and failing and learning from it.
So yea... 1 week until Christmas. I am in short sleeves and a skirt and loving every minute of it.
I focused this week on getting to know my coworkers. I set up hour long interviews with everyone to get a grasp on who they are, what they are looking for in life, and where they see the company going. All of this is to help me best see where I can fit in. It's a little complicated though, because I am not designing a 6 month project just for me, but a longer engagement that another fellow would pick up with wherever I leave off. So it gets tricky. I need to choose something with research, design and a series of iterations, but know that I will probably only make it to the design phase while I am here. After the interviews, I felt way more in tune with the team. I know more about their experiences and more importantly, their aspirations for the future. It was good to just listen and be, it was an exercise I found a lot of appreciation for and will probably use in future new engagements.
This week the team went to visit a program that is sponsored by Cisco, HP, Intel, MIT and the Boston Children's Museum. It is called Children's Lovecastles Trust. These guys have been doing distance learning for 10 years, they have their system mostly worked out and it is impressive to see. The teachers translate state regulated subject curriculum into 30 minute lessons. Each lesson contains a digital presentation that the teacher creates with supplementary learning videos if necessary. All communication is done through Webex. Each classroom is outfitted with a camera, screen, and internet cable. One teacher uses video conferencing to go through a lesson with an average of 5 different classrooms at the same time. The teacher skillfully pairs classes against each other and facilitates interactions between the students across different classes. This approach obviously relies on a lot of donated technology and a stable internet connection to the schools, so it isn't completely scalable, but it is an amazing case study for distance learning.
There is also an afterschool program attached to the facility that allows students to play at different workstations. Each station has a different set of programs installed on the computers. The kids are then free to play at whatever station they like. There are no rules, no defined structure, just a playspace for creativity and fun. It was impressive to see the soft skills they were learning- collaboration, trial and error, pride for the artifacts they created. It was inspiring to say the least.
On the non-work front, I decided the best way to people's hearts is through food. And, since I will be celebrating Christmas this year without the usual triggers of sights, sounds, smells, and tastes, I decided to bring it to me. The most Christmas of all objects, besides a pine tree, is gingerbread. So I organized a gingerbread making event with my coworkers, but who knew how difficult it is to find brown sugar in these parts. Everyone pitched in and brought different ingredients, while I was assigned to the more difficult ones... the gumdrops, decorations, molasses (which doesn't exist here) and the mysterious brown sugar. I ended up going to three different stores searching for brown sugar to no avail and decided the best approach was thievery.
Karnataka grows coffee beans, and makes pretty good coffee actually, so there has been a rise of local coffeeshops in Bangalore. There are also a few expat shops, like Costa Coffee, Au Bon Pain, and Starbucks. So I devised my plan of thievery around 1 section of Koramangala. There is a loop that inlcude 3 different cafes. 3 cafes with copious amounts of brown sugar packets for the taking. I went out one evening, did my job and hustled the neighboorhood, successfully procurring enough packets to fill 3/4 cup. Success!
The other success was in the making and baking. The girls loved it. I was so happy. Everyone got involved in the process, from grinding the spices to pounding the dough and cutting out shapes. It was great. Even better was their faces after tasting the batter and the final product. I fully support food as a conduit to friendship. It works.
My other big win for the weekend was going to Hannah's house for a Christmas party. I met a lot of people from different design and engineering companies in the area. It is interesting being on the India side of international work. In San Francisco, I took for granted the amount of hard work and dedication that our Indian counterparts were doing for us. I didn't realize the consistently late nights and early days they agreed to put in just to talk with us. I thought we were sacrificing a lot of our personal selves and lives for communication but I realize now how naive that thinking was. These guys travel atleast an hour each day in miserable traffic to just get to work. If there is a late night call, which is consistent and frequent, they either have to travel back to work or arrange for connectivity in their home and hope that there are no blackouts and nothing goes wrong. It is much more difficult here than I ever realized.
But I digress from the warm and cozy feeling I was previously reflecting on. Hannah's was rad. I made mulled wine and cooked a dish of paneer, dates and mint. It turned out well and felt so nice to have a kitchen again. We all had an art swap, under the rules of a white elephant, and I ended up with a beautiful hand carved block print. One of the designers at the party had been working with some local craftsmen to see if there was a potential business model for using these craftsmen in commercially produced goods. Rahul spoke for a while of his learnings in this space, mostly that there is a delicate balance in this eco-system. Disrupting one piece affects many, and mandating craft, or regulating it through government grants, may be stifling creativity and growth. The artists are not allowed to veer from traditional product. No use of non-traditional tools, and no incentive to explore. Not that many of these want to do that, but some do. And for them, there is tension. Rahul no longer works with his group of craftsmen, he says he needs time to digest what he has learned, but I commend his attitude for trying and failing and learning from it.
So yea... 1 week until Christmas. I am in short sleeves and a skirt and loving every minute of it.
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