Getting Closer

I'm starting to pack in earnest now. Can't seem to find my sunglasses, but otherwise I think I'm in pretty good shape.

I had a number of opportunities during the two Thanksgiving celebrations I attended yesterday, to talk about my trip. One of the other guests at the first meal had done a safari in Tanzania, and had some good information for me. To most people, though, my trip is something very exotic and foreign. I heard myself explaining both my trip, and what the IRC does many times, and each time it all made more and more sense to me. Let me see if I can sum it up here: The IRC helps refugees. We help them when they come to the US, but we also help them when they're in refugee camps. In order to be an effective member of the IRC team, I have to understand what we actually do when we help refugees. It's no different than when I worked in advertising, I needed to understand how we helped out clients get their message out. In order to do this, I need to visit the field. Pretty straightforward.

On the technical side, a significant part of my responsibility is to make sure that all of our worldwide staff has access to all the resources they need to do their jobs effectively. This ranges from bandwidth to PCs to applications. Providing these services to our headquarters in NY and our other US-based offices is challenging, but there are many good models to follow, and with the right approach can be done well. The rest of the world, and Africa in particular, is a whole different kettle of fish. Bandwidth is a real challenge there, which makes everything else harder. My hope for this trip is that I will accomplish two things relative to technology:
1. Get a real sense of what it's like to work from these locations, how painfully slow the Internet connection is, how our intranet functions, etc.
2. To meet and talk with people who are on the ground doing IT support. These folks work for the country offices, not for my IT group, so I have a lot to learn about how they get things done. My hope is that by getting to know them and their issues, I'll be able in the future to help them be more effective.

Of course I'm excited to see Africa, but my real focus is on the IRC's work, and how I can help.