Monday 1 April 2013

Çeşme

To be updated
Aquarium or Fence?
Guard Octopus?

Çeşme

Final Saturday in Izmir









End of week 3

Had a review with our client on Thursday.   We took him through an outline of what we plan to deliver and explained which areas need further work.   Fortunately he was pleased with what we have to date.  We divided up the remaining work across the team and got stuck into it on Friday to get as much covered before the weekend.


Tuesday 26 March 2013

Community Service Day

This morning we travelled to the Izmir Technical Institute about 40 minutes south of the city.  We were scheduled to give a series of presentations to a class of about 70 computer science students.  The idea was that each of us would talk for about 5 minutes on a topic we felt would be of use to the students.   Richard had suggested using Prezi as an interesting / different way of delivering the material, so over the last few days each of us provided him with our materials and he merged this into the final presentation.

The full sequence of presentations can be viewed at
Turkey Team 9 Community Service Day
This link allows you to view all of the presentations - and associated videos.  Allow a minute or two for it to load before starting view the detail.

I was up first, after a short video.   My theme was 'continuous professional development' and I tried to convey this by showing that throughout my career I have continuously learned new skills as my role has changed.   I dont know if you can get that from the slides without being able to hear what I said to each one.   The other presentations are also interesting and showcase the diversity that makes up IBM.

And we got some news coverage

haberler.com

stargundem

Friday 22 March 2013

Workshops

Yesterdays workshop with a group of from the board of the Young Entrepreneurs Council went well.  It generated lots of data.   Today we will repeat the workshop with a groups of students who are members of entrepreneurial societies at various Izmir universities.   If we gather a similar amount of data today then we will busy with analysis for much of next week.

Wednesday 20 March 2013

There's no show like a Joe show

OK - Irish readers may find this interesting.

Here is a picture of the table where I sat down to lunch.

Joe Dolan (1939 - 2007) was an Irish entertainer, recording artist and pop singer.   The last place I expected to see his picture was as part of a table display at the Izmir bazaar.

Maybe they want people to eat :-
audio More, and more and more .... audio



A new experience

On the way home yesterday I was thinking that I need to blog about more than just work and tourist activity.  There has to be something different.  
In Turkey you cannot avoid the shoeshine guys.   There is one on every other corner.   As a child I had to polish my shoes every Saturday night - a task I never enjoyed.   Perhaps that is why I have always had a somewhat idealogical opposition to having my shoes shined.   Well I finally gave in.   In the time it takes to order/collect a Starbucks coffee - and for half the price - I ended up with this ...