Classroom time

I'm going to have to keep today short and sweet. It's already 10:30 and I just gave up on trying to get anymore work done. I'm beat!

It's another gorgeous day in Morogoro. The temperature is perfect, the humidity is just right. I even slept well last night.

Class started today. We are gathered in a meeting room and there are a lot of people in the class -- something like 25 people. Fortunately Dennis and James have been terrific help.

I lost a few years off my life when, the first time we tried to enter a form on the phones we got error messages on all of the forms. Pretty quickly James figured out we had the wrong version of the program on the phones and it wasn't too difficult to download a new version and away we went.

They were very receptive and we got a great deal of work done. At one point we needed to make a decision about something and the room was divided about how to proceed. I put in my cohousing facilitator hat and decided to do something we call a "spectrum" exercise where people show their support for one point or the other by physically standing relative to how strongly they feel about their point. People at the extremes get to defend their view and see if anyone has a change of heart. It was really fascinating and effective.

What I was most proud of was that Joel, who is the most senior person on this project and holds admitted disdain for technology, has pointed out that if this is not good and user friendly enough, he'll put an end to it. Part of the way through the day he was saying, "This is COOL!" and, "I really like this!" That was very gratifying.

Even with the delays I think we are farther along that I had expected we could be at this point, so we will pick up where we left off tomorrow and see how much more time we need to spend on it. There are a lot of changes needed to the system as a result of their feedback, so it wouldn't be bad to stop early and get started on that.

So one quick, non-work story. The dining experience has really been an interesting learning experience for me. Joel had said that you should go to dinner about (as he puts it) 30 minutes before you expect to be chewing, because it takes a long time to get served. There were lots of wait-staff so that certainly isn't the problem. But Joel and I went to the hotel restaurant at 8PM and got served a bit after 9PM. I don't think that what we requested was so unusual. The waiter didn't apologize for the delay -- just standard operating procedure.