Meet the Clients

At long last my blogging comes to the purpose of our trip: to contribute some value to local clients as volunteers from IBM. By Monday we’d each worked long hours to prepare a single slide – or perhaps two – describing who we are. My slide had a big picture of a D Stock Hydro and another big picture of Maya. I was sure this would clearly demonstrate to the clients what sort of value I could deliver.

In the afternoon I donned my new gray suit and joined the other ten CSC members as we piled into small taxis for the trip to the kick-off meeting. We drove for some time through busy city streets with little regard for the color of traffic lights or the presence of oncoming cars, buses, and scooters. The horn was used liberally. Shijiazhuang is quite a big city by most standards, and the provincial capital of Hebei Province. But it seemed to contain approximately 11 foreigners.

Once on site we walked into an old school board room for the kick-off meeting. A Chinese flag stood at the front of the room alongside a massive vase. The main table was enormous, flanked by long and narrow backup tables of sorts. Cameras seemed to be everywhere. I expected to be given a number of pens to sign something into law. After some time of polite seating and arranging, our host kicked off the meeting with a formal speech that one of our Australian Business Volunteers (ABV) volunteers, Emily, translated into English. Next, the local IBM team did their presentation, explaining that Sam Palmisano was here. A few of us were momentarily amazed until we realized that “here” was Beijing, where he was giving some sort of speech to people who were not us. Nevertheless, the meeting tone was quite formal. As the first clients began to read prepared speeches, I noticed that my palms were getting sweaty. This was at least as likely to be due to the fact that I wear a wool suit about two times per year as it was due to nerves, but nevertheless.

Then it was time for the client from Hebei University of Economics and Business to introduce himself. His name was Pau, and he was my client, shared with a German fellow named Tom Treuten. The tone of the meeting changed. He spoke excitedly. He laughed a lot. He addressed Tom and me by name. He spoke terrific English. In short, Tom and I were in luck.

It was with this spirit of optimism that I took to the stage to introduce myself. I started by butchering the Chinese pronunciation of my name that I’d put on my business card that morning – Hao wen si – hoping to get a laugh. Not much. Then I went for a joke about my birthday given that much of the early meeting talked about IBM’s 100th birthday this year. Ooh…not funny when I heard it out loud. I went on to mangle some Chinese I’d learned from our guides on The Great Wall. This was the first time all meeting that Pau wasn’t laughing. Tough crowd. I noticed I was sweating again. Thankfully I wrapped up with a picture of me eating Dan Dan noodles. Good old Dan Dan, always comes through for me in a pinch.

The meeting wrapped up and Tom and I joined Pau and his student Jack for a conversation on our scope of work. We noticed some immediate problems. The first presentation was to take place in less than a week. The second was scheduled for a Saturday. They wanted us to talk about HR issues in our home countries. But once we spent a bit of time discussing the scope we felt good, and soon we would visit campus to nail down the topics and schedule once and for all. And Jack is a big fan of F1 car racing. Perhaps I’d get a chance to introduce him to F1 boat racing and the legend of Fast Freddie. After all, there are three F1 boat races scheduled in China in 2011.