Looking back on South Africa

So that's it for my stay in South Africa. I got back to NYC yesterday after about 70 hours of travel (don't ask). Strangely, I had enough energy to meet some friends for brunch only a few hours after getting off the plane. I guess I just really needed to see them after being away so long. I was definitely at the point of craving familiarity. I can't tell you how great is was to see my ladyfriend.

And now I'm in the process of getting caught up on mail, email and other missed connections. I spent most of the day "doing email" and am not in bad shape. My team at IBM did an excellent job of covering for me, intercepting messages, and leaving me off of the cc list.

Looking back at my blog entries about the Corporate Service Corps I realize I over-emphasized the extracurricular activities. I don't think I wrote quite enough about the project I was working on. That's at least in part due to the fact that for the first couple weeks we were just trying to figure out what the heck we were going to do and simultaneously doing research and trying to meet all the involved parties. There was a lot of reading and meeting and research -- bloggable, for sure, but pale in comparison to jumping off of cliffs and seeing elephants. And so I admit, I gave the work itself short shrift on the blog even though the experience of the work itself was quite intense.

I'll also admit to a level of cynicism. It just didn't seem realistic that in four weeks we'd be able to have an appreciable impact. There were only three of us on my little Business Against Crime -- Caroline, Anil, myself -- and we had only met one another for the first time on the first day of our arrival. Did we even have the right tools, skills and ideas? And so I was reluctant to build things up too much on the blog.

But in the last week -- really in the last few days -- it all came together. We came together. We had a couple of key meetings that helped us to crystallize a direction for our project, a fairly clear set of things we'd deliver for our client and a sustainable business plan for the work so that it could be carried on when we left. I feel really good about what we finally turned over to our client in our last presentation to them, which was attended by several stakeholders (including the head of a government agency for tourism, cell phone service providers, heads of several security firms, a local technology provider and the local chamber of commerce.)

Our final presentation was met with more than just enthusiasm -- the relevant stakeholders literally offered to fund the work. I think we've left our client in a great position to proceed.

Here's a summary from the cover letter of the report we gave our client:

Tourist safety is an integral part of any successful overall tourism strategy. Based on the research and recommendations from Team 1, and our own investigations over the past three weeks, we offer the following four items that will build tourist confidence in the Mpumalanga area and assist in creating a climate for continued tourism growth.

1. First, building on the concepts from the Corporate Service Corps South Africa I team, we describe a viable model for an SMS messaging system for tourists that carries safety tip messages.

2. Secondly, we describe a model application for smart phones that can bring substantial value to the local tourist industry and tourists while simultaneously raising tourists' consciousness about common sense tips for avoiding crime. We offer details for accessing a live demonstration of this application via smart phone.

3. Thirdly, we have developed an outline for a safety best-practices guide that can be shared through LCBT with local lodge owners.

4. Finally, we offer some observations and recommendations concerning the incident reporting systems in use by local security firms and SAPs. We have included a brief workshop guide to help these parties come quickly to an agreement about implementing a common incident reporting system and avoid potential obstacles in deploying and managing such a system.

Although a multitude of solutions are already in use in the Mpumalanga region to assist tourists, these solutions are not combined to create a unified, integrated crime reduction program.

By leveraging existing infrastructure, procedures and technology we believe an achievable strategy using the above four core activities will hold both short and long term benefits. In the short term the aim is to raise the profile of Mpumalanga as a safe tourist destination for the 2010 FIFA World Cup matches to be held in Nelspruit. In the longer term the aim is to create sustained safety levels for tourists, by building ‘best practice’ safety measures into the tourist industry and improving the collaboration and information sharing among South African Police (SAPs) and private security firms.

We propose to harness traditional print media for immediate use such as handouts and brochures in addition to evolving cellular technology (third generation smart phones). As new technology becomes more widely used and affordable, the proposed strategy will naturally evolve away from printed and SMS based information distribution towards Web Based smart phones. There will naturally be overlap between the print, SMS and web content distribution models. This staged strategy caters to the immediate needs leading up to 2010 World Cup while paving the way for the next generation of tourists and tourist industry operators.

I have a whole new appreciation for what business consulatants do now. You literally have to take a zillion pieces parts and weave them together into something whole. I'm sure I'll add more about my South African experience, but I wanted to provide at least a little wrap up of the work I did in South Africa. There you have it.