#pyxera

A Bittersweet Goodbye! 

I got a few hours of sleep during my last night in Jakarta – it’s hard to believe this amazing adventure is coming to an end. 

I’m very grateful for this opportunity and proud of what our teams accomplished but still feel like we can do more together. We plan on staying connected to our clients and friends in Indonesia and hope that we can continue to provide support from afar and maybe return in the future for another assignment. 

Last Supper with the Full Team. 

As a thank you for all of the hard work Anim and our Project Assistance have put into our program, we wanted to take them out for a special dinner. Since it is Ramadan, we planned a proper break fast with all of the local Java specialties. According with tradition, we started the meal with something sweet and cold and then enjoyed course after course from fish to beef to soup and salad, with steamed white rice of course. 

Careers Considerations 

For our breakout workshop, the university asked that we share insights from our careers to show the students different paths and allow them an opportunity to ask questions and get advice (not from their professors for a change). So we started by introducing ourselves and giving a brief overview of our (very different) career paths, what we learned along the way, challenges we faced and some of the best advice we received. This led to a healthy Q&A followed by a short exercise. 

With the evolving tech landscape, additional jobs, practices and processes seem to immerge almost daily. We asked the students to share what they think of related to IT (e.g., jobs, skills, technologies) and then we supplemented their list with what we think of related to IT (we did the same activity with our full team earlier that morning). 

We were impressed with the range of terms the students shared and they were happy to learn about some new topics, career opportunities and technologies and processes to investigate. 

http://fasilkom.mercubuana.ac.id/

http://thejak.co/2018/05/gandeng-ibm-tingkatkan-kapasitas-dosen-dan-mahasiawa-di-bidang-ti/

https://idnews.co.id/gandeng-imb-tingkatkan-kapasitas-dosen-dan-mahasiawa-di-bidang-it/

http://www.mnctrijayafm.com/news/detail/19579/umb-gandeng-ibm-tingkatkan-kapasitas-mahasiswa-dan-dosen-di-bidang

https://nasional.sindonews.com/read/1309537/144/berdaya-saing-mahasiswa-ilmu-komputer-butuh-sertifikasi-1527474073

https://m.liputan6.com/news/read/3524801/tingkatkan-layanan-ketenagakerjaan-kemnaker-jalin-kerja-sama-dengan-ibm

http://www.rri.co.id/post/berita/532828/sorotan_kampus/fasilkom_umb_gandeng_ibm_tingkatkan_kapasitas_mahasiswa_dan_dosen_di_bidang_ti.html

Community Service Day Take 2!

Our team was eager to find an opportunity to lend our skills and expertise as IBMers to the community in Jakarta. Our projects have a more indirect impact so we felt it would be valuable to build direct connections as well. 

Anim, our amazing Pyxera (NGO) Lead in Indonesia, has wonderful connections in Jakarta and worked day and night to pull together an amazing day with the technical (e.g., software engineering) students at Universitas Mercu Buana. When we arrived, we found the administrators eager and engaged, the students passionate and driven and our faces on a billboard outside of the school. 

We structured the day with six different topics – Design Thinking, Software Engineering, Agile, Project Management Tools, Chatbot and Career in IT (believe it or not, that one was mine, with Tom and Leo). Most groups, led by a combination of our CSC team members, provided an overview and then dove into hands-on learning with the students. 

In the spirit of agile, iteration and continuous learning, we issued a survey to the students and got some really good feedback: 

• 95% had a great experience at our workshops and would recommend them to friends 

• Students reported increasing their skills on a breadth of topics and acquired new skills that they can take back to the classroom and their future career search 

• The feedback we received from students is that they wanted more time both in the sessions and to interact more directly in Q&A (and some more prizes, of course) 

We found the day to be incredibly valuable and rewarding and all left wishing our time together was a little longer. We hope that other CSC groups in the future consider similar community service initiatives and that the IBM Indonesia team is able to further mentor these wonderful students.