Frankfurt Business Trip

This week was another business trip to Frankfurt, Germany.  From Brno it's about a seven hour drive to Frankfurt.

David, Slavek, Martin, and I were there for three days of customer meetings.  Fun, fun, fun.  

It was a productive trip but it felt so good to get back home and to sleep in my own bed.

Back to School Supplies

Kyndryl, like IBM, is good about getting involved with the local community in various ways.  At Christmas time there are always toy drives and such.  

In Atlanta, we used to collect school supplies for kids in need before they headed off to a new school year.  

A few years ago I suggested that we do this in Brno and I'm so glad that this continues every year.

My team collected quite a bit for this year's school supply drive.  I'm so proud of them!!

2023 International Women's Day

International Women's Day isn't a public holiday here in Czechland but it is a significant day.

This year's campaign theme is #EmbraceEquity and the goal is to get the world talking about Why equal opportunities aren't enough because people start from different places, so true inclusion and belonging requires equitable action.

It's traditional here in Czechland to give flowers on IWD.  Thanks to some of the ladies that help keep me on track every day.

Meetup in Prague

Igor, one of my former colleagues now works for Riganti which is a software development and design firm in Prague.  Late last year he invited me to speak at a Meetup event about agile project management at Microsoft's Prague office. 

I agreed to it provided that I would present in English.  There was no way that I would try to do it in Czech.

Public speaking isn't my favourite thing to do.  I can do it but it's not my idea of a good time.  Most people never believe that I'm an introvert who merely pretends to be an extrovert.

Jakob, me, and Igor

Overall it was a nice experience.  Big thanks to Igor and Riganti for inviting me to participate.  Apparently, my presentation will be online but I don't know when I'll get a chance to look at it.  

My first assistant, Jakob, was in the area so he came by to catch the presentation.  It was great to be able to catch up with the guys.

Meet the Mayor 2023

Yesterday I got to meet the mayor.  The mayor's office wanted to hear from people about how to better meet the needs of foreigners as the city continues to grow as a centre for technology and innovation.  

Kyndryl is the city's largest private employer with about 1700 foreigners working here in Brno.  We were provided two tickets and I was lucky enough to be asked to go. 

After work I showed up at the town tall for the event.  This was my first time inside and I was floored.  

Some of it has been recently renovated and I had no idea of just how beautiful it was.

JUDr. Markéta Vańková has been Brno's mayor since 2018.  Before she was mayor, she was a representative for the South Moravian Region.

One of the chaps from the Brno Expat Centre knew me from my blog.  That was a surprise but then later on I remembered that my blog had been mentioned back in 2017.

I was impressed with how the city is trying to bring in more highly-qualified expats, especially in the field of nanotechnology, and what the city can do to help people settle in.

There are foreigners from 149 countries registered in Brno.  Slovaks don't have to register as foreigners in Czechland so their numbers aren't included.  The largest number of foreigners in Brno are from Ukraine, followed by Vietnam, Russia, India, Romania, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria, Philippines, USA, Poland, UK, and Belarus.  

I was gobsmacked to find out that there are 629 Americans living in Brno.  I have no idea of where they are hiding because I don't know them.  How are there more Americans here than Poles when Poland is next door?  I honestly only know a few Americans here.  I know way more people from Italy, France, Spain, and Germany here in Brno and these countries aren't even on the list.

There were maybe 50 or 75 people that were invited and I got the chance to meet up with a few friends from other companies that I haven't seen in a while. 

It really was a great experience and I count myself very lucky to have had the chance to participate.

Now to figure out where are of these other Americans are.

3 Day Workshop

I spent the last three days at work in a workshop.  I wasn't really thrilled about spending three fulls days in a workshop because this meant that I would then need to spend at least a few hours each night working just so that I would not face a mountain of work when I returned.  I also wasn't thrilled about having to spend my birthday yesterday in this workshop.  

To top it all off, I knew the facilitator.  She and I don't see eye-to-eye on anything so spending three days with her wasn't my idea of a good time.  The saving grace is that I work with some great people and our Kyndryl Deutsche Bank team is awesome.

Keyboard Stickers

It was time to refresh my work computer and I had the choice to stay with a Mac or switch over to a Lenovo laptop using Windows.  Well, I'm such a jablečný kluk, an Apple guy, now that I didn't even consider switching back to a Windows operating system.  Kyndryl provided me with a new MacBook Air.  There's just one big problem.  They issued me a laptop with an American keyboard.  

I can't use an American keyboard.  It may seem funny to some people but my muscle memory has changed and now I touch type with a Czech keyboard.  I struggle anytime I have to use an American or German keyboard because I'm so used to Czech keyboard now.  It's not just the QWERTZ vs QWERTY thing but all of the punctuation characters are in different spots and I also type using Czech accented letters.

The fix was to order keyboard stickers.  I went into settings as set up a Czech keyboard and now I'm going to place stickers on the keys.  Even when touch typing, I occasionally glance at the keyboard to get my bearings and I want the keyboard to match my language setting.

My Second Kyndryl Business Trip

Following the Pet Shop Boys concert in Berlin on Saturday night, I was back in Brno on Sunday, because on Monday I had to go to back to Frankfurt for my second Kyndryl Business trip.  It looks like I should be here more or less quarterly. 

It was a good trip but there were some very long days.  A group of us did manage to make it in to the city one night for dinner and to check out a bit of the old town. 

Just as there are lots of differences in how English is spoken, German has the same thing.  Only maybe more.  Hessisch is the local German dialect spoken around here.  Fortunately my Hochdeutsch works here but I guess I need to pick up a little of the local lingo.  There is some specific local vocabulary but in general, a lot of the hard sounds become softer.

"auf" becomes "uff"

"P" gets pronounced more like "B"

-ig sounds like -isch

I'm sure that there's more to it.  I doubt that I'll ever blend in like a local.  Berliners usually think that I come from the south due to my accent and vocabulary.

While I was in Frankfurt, Natalie managed to get the weekend off wanted to get up to Berlin to see Claudia and Tünde before she had to return to Wellington.  I already had a Nat visit but one visit is never enough and we decided to surprise Tünde with a double godparent visit. 

On the way to Vienna

On Friday I had a train trip back to Brno via Vienna.  Natalie booked a sleeper train from Budapest to Berlin.  I got home, unpacked, showered, repacked and jumped on another train so that I could meet up with her in Břeclav.  The only glitch is that her train ended up being delayed almost three hours.  

C-Suite Visit

Yesterday part of our Kyndryl c-suite paid a visit to Brno.  This never happened when we were part of IBM.  It started off with a session in an auditorium at a local university where we got to hear from our CEO, CFO, and Chief Transformation Officer.  They were joined by our local site leader.

Martin Schroeter is our CEO so he leads the world's largest IT infrastructure services firm.  Prior to taking the reins at Kyndryl, he was the Senior Vice President of IBM Global Markets.

Nelly Akoth is our new Chief Transformation Officer, who previously was a senior partner in IBM's Global Business Services unit where she was the worldwide leader for the accounting and finance practice.  She used to be the CFO for IBM Sub-Saharan Africa.  I've had the opportunity to meet her before and she's great.

David Wyshner is our new Chief Financial Officer.  He actually didn't come from IBM but from XPO Logistics where he led the global finance organisation.

Zoltán Zerényi is the Director of Client Innovation Centre, EMEA, and he is our local site leader.

It was inspiring getting to listen to our leaders.  Later, Maida and I had the opportunity meet with our CEO.  Pretty cool!

Lunch with the Boys

I'm so glad that things are starting to get back to normal.  At least Covid wise.  Last week I was able to meet up with Maida for lunch and today I got to catch up with Michal and Andrew.

It's been a few years but I still miss working with these guys.  It was nice to be able to hear what all has been going on.  Hopefully we can make are fortnightly lunch a regular thing again.

Lunch Date

After what seems like forever I finally got to meet up with Maida for lunch.  We used to work together in the same team and would see each other in the office two to three times a week before Covid shut down the world.  I took on a new role in a different team about a year ago and we never seemed to be in the office on the same day.  So it was great to finally catch up with her and find out everything that's been going on.

When I was lived in the USA I worked full-time from home.  When I moved to Brno I worked full-time in the office.  There are pros and cons to each but I really enjoy the flexibility of working from the office three or four days a week with one or two days at home, depending on what all I've got going on in a particular week.  Due to Covid restrictions, I usually come to the office just once a week now.  It's great getting to see some colleagues in person but most of my meetings are still remote because even if I'm in the office, most others aren't there the same day.  Hopefully this will start to change soon.

Like I said it was so much fun catching up with Maida today.  Next week I'm supposed to meet up for lunch with Michal and Andrew.    

Geetha's Farewell Lunch

Today was Geetha's farewell lunch.  I've more or less worked with Geetha the whole time that I've been here in Czechland.  She worked in India with my team located in Brno.  She's always been a rock star so several years ago I sorted out a transfer for her to Brno.  Then a few years later, we worked together in a different team before I left to do something else.

But after more than five years in Brno she's ready to go back home.  That's one of the things about expats.  For the most part they come and then one day go back to their home country or head to the next adventure.

When I first moved here I thought that I'd be here for 2, maybe 3 years, and then either head back to the USA or perhaps end up in another country.  Yet, even after almost 13 years, I don't have any plans to leave Brno.

Safe travels back to Bangalore Geetha!  We'll miss you!!

First Kyndryl Business Trip

I was in Germany this past week on my first business trip with Kyndryl.

When I was with IBM in Atlanta, I usually travelled to meet with clients in California, Virginia, and Ohio.  While here in Czechland, I've been lucky enough to visit England, Ireland, Germany, Hungary, Slovenia, Netherlands, India, Poland and Slovakia.  I honestly can't even count how many times I've been to Bratislava and Wrocław.

This week I was in Frankfurt to meet with a client and while there we signed a new mega five-year deal.  It was a great visit but it was a lot of work and now I get to sleep in my own bed.

Kyndryl

In August, it was my 18th year with IBM and as of today I now work for Kyndryl.  IBM has spun off the infrastructure services business which included the division I worked for which was IBM Global Technology Services.

Kyndryl is an information technology services provider that designs, builds, manages and develops large-scale information systems worldwide.   

I never actually applied to work at IBM.  I worked for Equifax which is one of the three US credit bureaus and I was outsourced to IBM.  Basically I was told one day that I was moving to IBM and I got rebadged.  I have to say that overall it worked out all right and it eventually led me to my life here in Czechland.  So I'm excited to see what happens with Kyndryl.  We're pretty much the world's largest start-up.

Here's a short video I found out on YouTube.

©Kyndryl

One question that people keep asking is what does Kyndryl mean?  It's basically a mix of "kinship" and "tendril" which symbolises new growth and working together.

The only drawback to the name is that in Czech it sounds like Kinedryl which, in Czechland and Slovakia, is a popular medicine for motion sickness.