Starting at Tigo with an appointment scheduled for 9AM we ended up waiting for our contact in the Tigo San Pedro Sula headquarters to show up. Below Elder, COO of the project, and Stevan, our salesforce guru, are still jazzed about the promise of field connectivity!
Then, after some more waiting... perhaps less jazzed but still excited...
(I really love Tigo's smily face logo in this picture of Stevan and Doña Emilia, the project CEO)
We eventually did manage to connect with our Tigo contact only to learn how big of a bummer technology can be. Our Gobi Cards (the internal modem that enables field connectivity) were of course not configured for Tigo service and unable to pick up the test SIM cards Tigo was loaning us. After 3 hours in the Tigo office, to the humor of many Hondurans, we asked to test the SIM cards in external modems to see if there might have been something we were missing.
Tigo office and dedicated team
The team again with the Tigo "feliz" (happy) guy in the background. I thought it was a pretty great juxtaposition.
In testing the SIM cards in modems (after scouring tech forums for hours yearning for answers) we discovered that not only did the modems not work but that the SIM cards didn't either!
At this point Doña Emilia in her infinite wisdom and managerial capacity made a brilliant decision and coordinated a potential solution to our conundrum. Tottering away with 7 computers we left with plans to connect with one of Emilia's Santa Barbara contacts to test the computers with loaner modems she could acquire for us. We also felt the need for our California Tech Guru's genius and reached out to our USA support team, Esther and Tlaca to the rescue!
Driving up into the mountains after the requisite junk food and coke stop we chatted about the project and how it has grown, thinking of its nascent stages of Emilia coordinating incredibleness to todays new employees, stove factory and office and the REALLY big construction numbers projected. Emilia and Elder talked about how PM has taken on Honduras.
After some lunch at "La Canasta de Vida"and some cell phone activating and purchasing we were quickly immersed into the computers.
Working to activate in hour 2 of 5 this was how Stevan felt...
Eventually, with Tlaca's hours spent on the phone in the US and determination to get to the bottom of the problem Stevan and I in Honduras were able to activate the Gobi cards! Talk about the power of collaboration. By 7pm we were both really ready to get out of the hotel room so I alas didn't capture the elation of the installation, I assure you it was however equally powerful.
we however did capture these two gems...
Cell phone ring tone...
and feriado in Santa Barbara... GaGa ain't got nothing on this
All in all a totally awesome exhausting day with some pretty epic spanish usage.
Tomorrow we start day one of our training for the office team and buy the data plan for the gobi cards! Hurrayyy!
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