First Impressions

It's after midnight and I still haven't posted updates from Croatia but I wanted to jump ahead and blog my first impressions of the team while they were still first impressions.

Most of the team flew in sometime yesterday so today was our first chance to meet as a group.  Nothing formal, just a loosely formed plan to meet in the hotel lobby at 10am and go sightseeing.  We all 'know' each other in the sense that we have each other's Blue Pages picture and have heard each other's voices on the phone during our weekly calls for the last 3 months.  But it's a whole different thing to finally put a real person with a name and a voice.  To me, the pre-work calls were something to get through as a requirement for getting to Turkey but I didn't feel like they were particularly successful at helping us to really get to know our team mates.  Maybe that was just me and the fact that the calls were at 6am U.S. Mountain Time and I was barely awake.  But the amazing thing is ... after 5 minutes of meeting in person I felt like we'd all been friends forever.  I'm sure the pre-work helped with that but it's amazing what meeting face to face can do.

Now keep in mind that some of us had been in Istanbul for a few days, some just flew in late last night, so trying to decide what to see as a group was challenging.  'A bit like herding cats' is the way Viv put it.  But we set off towards the old city and somehow managed to keep all 11 people in tow while navigating the funicular, the tram, and the crowded Istanbul streets.  I'll post more details about the sightseeing later but I wanted to post the following picture tonight.  We started at the Basilica Cistern and inside they had a photo 'booth' setup where you could dress up as sultans and princesses and have your picture taken.  I'm not even sure who first suggested that we get one but before you know it, 8 of us were dressed in our finest royal gear and our first (partial) team photo was taken.

Front Row (L to R): Antonio (Mexico), Sara (U.S), Serina (India), Tsubasa (Japan)
Back Row (L to R): Sanjay (India), Frank (U.S), Subra (U.S), Kazufumi (Japan)

Then some more sightseeing stuff (more on that in a future blog) and finally a late team dinner.

The Team

So, my first impressions ... 1) This is going to be a fun group that is open to goofing around as well as working hard and 2) It's amazing how 15 people from 8 different countries can enjoy a 3 hour Turkish dinner together and I'll bet no one in that restaurant would have ever guessed that we all only met a few hours ago.  It's going to be a good month.

#ibmcsc Turkey 8