Day 16 Busy weekend ahead

We each have to present at the seminar for women and disabled SME entrepeneurs on Saturday. My presentation is on SME success stories so I have chosen Shi Jacks to present. Shi Jacks is an Angkringan or street restaurant in Solo city. It's speciality is flavoured drinks made from fresh milk. Indonesians are not renowned milk drinkers but Shi Jacks is doing a roaring trade and now has 10 restaurants around Solo city.

In order to be able to speak expertly on the topic we went along on Friday evening to sample their produce. The place was hopping. The food was basic enough but the milk shakes were very good indeed. If Grace or Denis were here they'd be regular customers in Shi Jacks!





Earlier on Friday we worked through SWOT analysis on the training facility and incubation centre at Solo Technopark. This was a useful exercise in bringing a summary to the research and interviews we had carried out over the past two weeks.






Before heading to Shi Jacks we had surprised our friend and colleague Christian from Argentina with a party for his 44th birthday.




He was genuinely stunned as he thought he was coming to a preparation meeting for the robots workshop the next day

The young people on the right are physics and engineering students who have (thankfully) volunteered to help at the robots workshop tomorrow afternoon. That will take some of the pressure off the rest of us.

Tomorrows event is a big deal with a government minister attending along with Mayor Rudy (who we already met at the kick off session) so early to bed this Friday night.





















Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 9 - Here comes the weekend

Image
Our final meeting for the week was with Ryou Juara a tenant in the Technopark incubation centre. He has developed a mobile app called Delivo which people can use to have parcels collected and delivered. Initially he's offering the service in the Solo City area but is hoping to form a partnership with Lion Air (the low cost carrier in SE Asia) and extend his reach. He is targetting souvenirs, fashion and food. There are four people involved including Ryou and they pay themselves half the minimum wage each month while they get the business up and running - that's EUR50 a month. He found out about Technopark from an enterprise group that he's a member of and is getting support with office space, soft skills training and assistance with developing his business plan. So an exhausting but productive and fascinating week of fact finding and research draws to a close. To summarise we covered: Four members of the Solo Technopark management team The partners of Technopark at
Read more

Day 10 - A feast of sight seeing

Image
Mr. Wasis from IBM Indonesia organised an action packed Saturday for us so up at 5.30am and away we went in a mini-bus at 6.30. Our first stop was Pramadan, a 9th century Hindu temple, near the city of Yogyakarta.  Anette from Germany plays a kind of worldwide treasure hunt called geo cash and was delighted to find a geo cash spot near to the temple. Popular for school trips - the children look to interview english speakers as a way to practice english and they love to get photos. Next stop was Borobudur  - not to be out done the Buddhists built a temple of similar magnitude to Pramadan just 56kms away. It's the largest Buddhist temple in the world. One of the bigger selfies that Ibad organised at Pramadan. Indonesia is just entering into it's rainy season so the day was a mix of sunshine and torrential downpours. This picture shows me with a snake - could Jacqueline manage this? While in this one I'm holding an Iguana
Read more

Day 7 - Out and about in Solo city

Image
Scooters Scooters everywhere  - The moped or scooter is the vehicle of choice in Indonesia. They swarm like ants along the road. It's chaotic and hard to tell who has right of way, but everyone seems to get to where they need to go. My colleague Tracy said it feels like you're in a game of Super Mario - Denis would love it! Click on the link to see a video of what I mean. Anyway a bit of a blog backlog due to our assignments becoming very busy so here's a catch up on a busy day 7. We were given a scope of work (SOW) document by Solo Technopark before we came to Indonesia so our goal for the first week is to gain an understanding of the running of their business and then propose any modifications we felt were needed to the scope. Once we get an agreed SOW in place then it's time to go and deliver on the plan. We met management of Solo Technopark on Day 6 so today we went out to meet other stakeholders. First up is ATMI  - a company that produces products commer
Read more