Last week was the 4th annual Xerox Innovation Group (XIG) conference in Webster, NY. It is an event that brings together researchers from all of our centers: Xerox Research Center Canada, Europe, India and Webster (my center) as well as the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). I was on the conference committee as the one of the keynote speaker chairs (I brought Professor Judy Olson to speak to our researchers about scientific collaboration over distance), so I was pretty busy during the event, helping with the logistics and networking with all of the amazing people in our organization.

In the midst of all this activity, I was surprised with an Excellence in Science and Technology award, along with 5 other team members, for our work on on Open Xerox. Open Xerox is the web portal that hosts technology prototypes from XIG, making them accessible to the external user community well before the launch of a product offering. I am responsible for the design and usability of the site and it’s associated services. Here’s the text from the award:

This award recognizes the Open Xerox Team. It has over a thousand users and is being used to support RFPs, customer engagement and technology licensing as well as share R&D across the XIG and broader research community. Designed to combine technologies, facilitate transfer, ease integration into customer applications and host software at very different levels of maturity the proprietary platform also has built-in IP protection.

The team for Open Xerox is a cross-center team, including people from Xerox Research Center Europe (XRCE) and Xerox Research Center Webster (XRCW). Pictured (from left to right) are Irene Maxwell (XRCE), Sophie Vandebroek (CTO of Xerox and President of XIG), me and Mike Kehoe (XRCW). Behind us is the video screen that shows some of our other team members connecting via video conference from XRCE in Grenoble, France: Jutta Willamowski and Nicola (hidden off screen). Herve Poirier (XRCE) is also on our team and was present at the conference, but did not make it for the awards ceremony. We were all given a nice plaque and an iPad 2 for our efforts. I’m very proud of the team and the project so I decided to post about it here.

This is the tenth in an ongoing series of posts that capture journal entries from my incredible trip to Zimbabwe in 1997. You can read more about my motivation for the journey and why I’m revisiting it now in the original post. I was 21 at the time I wrote this.
 
Part 10
7/3/97, Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe
I’ve been busy writing postcards and letters because I actually got to the Zengeza Post Office today and sent 23 postcards and three letters. Getting there was an ordeal because the hours are within my work schedule (8:30am-4:00pm). Joseph and Talita, driven by Emanuel, the designated CHIYSAP chauffeur (very few people drive here), came and picked us up early so I could go. We thought it opened at 8 but when we got there, we discovered it was 8:30 so that whole exercise was futile. I got a ride there later in the day and spent half an hour in line and another half hour liking stamps. Postcards cost $5.00 each and letters anywhere from $5-15.00. I bought some extra stamps so I won’t have to go there for a while. I’ll just have to estimate the weight.

I spent most of the day at the dressmaking training unit, a total waste of my time. They were supposed to cut out their trousers today but only one had her material. I helped three people transfer the master pattern into a copy of their own, the other two refused to do even that. After I did that I sat around for a while and then told the instructor to call me when she actually had something for me to do. I walked back to CHIYSAP where I had a productive meeting with Lovemore, then got into the back of the CHIYSAP truck (we took the station wagon in the morning but it wasn’t running very well) and came home.

I spent the weekend in the city; I went by myself so it was a test. I actually made it home in one piece (after dark) on Sunday night. Friday I stayed home after work because I had to meet with the theatre group on Saturday morning at 9:30am. Friday during the day was leadership training. It consisted of a male forum and a female forum. I was bummed because I can’t really relate to any of those girls except Judith, the welder. We spent our time writing articles for the CHIYSAP newsletter so it wasn’t as interesting as it could have been.

Saturday morning, James, the leader of the theatre group, came to get me at home. We actually walked all the way to CHIYSAP, something I was not expecting. It is a really long and sweaty trek! James is an actor in some Shona language TV dramas and as we walked down the road people not only stared at me, but stared at the TV star and called him by his character name: Tony. We started the theatre meeting with a discussion of future events, there are many planned but we have few concrete details on anything. I’m trying to put together a calendar for them. Then we did warm-ups which consisted of some dancing and singing games. I showed them “prunes and suns” (probably the only useful thing I took from my Beginning Acting I class at Santa Clara University). After warm-ups we practiced the traditional dances which I had seen on the previous Friday. I want to make some choreographic suggestions but I’m not sure how to go about it, I’ll have to discuss it with James.
 
Continued in Part 11

This is the ninth in an ongoing series of posts that capture journal entries from my incredible trip to Zimbabwe in 1997. You can read more about my motivation for the journey and why I’m revisiting it now in the original post. I was 21 at the time I wrote this.
 
Part 9
7/3/97, Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe

Today was a good day although it started with some guys harassing me on the bus this morning. They were saying something about the color of my skin, but I couldn’t understand them so I turned away. They continued talking and pointing at me and Francis even talked to them which I thought was rather rude. I’ll just assume he was defending me.
 
Every morning we walk across a field to a main intersection and get a ‘lift’ to the St. Mary’s Area which is closest to CHIYSAP. Then we walk across another field of dry grass to get to the office. The lift can be provided by several different types of transportation. There are large buses that look like American school buses which are owned by many different companies; there are mini buses of every sort, some are owned my companies, others by individuals; there are “emergency taxies” which are about the size of a station wagon; there are also just random people who will give you a ride. Buses cost $2.80 and private rides are $4.00 I think.
 
I am getting more accustomed to the layout of this place and basic ways to get around. I’ll test that this weekend when I go into town by myself. I’ll have to figure out how to get home. I wrote my address down so I can ask if I get lost, but I fear that people here generally don’t have much good will towards me, a light-skinned foreigner. It is definitely a new place for me, but somehow it reminds me of my college experience at Santa Clara University. However, I could get along on my own there an at least it was safe. Here everything is unfamiliar and uncertain, but maybe someday soon I’ll be able to feel at home.
 
I spent the whole day (9am-5pm) at the office today, with two breaks for snacks and food which is becoming more palatable. We usually have bread with margarine and mazoe for snacks and a plate of sadza with greens and beef for lunch. Mazoe is like Hawaiian Punch, it comes concentrated and then you add water (four parts water to one part mazoe). It only contains ten percent juice, but it is better than water. Today’s meeting was the Council of Youths. It took place outsize under the tree and was actually pretty interesting. CHIYSAP is an extremely complex organization which allows everyone their input so things take a while, but I think that is a good thing. By the time I come home I’ll be used to their mode and everyone at home will be impatient with my new ‘developing country’ attitude towards time!
 
Continued in Part 10

This is the eighth in an ongoing series of posts that capture journal entries from my incredible trip to Zimbabwe in 1997. You can read more about my motivation for the journey and why I’m revisiting it now in the original post. I was 21 at the time I wrote this.
 
Part 8
7/2/97, Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe
OK, feeling a little better today. I had a small breakdown in Talita’s office today and was told basically to get over it. So I have to be strong and endure the amazingly slow pace of life in a developing country, as well as the poverty and inconvenience. It took me two hours this morning to produce two letters at work, because I did not have all the information and had to wait on others , all of whom are incredibly slow and extremely irritating. I finally got all the information and got the letters printed out and then went into town with Lovemore, my partner in crime (at work anyway). We had several errands to run at the Embassy and at Speciss College. Lovemore had to make a delivery to a lawyer and I finally bought some postcards.
 
Lovemare is a very interesting young man, he actually works for CHIYSAP as a Project Officer and unlike most people his age, he lives alone and has some logical plans to make money outside of CHIYSAP because they don’t pay very much. Harare during the week is much more bustling than on the weekend, but I still didn’t see very many white or ‘colored’ people. The buses from the outlying areas all come to one place and to go anywhere else you have to take a taxi, which is expensive, by CHIYSAP standards anyway. So we walked to the embassy.
 
This is the second time I’ve been there and I guess I was expecting to be treated differently there because I’m an American citizen. This has not been the case. Most of the people who work there aren’t American anyway so they could give a shit. When I registered there the other day I got a flier for a 4th of July celebration taking place at some park in Harare on Saturday (July 5). I’m going to try to go and I hope it will be a positive experience. Anyway, we went to the embassy because they fund the dressmaking training unit and we have some questions about the practical application of those funds. They guy wasn’t there and we were told to wait outside or come back later.
 
So we walked all the way back to the bus station area and got a ride to Speciss College to register the three secretarial trainees for their placement tests. This was a complete fiasco. First we were given the wrong form, that fact was only discovered after we filled out all three. Next we found the real form and were told that we had to fill out 9 of them (one for each person and each subject that they were taking the test in)! I was extremely frustrated, that college is worse than CHIYSAP! So after we finally got all the forms done, we had to wait for this guy to manually create a receipt for each and every one of those forms. In the end I felt sorry for him because I wasn’t very nice to him at first. I should learn to be more patient I suppose.
 
Next we took a bus back to town and walked back to the embassy but the guy still wasn’t there so we walked back to the bus area and stood in line (the queue as they call it here). We got back to CHIYSAP before everyone went home.
 
It has been sprinkling/raining since the afternoon. Everyone says it is very cold but I don’t think so. I’ll probably say something different tomorrow morning in my ice cold shower. Last night I was awakened by shouting, a thief was stealing something from next door I guess. The neighbors discovered him and he jumped over the fence into our area and ran around the back of the house and jumped the fence again. Apparently they caught him and beat him (that was the report from Francis). This afternoon when we came home we found that he had left his shoe in the front yard. This is the second incident in the week that I have been here. I guess that’s the reason for all the bars and locks. I hope my stuff doesn’t get stolen while I am here.
 
Continued in Part 9

This is the seventh in an ongoing series of posts that capture journal entries from my incredible trip to Zimbabwe in 1997. You can read more about my motivation for the journey and why I’m revisiting it now in the original post. I was 21 at the time I wrote this.
 
Part 7
6/30/97, Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe
Monday. Work is only 8am-4pm, Thursday and Friday are spent in meetings so that leaves me only three days to fill, with what I am still not clear on. Tomorrow I’m going to spend all day with dressmaking. That should be interesting, everyone was impressed with the skirt and top I made for myself at the party on Saturday so I don’t think they are too advanced, it’s just a simple pattern. Today I went to town (Harare) again, this time with Joseph, who not only has the worst teeth but also the worst eyesight, holding things inches from his thick glasses. He doesn’t drive, but owns a car. Clemens acts as CHIYSAP chauffeur. I’ve told them I can drive but I don’t think they believe me, women don’t drive.
 
So today I registered at the American Embassy, which contained no Americans that I could see, just the people who worked there and many people, Zimbabwean and other, trying to get a visa to go to America. I guess it’s pretty hard to get one, I heard many stores, all of which were rejected as flimsy reasons to want to go to the U.S. I also went to the bank to get money and to check if my credit cards were working. For a while, the Advanta wasn’t. The Chase does but I haven’t been able to use it to get money at an ATM. They both worked at the bank so I guess I feel a little more secure. We also visited the post office, stationary store, and OXFAM offices where David works (where I will be able to receive faxes). David is the most sane and rational Zimbabwean man I have met here. I like him very much and his wife Francine as well. They are very progressive and accepting. I want to have dinner with them soon. So most of my day in the city was spent in and out of the car. For the short time I was at work I sat at my desk and read a paper by Joseph that was surprisingly eloquent and informative. There is more to that man than meets the eye.
 
7/1/97, Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe
Feeling very alone, missing Jennie, wanting to go home.
 
Continued in Part 8