Tim's Vietnam Service Learning Trip: Introduction

Introduction

Hello folks! Just beginning a new volunteer expedition, and wanted to use this first post to set the stage, and talk a bit about my current stay in Hong Kong. As you may know, I did a service learning trip to India, working with the NGO (non-governmental organization) called iSPICE, which is an acronym for something or other. That trip was loosely sponsored by the VMware foundation, in they provided me air-cover with my boss to take the time off work, but I funded the whole thing myself. For more on that trip see my blog on the trip over at http://timvolunteers.blogspot.com.

This trip is different in that the whole thing is an official VMware foundation trip. In addition to providing a week off for each employee per year, they are now starting to build organized trips, and about a year ago they went to Kenya on such a trip. That trip was to support the creation of new computer labs for kids in orphanages out side of Nairobi. Their primary partners were Orphans' Overseas, who has an existing program supporting such labs and has been working for many years there, and Team for Tech, and Intel related NGO that supports the logistical side of companies doing service work.

Tad - the director of Ophans Overseas, and some of the kids

Why Vietnam? And Why me?

Orphans' Overseas has two main locations, Kenya as I mentioned, and Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon) in Vietnam. So its kind of logical to try a similar effort in HCMC. But in Kenya they didn't really use any VMware technology. They used classmate PCs, from Intel, and software from an educational vendor named Pearson. Folks at Ophans' Overseas wondered if we could use vmware technology to simplify the deployment of Pearson software in these computer labs, and if you google that topic you end up with a paper written by my team at VMware (its here). So after the Kenya trip wrapped up I got a call to see if I could help deploy VMware View in Vietnam orphanages. How cool is that? Honestly, there are like 5000 technical people at VMware, so I was super lucky to get that call, and I am really hoping I can do a good job and help make this thing a success. Now I am leading the technical team for the project, and we will be running a short trip now, and a longer trip in late Feb to deploy the technology.

Hong Kong Travel

OK - that probably put some readers to sleep, so let's start talking fun travel. Before heading to Vietnam I'm stopping in Hong Kong for a couple days. My old best buddy Bill Cheung lives there, as does another good friend Scott D. So I got in last night and already Bill has kept me very well entertained. Hong Kong has great night life and solid public transit, so its a super fun place to explore. Bill is a super social guy, so seems to know everyone, and loves to entertain.