Published May 19, 2005
“I have no questions. I have nothing to add.” That’s what you want to hear from the CEO of a major cable TV company after you’ve presented to him, and that’s what my PRIME consulting team got from the president of Brazillian cable leader NET Serviços. Two days in Brazil, four fun and interesting site visits, some good food, and a funny tour guide — plus that positive response — how can you do better?
My PRIME team researched implementations of VoIP internationally and recommended some best practices to roll out VoIP over cable broadband in Brazil. Apparently, the NET CEO had prepared a presentation on VoIP in case he didn’t like what we came up with — but he didn’t give it; instead, he said that he was impressed, and that we’d come up with pretty much what NET was thinking about implementing. He even asked us for our presentation to pass around his office. So far, I think this means that Marshall teams are batting 1.000 — we’ve impressed all of our consulting projects with solid presentations and solid analysis and conclusions.
The rest of the Brazil part of the trip has been awfully cool too. First of all, there’s finally free internet with which to blog (for the previous two entries, we know the answer to the question “how much will Wade pay to blog?” is “$10”). Second, whereas Chile is all about fish and empañadas, Brazi’s food is pretty much everything, but different and interesting. So I’m loving the food — even though it all seems to be either all-you-can-eat or buffets sold by the kilo, and I’m likely to put on about ten pounds here.
The site visits have been great too. We’ve seen ATM and cell phone factories, driven in circles around São Paulo, and been hosted at lunch by the American Chamber of Commerce. And my Portuguese is coming in handy — I’ve figured out where to buy water, where the bathroom is, how to get out of a confusing mall, gotten my food without cream sauce, gotten my juice without ice, and more, all with moderately complete sentences.
This stuff is fun.