Dear readers,
let me start by saying that I've missed you very much. It has been some time since our last publication about SKILL & CHILL's internationalization activities.
It's mid-March, 14 March to be exact. I'm on a plane to Paris with the fantastic SKILL & CHILL team — a group whose support you can always feel. Fully motivated and curious about the people and opportunities waiting for us at IT PARTNERS 2023, we're already heading to our third mission. Yes, the third mission within a single quarter. Some of you may remember that we started in mid-December. Who remembers the first country?
Instead of asking rhetorical questions, let's recap our second mission in Saudi Arabia. Shock, wow and OMG are only a few of the words that describe what we saw at LEAP 2023. We were invited to the country's largest technology event, supported by government agencies, universities and major corporations such as ARAMCO.
Have you ever been to an IT fair spread across five huge halls that you could not fully explore in a single day? Luckily LEAP lasted four days. I had never attended a longer or larger IT technology exhibition. I thought Western Europe — extremely well organized and full of events striving for perfection — had set the bar high, but LEAP 2023 exceeded our boldest expectations.
It was breathtaking. You enter a hall and there is a show starring a robot that actually talks to you — and makes sense. If not a robot, then a hologram. For me, this is passion, hobby and fascination all at once.
Laugh if you want, but when I started my computer adventure at age seven and watched the first films about robots, it was hard to imagine that these times would actually arrive. Yet they have. Robots may not be running through the streets yet, but you can certainly meet them at places like LEAP 2023.
Our days at the exhibition were packed with meetings. I personally collected about 276 business cards, and together we gathered more than 400. That's a fantastic result, and the follow-up work is still going on: messages, calls and meetings. What deserves special emphasis is how open the market, entrepreneurs, corporations and the entire community were.
Not everyone follows Arab markets closely — I didn't either, but that is changing. Our teammate Bruce — Przemysław Rutkowski — studied Arabic language and culture, speaks Arabic fluently and has long been interested in the region. We had many conversations about local culture. Among other things, we discussed the difficult position women have historically faced in many Arab countries and how that situation is changing. We initially wondered whether LEAP would be almost entirely male, but women were visible at every level of the event: expert panels, keynote stages, company ownership, key-account and sales roles, and boards of directors.
Great to see — keep it up!
Back to LEAP 2023: Saudi Arabia wants to become a major technology power and has opened its market to companies from around the world. That creates an enormous opportunity for us, especially because the team has set a clear goal: build cooperation with international clients. We have a goal, a plan and strategy, business missions and participation in international exhibitions. Now we have to work, improve every day and stay consistent until the results come.
Unfortunately, it's time to get off the plane and immerse ourselves in Paris and IT Partners 2023. Keep your fingers crossed for us and wish us plenty of productive meetings and interesting people!
