"Hey, Andy!!" The stranger grinned. "Nice to meet you in the flesh at last!". It was the last customer visit on a recent trip to the West Coast, and I was rather surprised by the friendliness of the greeting from Mark. "Remember that time about a year ago when..."
And suddenly I remembered. It was in March of 2008, and the Indium Corporation Asia Tech Service team had gotten involved with some technical issues after my last trip to the Philipinnes. Mark's subcon just south of Manila, was having reflow and voiding problems that I had tried to resolve in the two hours allowed at the time: Mark and his team were encouraged but not completely happy with the results seen.
The reason I bore you with all this is that it was one of those peculiarly Indium Corporation moments when our Asia Tech Team's global reach was at its fullest potential. Picture this: the Indium Team huddled round a Blackberry (on speakerphone) on the second floor of a hotel in Suzhou (China), talking to both Mark (based on the West Coast of the USA), and his subcon's engineer (Philipinnes). Around the phone at our end were Sehar Samiappan (Malaysian), Thomas Tong (Singaporean) and me (UK-born).
Everybody contributed, and the problem was resolved (it was a reflow oven PM issue, just in case you were wondering): across borders, time zones and continents. Odd thing was that it was only in the bar later that we realized what a mixture of nationalities had each contributed, and maybe even odder: that it was no big deal that we had done it as a team.
We may not quite be the United Nations, but I think we can say with some justification. Indium Corporation Technical Service: "Global. Yeah, we do that..."
Cheers! Andy