Our Work begins...

We made it to the Mamiraua Reserve offices yesterday afternoon and received our first massive information dump. The research center is very impressive: a series of brand new buildings, situated on a large compound, right by the Lago Tefe (see pictures). The have maybe 50 people working there and to be honest the run a pretty impressive operation, addressing issues everywhere from community development, sustainable agriculture, sustainable fishing, sustainable forest use, health care and education, communication and broadcasting of news (to and from the reserve), ecotourism and and and... The offices themselves are fully inline with any wired, high tech office space I have worked in before and the people working here are highly educated scientists who know their stuff. It was almost a bit of a reverse culture shock to all of a sudden run in to 50 super smart people, in a high tech office, in this very remote place where most of our conversations with the local population so far has revolved around where to get the best rice, beans and beer... I'm feeling quite humble and honored that they are looking to us for help in shaping their future -- however they, admittedly, are scientists and not business people/marketers, and they are currently clearly under selling themselves, so hopefully we can indeed add some value. It will be a tough challenge tough - we heard a lot of "been there, done thats" today - the list of cons seems for everything seems long, while the pro-list is short - alas, I guess that is why we are here!