Vocational Visits - Hillary

The last two days have been a whirlwind of vocational visits, van rides, and new Brasilian friends and contacts. The local Rotary chapter did an excellent job coordinating vocational visits for our whole team to help us understand how our jobs are done in here in Brazil. The team, in time, will all get to highlight their own visits. Since I have a great internet connection and a few moments tonight, I will take the liberty to go first:

Yesterday, my day began with a visit to MP Publicidade, a local advertising and marketing agency. My wonderful guide Liandra studied and lived in California for several years. It's always funny to meet people in foreign countries that speak your language with a very distinct accent. Hers was So-Call all the way. The agency worked VERY similar to those you would see in the United States. There was a graphics deptartment, film department, finishing department, customer relations dept. and media dept. They use the same type of software I use in my profession - InDesign, PhotoShop, Illustrator, Excel, Word, and Outlook for email. The office had a very fun design and mostly young employees. I could tell they have a lot of fun there, even though the work is stresfull at times. A big thanks to Liandra (pictured above in the pink shirt) and her team for taking time out of their busy schedules to host me. If you want to check out their business website: http://www.mppublicdade.com.br/

After a tasty lunch of beans, rice, steak, salad and the most heavenly chocolate cake pudding, I joined fellow teammate Kristy for a tour of the local news agency Rede Gazete. They control several newspapers as well as multiple TV and radio stations. They are the main news outlet for Espirito Santo. Leticia, Manager of Communications, was our wonderful guide and she toured us through the facility from top to bottom. We visited the news room, the radio and TV station studios, the printing press and learned much about not only how news is run in Brazil, but also about the local government. If you want the inside story on who will be elected the next president of Brazil...let me know ;) It was also interesting to hear they face the same challenges as many agencies in the United States in that newspaper sales are declining as more and more people turn to the internet for news and information. The one saving grace for this agency is that the lower class population that does not have internet access yet, is very interested in the tabloid newpaper they create. Subscriptions for the tabloid have increased while subscriptions to the standard gazette paper have declined.

TODAY I spent ALL day with the local power company EDP. They serve 1.5 million customers and have 900 employees. A little bit bigger than the 20,000 customer and 74 employees at EPUD ;) In total they have 78 substations and 355 feeders in their system. 50% of their load comes from big factories in ES and the other 50% is residential. 85% of their power is hydropower from Itapu Dam, 12% is geothermal gas, and the other 3% is solar, wind, nuclear and other various sources. The entire day was in Portugues so my brain resembles mush at the moment. Forgive any typos to nonsensicals in my post today please.

The General Director of EDP, Fernando, is in the local Rotary chapter and he arranged interviews with the Operations Manager Luciano, Control Manager Edson, Substation Engineer Lino, System Engineer Jose and Communications Manager Lorena. It was an incredible day.  I was VERY impressed at how automated their system is. They have integrated maps and digital diagrams that map where every line, subtation, transformer and recloser in located in the system. They have automated alarms when there is a fault or outage and each truck has GPS embedded so they can send the nearest team to fix the issues.  It was VERY impressive. For communication with the crews, the use radio and live chat on a handheld device issued to all employees. The number one cause of outages here is storms and wind, followed by trees and electric system failure, which is very similar to Oregon.

The communication department was also quite similar to my work. Some similarities include the challenges of dealing with disgruntled customers and getting a message out to everyone. She did say however that rising electricity prices are not such an issue in Brazil. Vitoria has has the lowest incidence of outages in Brazil, so they have pretty happy customers. They also deal with metal theft, and elecriticy theft is a big problem in some of the poorer areas of town.

After all the interviews I visited one of their newest substations. they have a problem with birds building nests in their equipment, as do all Oregon utlities, so they employ bird protective measures like the red coverings seen at left.

We promised to stay in touch as they had several questions I could not answer and I know my company may have more for them.  With my email addresses and Portuguese dictionary, we will stay in touch ;)

A BIG thanks to the local team for organizing these experiences. I have several more before the end of the trip and they have all been excellent experiences.