🇹🇳 L&H Tunisia 2025: Insights #1
Let's continue with the Tunisia topic. As I mentioned in the previous post, the entire last week was dedicated to technical training in Tunisia, which I co-organized and also led. I'd now like to share what I learned from that experience.
🇹🇳 Tunisia
The first topic is the country and culture itself.
1️⃣ We received tremendous support from our local office in organizing the on-site training. And it truly helped. All of our colleagues were very friendly and willing to assist. That felt great.
2️⃣ It seems they have a cultural tradition of having coffee, tea, or drinks at 4:00 PM. Therefore, some snacks and drinks are delivered to the office each day, and people chat and eat a little. What a great tradition!
3️⃣ GDP per capita in Tunisia is even lower than in Ukraine, and you can see it on the streets. While the food (restaurants) is cheap and tasty (€4 for a tuna salad + local cola), the surroundings look less appealing. Just as I used to experience in Ukraine, you can relatively cheaply build something nice inside (a restaurant), but you cannot influence the outside much (the streets). Also, as we were told by locals, they think that Tunisians only build but do not spend enough resources on maintenance.
4️⃣ Experiencing plastic straws, water bottle caps you can detach from the bottle, or even a pack of cigarettes without pictures of dead people was a cultural shock for a European homebody like me. But the spirit of freedom was in the air!
5️⃣ It appeared that Tunis has it's own Santorini. Sidi Bou Saïd (on the attached image) looks and feels great and is just in 20 minutes from the city itself.
💡 Learning Part
As I said, I delivered my tech leadership course to my colleagues. 3 days, ~3 hours a day.
1️⃣ Location matters. For our first day, we had a hotel conference room arranged. And it felt great, like a real, high-end training. For the next two days, we used our office facilities, and since there was no conference room for ~20 people, we just used a kind of hallway. There was enough space, but a good location makes a huge difference.
2️⃣ Offline vs. Online. On one hand, offline was beneficial since people were engaged; it was easier to start interaction, and discussions sparked more naturally. On the other hand, I'm used to doing exercises on a Miro board, which provides a certain framing and space for all participants. Offline exercises were different, even if I adapted them a little.
3️⃣ Same Company vs. Mixed Group. I felt that since we had people from within the same company, it was a little more difficult for them to share some of their personal stuff with the group (such as sharing their personal goals). With a mixed group (different companies, as in the online training), it's easier for people to share since they feel more detached from the group.
4️⃣ It was great to see that some of the topics we had covered were used right away. For example, the presentation framework was applied to the team's demo presentation, which made it clear for non-technical people.
➡️ tomorrow I will finish with the hackathon summary and overall conclusion.
6November 26, 2025 630
