June 01, 2020
The initiative responds to the existing health emergency situation in the country due to the presence of COVID 19.
This platform was founded by teachers at Stanford University to provide access to quality education, and today it is used by more than 15 million students around the world.
The courses continue the line of learning in virtual environments that Plan Ceibal and ANEP offer students. Although they are not included in the compulsory secondary education curricula, they will provide each young person with the possibility of extracurricular training, with a very wide catalog of more than 3,600 minicourses in Spanish and English that Coursera provides today through universities of all the world.
Among the different options of minicourses are: Communication, Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Business, Marketing, Computational Thinking, Programming, Economics, Mathematics, Agricultural Sciences, Physics, Art and Languages, among others.
Despite the urgencies of the hour, we did not want to miss out on the opportunity to “celebrate” this first anniversary, remember these first steps full of shared learning and achievements, and thank everyone who trusted us and the talent of our teams.
The Arbusta Uruguay operation was born in February 2019, with the same spirit of Arbusta in its operations in Argentina and Colombia: providing quality digital services providing employment opportunities to young people that the market does not look at.
We started with 10 part-time collaborators in a Montevideo co-work and a Digital Interaction project with the support of the Buenos Aires teams. Very soon Erika Santos, our first Project Manager and key member of the team, joined, and in early April I joined as Country Manager.
Montevideo offices and a growing team
When the operation began to consolidate, we settled in our beloved offices in downtown Montevideo (and how we miss them!). Today we are about 50 collaborators fulfilling Operations, Administration & Finance and Human Capital functions. We have 6 clients and 8 projects: three from QA & Software Testing, three from Data Services and two from Digital Interactions.
In one year we managed to quintuple our size, consolidate ourselves as a team and evolve in our working methodologies and ways of organizing ourselves. Always towards innovation and agility to respond to the needs of customers and the industry. At the beginning of 2020 we obtained the certification of our quality processes with the ISO 9001 standard. This consolidation came hand in hand with a very important personal and professional growth of the entire team, which generates a lot of satisfaction.
Along this path, we met and established enriching alliances with CUTI (Uruguayan Chamber of Information Technology), Antel, CEDU (Chamber of Digital Economy of Uruguay), the Youth to Program Plan Ceibal team, Mercado Libre in UY, Uruguay XXI, LATU, among so many organizations, clients, suppliers and teams that work closely with us on a daily basis.
How to continue growing in the context of crisis
In these difficult and disruptive times that we all live, we have faced significant challenges. In an agile way, we had to migrate 100% of our operation to work remotely from March 16. In addition, we had to get creative and innovate in many processes, for example, we have made the selection and induction of new collaborators in a virtual way.
I am convinced that our agile and flexible way of working has allowed us to overcome various obstacles, learning and strengthening ourselves along the way. Our Emotional Intelligence Program, which began with workshops during 2019, has also become an ally to go through these circumstances and today we maintain it with virtual meetings open twice a week, in which Montevideo collaborators weave support networks with from Medellín, Buenos Aires and Rosario, taking on more than ever the dimension of Arbusta as a community.
With the look set in the future
Our value lies more than ever in the quality of the service we provide to our clients, and in our ability to identify and develop talent that is generally not considered by the market: young people without formal technical training who live in fragile socioeconomic contexts. Arbusta gives these young people their first work experience in the technology industry and allows them to develop their potential as individuals and professionals. In turn, we promote the participation of women in the industry. At Arbusta, almost 60% are women and we contribute in this way to reducing the gender gap in the sector.
What has this first year at Arbusta meant to me? A huge personal and professional growth. I am grateful to the entire Arbusta team in general, and to Uruguay in particular. And finally I feel immense pride. Pride of being part of this great team of 300 people and of everything that we are achieving, with successes and mistakes. In this difficult context, Arbusta is an example that there is a future and we love being protagonists of it.
"An image is worth a thousand words," says a popular saying shared by members of a sector, that of the Uruguayan illustration, which works to export strokes of "exquisite" quality and technique, according to an interview with Efe agent Jorge Varela, who represents eighteen illustrators from this small country.
DRAWING STORIES A story of emigrants, love and soccer served the Uruguayan Eduardo Sganga to win the 2019 National Illustration Award and bring his project "Danube" to the International Fair of Children's and Youth Book in Bologna (Italy) 2020 (BCBF, for his acronym in English), the largest showcase of this type of literature in the world. Through reds and blues, Sganga expresses himself in this work in a language, that of the illustration, which has accompanied him since the first time he grabbed a pencil when he was just a child, he relates in a conversation with Efe.
Sganga entered this world through a Textile Design career, since in Uruguay there is no specific training in illustration, something that, although it may seem like a handicap, becomes a virtue, as it offers a "variety" to the market editorial that other countries do not, indicates the agent Jorge Varela. "What happens in Uruguay is a very rich process, at the training and exchange level, which has crystallized in recent years with a very interesting evolution by a number of artists who have been recognized abroad", Varela stresses.
Several publishers in Uruguay are betting on the album book, the one in which the image has the same role as the word and the illustration is essential. "We are not only going with the trend of illustration, but somehow generating a trend for the originality of Uruguayan illustrations," says director of the Basilisa publishing house, Mercedes Lafourcade. In this way, and with a "language of its own", Uruguay is managing to "break the dynamic" and generate content for European and Asian markets, which were not used to buying Uruguayan culture, the director of Amanuense, Rodolfo Bolaños, tells Efe.
ILLUSTRATE TO INCLUDE A yellowish eye of a crocodile cries and looks at the reader of "Milo y Manú" in an illustration of the Uruguayan FABA that occupies the page of this book published by Basilisa, an editorial that works for readers with dyslexia. It is one of the "disturbing" images with which Basilisa fills her albums in order to "awaken" the child's interest in reading, says Lafourcade. This editorial uses research in the fields of cognitive science and artificial intelligence to create works adapted and beneficial for people with dyslexia. Thus, Basilisa plays with elements such as lexicon or typography to simplify reading and for words to have a cognitive effect on the public, all with the help of the image, which never detracts in quality.
What does the company do and how did the Academy unit come about ?
IDATHA is a company that was forged in the academic field with a focus on Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. He was born from teachers at the Computer Institute of the University of the Republic, with deep experience and interest in data processing and natural language processing. Since then we have been working with national and international clients, public and private, applying Artificial Intelligence to help solve their challenges. We are dedicated to understanding data so that our clients are dedicated to achieving their goals.
In this tour we have dictated multiple trainings to different audiences, from informative trainings to C-level executives to technical trainings for experts from various industries. Recurring suggestions from clients and those who have already participated in one of our courses motivated us to jump the barrier of the difficulties that distance and timetables impose.
What is the purpose of the Academy? What is your differential in the market?
The objective of IDATHA Academy is that our clients can reach theirs; the tool on which we rely is knowledge. We seek to bridge the gap that exists between domain knowledge in different areas and the technology that allows us to take advantage of Artificial Intelligence. We believe that knowledge must be shared in order to advance, and from our unit we help that knowledge to be learned and useful for professionals not only in information technology.
We transmit the experience of years learning so that each student generates his own learning. A unique value is that our courses are conducted by live teleconferences with small groups, which allows the teacher to interact answering queries according to the needs of each student and that they interact with each other. Physical presence - especially in these times - is not an impediment.
What audience do they target and with what type of training?
That depends on each course. We have courses for the public with a deeply technical profile that seeks to strengthen and validate their knowledge in Computer Vision, one of the branches of AI. And we have courses for professionals in areas such as economics, finance, sociology or for researchers who are looking to get into and start using world-class Business Intelligence, Data Science and Artificial Intelligence tools. This course has already gone through several iterations and is one of our favorites, because it helps each member in the process of discovering how to apply these technologies to their area of knowledge.
What are the entry requirements?
We have two types, one with low technological requirements and the other for people with programming experience.
Mostly our courses were designed targeting people who have been studying or working in areas in which, in some way, they are nourished and in turn generate data: economics, finance, sociology, scientific research, among others. With this knowledge, knowing how to use a computer, and with the will to learn, they have what they need to start, we take care of the rest.
Deeply technical courses like Computer Vision require prior knowledge of information technology, particularly in development. It was designed to assist in preparing to take Google's international certification on Tensorflow.
These webinars talk about new trends in the business world that you should know about. If you want to be a professional at the forefront, you must be aware of the new topics and know what is being said when IoT, Big Data, StoryTelling or Digital Transformation are named. 4 webinars that you should not miss.
This Webinar deals with IoT (the Internet of Things), the technologies that generate an interconnection of objects through the Internet, allowing the collection of information that can be very useful in today's world.
It is in charge of Fernando Villagómez (Product Manager of Telefónica Business Solutions) who describes a brief history of the IoT, its components and how people use this tool to solve everyday problems. In addition, he explains how this technology can provide benefits in areas such as medicine (through the use of smart devices that can measure a patient's heart rate), as well as in office objects or home use, such as a fire system.
In this webinar Moisés Pascual (CDO of Telefónica Movistar Ecuador), talks about the impact of Big Data in the world, explaining what the digital revolution is and the changes that take place in society.
Describe the transformation of business and expose examples of this new digital age. To give context, it refers to companies like Airbnb or Uber. Discuss how the largest companies in the world succeed in this revolution and details the modalities that they use to achieve their success.
In addition, he talks about the "people's internet", where social networks are involved.
José Alvarez, Head of Digital Marketing, talks about what needs to be done and what should be avoided for a story to be successful and its content to be properly disseminated.
It details the goals and tools to use when telling a story and how to move it to a business level. Explains that a link must be generated with users, which is achieved through three actions: excite, connect and help them grow.
Melissa Hernández, Manager of Experience and Change Management at Telefónica Ecuador, talks about the digital environment we are currently in and how we should approach the digital transformation. Explains the methodologies that help us implement this transformation and what are the key competencies that professionals need.
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