I was heading out the door the other morning for a breakfast event featuring the Vice President of Colombia in nearby Palo Alto. He was speaking about outsourcing to Colombia as a nearshore alternative to other countries in Central and South America.
This will be interesting, I thought. Like most Americans, my impression of Colombia is based primarily on scenes from the movie Clear and Present Danger starring Harrison Ford. And he was lucky to get out alive.
But a friend of mine visited last year and he seemed to come home OK. I have heard of outsourced software development being done in Colombia. Perhaps things were changing for the better there.
I checked my email before going and saw mention of an article describing the 25 Most Dangerous Places to Outsource. Top of the list? It was Bogotá, Colombia. Yes, this breakfast will be very interesting.
I printed a copy of the article to bring with me.
Things have really changed in Colombia. Vice President Santos was first elected in 2002 and re-elected in 2006. Crime and drug cartel activity has been significantly reduced. At one point Santos said that the per-capita murder rate in all of Colombia is now less than that of the city of Phoenix, AZ.
Indeed, the people from Colombia who I met seemed up beat and optimistic about the future and doing business with American companies. There were several software development companies that could be Accelerance partners.
But what about that article? I showed it to Mr. Jaime Echavarria, the Trade Commissioner for Colombia & ProExport USA Director. He shook his head sadly and promised to find out about the methods used to create the misleading survey.
I joked with one of the Colombians about their image from the Clear and Present Danger movie. He smiled and asked, “Did you know Colombia has a very neutral Spanish accent?” It was hard to tell because he was speaking with perfect English.
“When a Colombian watches that movie, we laugh. The movie was filmed in Mexico and all the accents are definitely Mexican!”
