It was a fascinating experience, and I'll be reporting on it in much fuller detail in the next few days. In fact, it will probably take quite a while for me to process my notes and my thoughts into readable prose and a coherent narrative for Call Center's increasingly global readership. I ran headlong into many of the controversies that dog the American industry, and some that transcend national borders. I spoke at length with people who work at all levels of the industry, from consultants (they are everywhere) to CSRs, managers and strategists, outsourcers and insourcers, politicians (!), natives of the UK, the middle east, other African countries, Europe - and, oddly, just a handful of other Americans.

Let me acknowledge that almost everything I thought I knew about Egypt was wrong. That includes the things they teach us in school that have nothing to do with call centers. We as Americans know precious little about what the rest of the world is really like. Encounters with non-Americans are a dramatically refreshing chance to see how we are perceived, and to explore the blinders with which we perceive others. More about that later.

But first, let me spell out my personal agenda as I saw it; here's what I went to Egypt to find out:

1. What are the actual real-life conditions in the Egyptian call center industry; what's the infrastructure like (real estate, power, telecom, networking)? For almost two years, several Egyptian companies have been coming to the U.S. to discuss the development of their nascent industry, and to pitch their nation's services as an offshore destination akin to India. Was there a bricks and mortar reality to match the hype?

2. What does a country like Egypt have to do to project itself onto the world stage as a viable call center destination? I wondered whether there was a set of tangible steps a country (or an industry within that country) could take to make itself "relevant" or "acceptable" to multinational companies. What combination of infrastructure investment and human resources development and marketing savvy makes the difference between a country that's viable for American/European offshoring (India, Phillipines) and a country that's probably not (Botswana). (Sorry, Botswana, but in your hearts you must know you're not ready.) Egypt is an interesting test case - if they can prove they have the industrial infrastructure, and their potential agent pool is up to par, what are the real and imagined barriers to success?

3. How does a country prepare its population for life in a services-oriented, English-based, western-focused industry? Again, are there concrete steps?

4. Why do things look so different from an American point of view from that of the Europeans? Or are they really different? Can we learn anything about the unique qualities of American business (and in particular, American customer service strategies) by comparing our views of offshoring, outsourcing and BPO activity with our European and UK colleagues?

5. To what extent, really, is the call center industry a global one, or a loose-knit assembly of distinct national ones? In other words, are the we United States of Call Centers, or are we more like the Call Center United Nations?

There were other questions looking for answers, but that's where I started. Answers to those questions, more travelogue, and details of what I saw at the conference and in the call centers themselves, in my next posts.