Branding wise, these guys have got it down…from the almost irreverent and fun decorations (think rainbows, clouds and synthetic grass) to the friendly staff that were hanging around the booth.

All this extends to Skype-blue Slushees, and the iPhone case….All great talking points as well.

Peter, one of the faces of the social media team, whom you can also find over on the Skype blogs.

_______________________________

Curious about the Skype story in online conversations in Singapore, this is what was came up in terms of the top discussed themes/buzz clusters in relation to the Skype brand name.

Unsurprisingly, Skype is strongly associated with functions like Video Conferencing and Calls.

• Video Conferencing/Video Calls

• Mobile Phones: Given that mobile usage is increasing, the fact that Skype is often mentioned in conjunction with mobile phones isn’t all that surprising.

Phone Models discussed

• iPhone 4 /Apple iPhone : Interestingly enough, there were separate conversation themes for the iPhone 4 versus generic chatter on the Apple iPhone itself, possibly double the share of voice for the iPhone compared to other phone models.
• Windows Phone 7 : There was a previous rumour floating around that Skype wouldn’t be developing for the Windows Phone 7 but that has since been cleared up over at ZDNet Asia.
• HTC Touch
• BlackBerry
• Motorola

Communication Centric:

• SMS
• MSN
• Social Networking
• Facebook – Skype was also one of the top Web 2.0 brands often mentioned together with the likes of other communication options like MSN and Yahoo!.

“We have cellphones if its important, and email, IM and Skype if its not.” - a post from The Singaporum Forum.

Skype for “not important” calls. Issue or non issue?

“Erm i normally use skype to call my friends during gameplays… Not really used for overseas purposes. ” - Hardwarezone Forum.

While Skype might be utilized heavily by the overseas crowd ( I know I would!), it’s interesting to note that gamers might also be an alternative target audience in their messaging. Not something that immediately comes to mind.

_______________________________

Also saw that the Skype business solutions offering was given a counter of its own at the booth. Skype still seems to be resonating with the average consumer online, but it will be interesting to see how their branding might translate to serious enterprise customers, and the impact or effect, if any.

Full Disclaimer: All buzz clusters phrases were taken from Brandtology’s (where I work!) Digital Conversation Workbench.

Other official pictures from the event here! : Skype Twitter Accounts

Social Networking World Forum(SWNF) – Asia …back (and better) for this year! There’s even a ticker on the new look website counting down! Honoured to be one of the media partners for this event. Attended the  SNWF Asia last year, and had a blast, thanks to the great team at Six Degrees. Guess this is one event that’s gaining traction and looking forward especially to the discussions (more Asia-centric case studies please) and sharing by others in the field.

“Brands often struggle with social media and the danger is to view it as just another marketing channel. Many realise it’s a completely different approach to interacting with consumers, building communities, integrating social CRM strategies and more. Much understanding still needs to be undertaken into consumer engagement, and the long term value social media can bring to brands.” commented Ian Johnson, MD Six Degrees Events.

Event Info

Leading Asian brands will be discussing the latest in social media marketing, social CRM, social search, community building and the role social media plays within their organisation. The Social Media World Forum (SMWF) Asia running on the 22/23rd September at Suntec, Singapore (www.socialmedia-forum.com/asia) will showcase the leading social media trends taking place in Asia through a combined conference and exhibition.

The event will examine who the key social media influencers are in the Asian community, and the major trends in the likes of China, Singapore and Indonesia. It will look at how Asian marketers are realising the potential of social media and the role it will play in their future success, along with key emerging social media tracking tools.

Speaker Line up Teaser

• Pooja Arora, Brand Manager, P&G
• Nicki Kenyon, Vice President, Digital Marketing APMEA, MasterCard Worldwide
• Reynold D’Silva, Global Brand Marketing Manager, Unilever
• Blake Chandlee, VP & Commercial Director, EMEA, Facebook
• Damien Cummings, SMB Online Director – Asia Pacific & Japan, Dell
• Lito S. German, Marketing Director, BMW Group Asia
• Argha Sen, Head of Marketing & CRM, Toys R Us
• Fotini Paraskakis, Director of Production, Fremantle Media Asia
• Derek Yeo, Head of Marketing, Tiger Airways

Early Booking Discount Ends 21st Aug 09…As I’m a partner with the event you can receive a 25% discount on delegate passes to Social Media World Forum Asia 2010. All you have to do is quote ‘dorothypoon.com’ when you register. Here’s the registration link. http://www.socialmedia-forum.com/asia/register/conference And this year’s agenda!

Drop me a note / Tweet if you’re going to be there.  Catch up then!

I was at the HP #futureis event earlier this year, and there were many interesting presentations given by the various folk who shared. And yet, right now, while the whole Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare phenomenon has taken various parts of the world by storm, sometimes it easy to forget that there are many out there who still mainly stick to good old fashioned email, and surfing websites. So what constitutes this whole “social media” concept, anyway? It probably means different things to different people, and just when you think that you’re starting to understand the landscape, it moves again. We’re probably not even scratching the surface of what could possibly be done with all the information we have, and even trying to make sense of the upcoming trends in the scene.

Real time is so Yesterday; Predictive Analytics is the Now <?>

Last year around this time, the chatter was all about the real time phenomenon and how microblogging sites like Twitter could contribute to this. A year later, Twitter still surfaces in conversations, but now we’re looking into something that I’ve recently become very interested in – using past and present data to predict the future. Apparently, Twitter can even predict box office revenues of Hollywood movies, better than some established standards. All this is inherently fascinating to me, and something I’d love to explore more. The end of the research pretty much sums up the importance of this.

So effectively, this could apply to product launches, electorial campaigns (as the paper highlights) and all sorts of other CRM related issues.

What is Privacy?

On top of that, the definition of privacy continues to evolve as well. I’ll have to say that the behaviours linked to Foursquare still border on stalkerish creepy at times, and other sources like Facebook house such an incredible amount of (mostly accurate and genuine) data about demographics, user interests and the like, it’s seriously hard not to see this as a gold mine for marketers/advertisers. Imagine the conclusions that could be drawn from all this information.

What goes viral? Some good folk at UPenn/Wharton have published some research studying the list of the most emailed articles on the NYtimes that suggests that positive, rather than negative news is more viral (all those in PR can heave a sigh of relief) and that “useful” information is more likely to be shared, given that these could enhance connections with others. That goes for awe (inspiring) stories too. The generalizability of the results is a little suspect, given that it was largely confined to the readers of the NYtimes.com, and those who actually use the email function, but interesting nonetheless.

Share Prices & the Bottomline Another angle that has surfaced recently has been the effort to try and measure some real world impact of social media. We have the entire situation with Nestle and the impact of the Facebook debacle on it’s share prices. Zilch, at least according to this article. My sensing is that this is largely to do with the nature of the conversation. I do not deny it’s importance, but CSR for the most part, has been a tricky component to compute in terms of tangible profits. Perhaps it might have been different, should the issue have centered around an actual product, or service deficit. ROI is a tricky thing to nail down, one simplistic formula would probably not be able to encompass all the variables to be taken into account.

These are just some random musings that have come up… More about some other trends and thoughts on those in the next post!

The plane ride to China was within a bearable threshold, unlike the grueling 24 hour journeys to the USA.  I am entertained by the H1N1 cartoon they’ve created, the animated characters looking like a Chinese New Year food product advertisement rather than a warning about the disease that has affected people worldwide.

I survive the taxi journey from the airport during which the driver weaves in and out of trucks the size of Optimus Prime. Privately, I suspect he fancies himself as auditioning for 2 Fast 2 Furious, because he drives like (well, a taxi driver…) he is behind the wheel of a Forumula 1 Vehicle.

The next morning, I am having breakfast in the hotel, and something is having my foot for breakfast. I later spot the culprit – a lone Hangzhou mosquito hovering around and having eaten it’s fill, finds its business elsewhere. My foot bears the only trace of its presence. The breakfast area plays Christmas saxophone songs and I think of snow. End of the week, I realize that that same CD basically plays everyday, at any of the eating haunts, and repeatedly from morning to night.

Despite the revolving doors at the entrance which usually hint to me of freezing cold weather, it has been pretty much “like Singapore” and not “hotter than Singapore” as I had been forewarned. Maybe I have some sort of luck with the weather right now, because it has apparently been raining in Singapore since I left. Perhaps then, my perception of this place is somewhat different from the rest, because talking to the locals gets me the information that this is an uncharacteristically cool bout of Summer weather we are experiencing.

The office here is seriously swanky, with a pantry area that looks like a cafe, LCD screens mounted on the ceiling and kick ass conferencing equipment. I love the happy colours, and the chinese logo is a nice touch on the introductory wall that greets everyone who steps in.

Till then, Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, Youtube, Blogger are amongst the sites that I’ve been unable to access in certain places….

Facebook reassures me that they “take my privacy seriously” with their investigation that I really am who I am, since I’ve not  logged in from this location before. I wonder if this happens only in China, because I didn’t get the same screen in the USA.

More on the great firewall of China (and Iran for that matter) here and some other interesting insights on the other parts of China.

Because, I can imagine from the sheer size of this country, there are many Chinas within the whole, and what I’m seeing is barely scratching the surface of what it is like in all the other cities and provinces.

A pictorial post.

It was interesting to see how the choreographers used the sea, sky and land as their canvas. Symmetry of formation was almost impossible, and the construction works for the bridge and IR in the background marred it somewhat.
Still, an interesting show nonetheless!

Tags: ndp, singapore, birthday, marinabay, nationaldayparade, fireworks, city, skyscrapers

Digital has definitely come of age… I’m not entirely sure offline will be wiped out so thoroughly in so short a time as Steve Ballmer so radically postulated, but we are definitely seeing the start of this ‘fundamental economic reset‘.

Readers of this blog get a 15% discount, so make full use of it.  If you’re planning to head down, drop a note or give me a shoutout on Twitter and it would be great to catch up in real life!

Details, details!

______________________________________________________________________________

Social Networking World Forum – Asia - Grand Hyatt Singapore, Singapore, 22nd and 23rd Sept 2009

• Two day conference dedicated to social networking

• Featuring key speakers from social networking publishers, advertising agencies, industry analysts, software developers and equipment manufacturers, pay-TV and network service providers, mobile operators, plus many more

• Evening Networking Reception

• Joint exhibition combining social networking and mobile social networking formats

• Free to attend exhibition only pass available

Key Speakers included:

• Bennett Porter, Head of Marketing – South East Asia, Yahoo
• Deep Malhotra, Senior Director, MySpace India and South East Asia.
• Desmond Tan, Brand Manager, Loreal
• Bambos Kaisharis, Head of Marketing, Singapore & Malaysia Nokia
• Lai Kok Fung , CEO , BuzzCity
• Jeffrey Seah, CEO – South East Asia, Starcom MediaVest Group
• Olivier Legrand, General Manager – Asia, The Wall Street Journal Digital Network
• Paras Sharma, Senior Director, Marketing & Corporate Communications, ESPN Star Sports
• Plus many more

Early Booking Discount Ends 21st Aug 09 + 15% discount for blog readers

www.socialnetworking-asia.com

Strategy, Strategy

One of the things that stuck to me was how Scott detailed that they didn’t roll out onto 50 sites at once. That is also why I like parts of this post about 3 common social media mistakes and the “shiny new object” syndrome.

It’s true. Just because the tools/sites are out there, doesn’t mean you have to use all of them at once or all of them, ever. He was also about figuring out what metrics made sense for each of the
channels, and using those to measure ROI, instead of sticking to the
traditional definitions of success.

“… make certain that the social media strategy is right for your
particular company, not because everyone else is doing it. One size
doesn’t fit all.“

He mentioned how the team figured out that when rolling out a Youtube video, the critical point was really in the first 24 hours. Once a video made Top video of the Day, it was more likely to ride on a wave of viewership.

“You don’t stop doing radio because you can’t tell which radio ad got you the sale.”
It was also interesting that Scott didn’t quite seem to focus on the distinction between the traditional and new media. Again, at the end of the day, the focus was on delivering a consistent, strong message across the various networks- SMS, email, websites and the lot. It wasn’t quite the struggle between “Should we channel our funds to traditional print ads or a digital campaign?“. “Good old fashioned online stores work too”, quipped Scott, on their Tshirts sold on Myspace.

Other takeaway snippets:

• The message + messenger are key

This paragraph highlights this nicely.

” and for the multi-channel, hyper-connected, user-generated,
co-created, always-on world we now live in — a world where the good
gets what it deserves and so does the bad? What if we stopped getting
all hot and heavy over the latest new media success stories du jour,
and starting realizing that the real triumph of, say, the Obama
campaign was the product and the story, not the channel used for
storytelling?”

• Customer service is now two-way communication
  
• Every organization must set online goals
• Be willing to experiment
• Engage your audience.

I hadn’t realized that Scott had come out of the music industry, having experienced and watched young artists trying to find a new tool (Myspace) to sell their records. He shared how he had been watching the trends through young artists, and trying to figure out how to tap into this.

Well, he must have done something right!

Credit goes to Bernard for the group pic, and shoutout to Anubha from Upstream Asia for the invite to this session!

More Link Love: Some other posts on the Goodstein Bloggers’ Session….

Bernard, Shalabh ,  Mohan, Saurabh , Daniel

It was a pretty lively session, from the responses on Twitter and conversations. Here’s the gang panel in discussion with Graham.

Amidst the blinding lights, waiting for the delegates to come back from coffee….

So a couple of highlights from the discussion:

Q: What do you like about digital marketing? What do you not like?

I remember saying that the one thing that I really felt didn’t quite “work” was corporate accounts following me on Twitter. I’d probably follow back if I like the brand, but if not…it just feels like going back to the old days of intrusive advertising. If I like the brand, I’d hunt them out.  This point apparently resonated with Jeremy Snyder, in his great summary of what transpired on Day 1.

The concept of Friends

… To me, it’s really not about the numbers game. The people who are in the numbers game are SEO/digital marketers on Twitter who follow 10000 random people who vaguely mention a keyword once, and have about 100 followers back (maybe other spammers“digital marketers”  who can help you “get rich quick”).

Someone asked if Gen Y measures success by how many friends you have. I sure don’t. The only people who do are the said people above…and probably the likes of Ashton Kutcher when he was in the CNN Twitter challenge.

Digital Identity

The question was whether or not digital identities were an accurate portrayal of ourselves, since marketers were probably using social profiles to try and get a sense of who you are as a person.

My answer : I (and partial mountains of psychology research that I had to trawl through for a past paper) believe that digital identities are not accurate on their own, but they could either be an extension of who we are or an aspect that may not be seen in our offline selves. True, social profiles are completely malleable online, so that people can choose to “create” their own digital identities, but the same can be said of how we pick how we speak, what we wear, how we behave, and where we choose to hang out. Impression management works the same way in real life and the digital channel.

I wish I had a photo taken with Devin and his hot pink glasses. Cool stuff.

Advertising

I think that advertising will move towards being invisible in the future, it will become content. Ideally content that people are searching for. If I’m looking online for the best hotel to stay while in a particular country, it says a lot if your brand is mentioned in the top post that search engines return. And no, I’m not talking about the text based ads (which I never really pay attention to anyway because they are not what I’m looking for).

Media consumption from different perspectives

Great to have fellow panelist, Devin, from Uni of Texas on the panel, with his statement that no one really reads the newspapers in the States anymore (“You’re throwing your money down the drain advertising there”, to quote him) . He also mentioned how magazines were probably 85% of advertising ( I reiterate the importance of my point about advertising as content in future). TV – no one’s watching. Malik watches TV ..but online. Did that count? he pondered aloud, to the chuckles amongst the audience.

The very tired argument about traditional v.s new/social media

Daryl & I have recorded some live Ad:tech thoughts on our newest installment of the GennY Podcast. You can download the file here, where we address:

• the traditional v.s new media issue as mentioned (must there really be a distinction? I’d vote for a wholistic campaign. Just because everyone is increasingly on digital doesn’t mean you stop talking in all other channels altogether.
• Influencers – do they need to be friends/family? (not really)
• Reaching out to youth…
• and finally questioning if youth are really that different?
  

Thoughts
All in all, it was a fun session. Always too short – its hard to really gleam insights when you’re pressed for time, so I do wish there had been more responses to Graham’s call for questions, both on radio and on the official Ad:tech blog. We’ve got forever now online to really respond. Would love to hear in the comments if you have any opinions!

True, we’re mostly alpha users of the tools online and exploring the social media space, but a panel session is not much different from a focus group. Qualitative research has never been about the numbers, but more on insights and trying to find out the reasons why, how people do what they do. We all fall somewhere along the technology adoption curve anyhow, so once you have a clearer picture of that path, you can pretty much predict some possible trends for the population at large.

More Link Love:

Graham’s Pre Ad:tech interview : 28th May : on 93.8 Live on ‘How to Market to Youths’

Some good insights here! Loving the research insight on how the folks at Apple visited a sweet factory before successfully deciding to name their products in yummilicious flavours.

Part 1: Play here:
Download Part 1

Part 2:

Play here:
Download Part 2

Ritsa’s post has a pretty detailed commentary about the main gist of what transpired, so do check it out. She seems to have a great sense of humour and I am digging the BYT (bright young things) description. But I’ll have to say that Graham is anything but a dinosaur!

Speaker page

My other Ad:tech posts:

Pre Ad:tech thoughts: Web 2.0 & Gen Y: The Other Side of the Story
Ad:Tech Singapore Thoughts: #1 Live event Tweeting…

Next up…a post on Scott Goodstein. You can stay tuned through this blog’s RSS here!

This was the first time I’ve tried to live tweet an entire 2 day conference, and I’ve found it was no easy feat…

Brain Intensive

A couple of the guys were remarking that it was pretty trying to Tweet, listen, synthesize and breathe all at once. Tiring yes, but I shall credit the factors that supposedly make females more adept at multitasking, and maybe the live blogging practice from Social Media Breakfast sessions.  Still, end of Day 1, we were Zapped with a capital Z, reflected in the more modest number of Tweets on Day 2, if you were following the live Twitter feed.

Self PWNed.

I love Tweetdeck. really I do. I’d never tried out the Twitter/FB syncing on Tweetdeck so something in me asked why not? I’ll show you why (not). See this, and multiply it a few times in length.

Basically, I spammed my FB profile with my Tweets. Horrendous. I’m sure I spammed the FB News feed of all my friends as well, giving them sure reasons to filter me out .. haha ( just kidding).

Anyway, by lunchtime of the first day, I decided this was not working (not as fun as I thought it would be, visually or mentally), so I stopped the simultaneous posting to both Twitter and FB, so my profile could breathe. Left a status msg linked to my twitter feed instead.  The really un-fun part was having to go in and delete the posts on my wall..one by one. Didn’t quite erase them all… No more experimenting on this!

Lets try not to parrot

I also didn’t want to repeat every single thing that was being Tweeted, so the plan I had really was to watch the live feed and pretty much figure out on the spot the angles that each of the other people Tweeting were taking, and avoid posting similar thoughts. Not entirely avoidable, of course, since most good points are usually the ones that get picked up and Tweeted, but worth the effort and still manageable due to the number of Tweeters. Which brings me to my next point…

It’s a digital conference

…but where is the tech? went a Tweet that I saw. Should we hope to see more people actually getting their feet wet and using the tools that would help them understand the different aspects of how it could help them in their jobs better? Only a handful of people were live Tweeting, with the rest of the comments coming from interested parties not present at the conference.

Live event broadcasting

I can see why there is the debate over whether or not a portion of the presentation screen should be devoted to the live Tweets while presentations are going on. Possible issues I can think of are:

• It’s distracting : some people can’t listen and focus on the Tweets at the same time
• hijacking: some people mistaking the Tweet screen as a stage to send SMS-type msgs like on TV/ or saying something inappropriate.

The Tools are more powerful than you know…if used right

Some thoughts on the conference as a whole – It really would have helped if the folks organizing the conference could have confirmed the #hashtag, rather than the Tweeters finalizing it themselves. I saw Claudia taking the inititaive to try and standardiz the tag, but there was still some confusion and all conversation got divided mostly between @adtechasia (the official one) and @adtechsg, with a huge majority not even using them… so just adtech ought to return those results in Twitter search. The problem with the last option is that it returns all global adtech sessions – Twitter is now “mainstream”…hopefully digital marketers will make more effort to really utilize the power of the tools offered to them.

I found another Tweet about how Ad:tech singapore might end up as the conference with the most number of abandoned conference Twitter accounts ever amusing.

Having said that, it was very encouraging to see progress, however small, in terms of the ad:tech blog, using Twitter to get live audience questions during sessions ( although there was the query about why Wifii appeared to be cut off during sessions without a Twitter Q&A feature. Feedback off the Adtech Twitter stream should show lots of griping comments about a technology centric conference with no internet from both visiting and local delegates… ). Baby steps, but it can only get better!

Are you on Twitter? Drop a note to say hi if you were at Ad:tech too! If not, it would be cool to connect on Twitter anyway, or you can leave a comment here.

More up next on the Keynote Youth Panel session… and meeting Scott Goodstein (man behind Obama’s digital campaign)! I shall try not to fangirl too much.

My other posts on Ad:tech this year:

Pre Ad:tech thoughts: Web 2.0 & Gen Y: The Other Side of the Story
Ad:Tech Singapore Thoughts: #2 Engage the Youth Keynote session

You can stay tuned through this blog’s RSS here!

Very amusing was the line up of fake fangs that greeted us at the entrance. Each of us got one. I have decided that they look very much like dentures, when placed on the appropriate prop (like white serviettes).

Bloggers mixing up a storm, trying to recreate the True Blood concoction after being “taught” on the spot. (True Blood is the name of a drink that we were served, and obviously, the title of the show!)

More photos from the True Blood Event from HBO can be found here. I thought the night was a riot, cos we were made to pose like the show’s poster as you can see in the background above. So apparently, mine was totally not sultry and came out looking oh-so-happy. haha! Poster imitation FAIL.

And because I was tagged by Yinqi, here goes!

1) Assuming that vampires did exist (and I’d want them only in Bill Compton/Edward Cullen types :p), would I date a vampire?

NO. For some reason, this question makes me imagine a T shirt with the phrase “I bite”. Anyway, still a definite no. =)

2) If you were a vampire (in True Blood times), would you choose real or fake blood?

So this is probably not going to make sense unless you watch the show, in which both species can (somewhat peacefully) co-exist because of synthetic blood. Um. I would probably go for fake? The thought of it being real disturbs me. Plus, the True Blood drink we tried at Ink Bar was pretty good! I only tried the non alcoholic version though, had a meeting to return to!

3) Which of these 3 abilities would you choose? Super speed, telepathy and shape-shifting.

As it is, I already get an excess of information from just being naturally attuned to the various things people are saying/not saying. Watching the preview snippets of True Blood and the telepathic waitress also made me realize it must be pretty tough to be able to keep hearing other people’s thoughts.

I’m going with Yinqi’s combination choice here. Super speed…sounds pretty good to me! Shape-shifting would be cool too, I’m imagining morphing into various animals, to fly, swim, run, and then turning the corner and becoming human again.

….You can read the HBO blog here!

To find out about what transpired, my live blogging post can be found here. And I believe that there has been a great account and summary of the night over at Ingrid’s , Daryl’s and Claudia’s, so head on there for more post SMB6 thoughts!

Here are just some other random sentiments on SMB 6…

Predicting turnout
If my memory doesn’t fail me, there was a lot of food left over at SMB 5, because of people saying they were a confirmed “attending on the guest list” but did a no show. Daniel expressed his sentiments about respecting the event and organizers.

” FaceBook makes it easy to RSVP for events so if you say you‘re attending, do turn up. Respect the organizers, respect the event.”
danielgoh 06:09 PM Pacific – Sat 12/13/08

On that note, for SMB 6, we did have access to the guest list, but given what happened the last time, it was pretty difficult to truly ascertain how many people would actually do a show up. Hopefully this gets easier with time and historical data! Maybe we need some sort of model to churn out some numbers.

One event, maximum two purposes?
I guess the focus of the night might have been a little diluted because of all the various segments that were happening (SMB6 + Virtual Tangs + Earth Hour). The previous events focused either solely on the social media and networking aspect, with at most, another little sharing segment from the venue sponsors.

It was, also nice to see the community growing and some new faces in the crowd. We definitely need a bigger space to accomodate everyone. Till the next time!

If you were there, your feedback, as usual, would be great so that we can make future events better!

Given that it is Christmas, it was pretty meaningful to have Daniel share with us about their Samsung Hope campaign. They are not asking for donations, just your time and support. Essentially, you get to decide how a pool of funds gets distributed amongst different beneficiaries. It’s dead simple, and just takes a moment. More details at the Samsung Hope website, where you can pledge too.

My pledge!

This was a pretty relaxed SMB 5, so it can pretty much be summed up in a sentence – great food, great company, great conversation all around!

If you were at SMB 5, we’d appreciate your help in filling out this short survey. Be heard, help us make SMB better!
And…. join the Facebook Group if you haven’t!

Tags: smb5, socialmediabreakfast, smb, social media brunch, samsunghope, pledge,

It started off with a light cocktail dinner high up above at the very swanky UBS lounge overlooking the glittering citylights.
It ended with those who stayed long enough going for a visit to the trading floor, oddly quiet because the shift had been passed on to the other side of the globe. Still, the room was flooded with multiple computer screens, and huge plasma TVs on the wall reported the news of the night silently.

What happened in the middle? …On to the main part of the night!
The talk was great. It did not focus solely on the feminist viewpoint as the title might lead one to think, but rather, on a quiet confidence of a panel of females(and male) who have grown into their own, and were willing to share their experiences openly.

Some gems from the night:

• Being True to yourself
• Happiness- with small successes as well as your big ones.
• Strength(s) of a woman

Negotiation – With a knowledge and innate sense of what both sides are thinking, a lot of women end up being very successful negotiators. I suppose integrative solutions are always out there for one to find. In addition, a “Can Do” attitude. When it’s down to the wire, a woman will do what it takes – to support her family, to support herself.

• Overcoming Your own barriers – Do the gender barriers exist only in your mind?

One of the advice for the young ladies present was to find an industry that is so fast changing, that tradition has not had the chance to take root. Interesting.

• Jobs, Priorities & Decisions – What to do?

One of the phrases uttered by the panel really resonated with me. How they talked about “stumbling into” many of the opportunities that allowed them to become the people they are today.

Perhaps this theme would have been pertinent to all who are about to graduate, and trying to figure out what to do. What to do with themselves.

As always, Ben Casnocha has a gem of a post on uncertainty in life.

“I would add that if you don’t regularly feel utterly confused, if you don’t occasionally feel like you’re treading just above water, if you don’t ever feel misunderstood, then you probably aren’t living in life — you’re just observing it.”

The question was raised during the conference – What then, is the responsible thing to do? Find your dream & follow that? Circumstantial living?

I find change invigorating. I’ve been professionally diagnosed that change has the same effect as rest on myself. But sometimes, too much change, too fast, too soon, can wear anyone (myself most certainly included) out.

We live in exciting times. As Gerald Chan, country head of UBS, mentioned, Mores are constantly shifting. Even in the new millennium (for in the grander scale of things, we have only just begun), issues of race, gender and identity are still salient. The media no doubt have already honed in on the race issue after Obama’s historic win. What’s next? A female president to lead the United States?

I don’t see why not.

p.s: In light of the subject of this post, I really have to share some related social media girl-power links!

Tags: ubs, young women’s leadership connection, life, career, female,

Sept 5:
I was at Day 2 of the Youth Marketing Forum at Dragonfly on Wednesday. I suppose many of you are now expecting a post on the hottest trends in youth marketing. What I got out of it though, were more presentation how-tos (or more like how not to) and lessons in life. Education was a huge theme in a lot of the thoughts too. Might be a strange theme for a youth marketing post, but if you think about it, life really IS all about constant learning, and hence, indirectly, the education of oneself.

I will start of with the issues close to my heart.

During the youth panel session, we were asked,”If you were given $1000 to spend immediately, what would you buy?”
Typical answers ensued. Shoes, bags, travel tickets, the Iphone! I kept silent, because I honestly had nothing top of the mind that I wanted.

Now I realize what I wish I could really buy.
Time. I want time enough to be critical about issues around me. Can a $1000 buy me that? No, it can’t. Maybe a million could.

In January, I penned that how a particular sentence from a UVA campus publication caught my eye. It was about how this particular student writer found that he “had no time to be critical”. That was one of the things that really caught my eye. I strongly identify with this sentiment, and I think that one sentence really holds a lot more than it appears to.

Time, not money, is the new commodity. Another thought that I picked up from the head worker at world vision when I was volunteering there 2 Christmases ago. How true it is. We simply have no time for anything anymore, but I’m not sure if anyone realizes that work expands to fill the time that you have. It is a rather complex arrangement to realize that the chances of you waking up, with absolutely nothing in the world to do, are going to become slimmer and slimmer as we go along, and that the only way you’ll ever get to actually live, is to intentionally take time out to do so. Maybe I shouldn’t use the word “We”, becuase, really, what I’m referring to is “I”, and I shouldn’t speak for everyone.

We want to inspire thinkers, but our universities are mainly producing do-ers. Simply because there hasn’t been enough time to go out there an explore, everyone is just too b-u-s-y to ponder about anything. And I am guilty as well. Deprived of time, I find my writing frame of mind degenerating. Deprived of time, I find my thoughts disappearing as I morph back into sponge mode at times. But at least, I am still constantly learning!

> Education

I loved what some of the Stikfas peeps brought up.
An important lesson on focus. It’s true, just looking at the word seems to imply that we focus on one thing. It is actually more apt to describe it as having to focus on many (selected) things.

Take risks – Ask yourself- Will it kill us? If no, do it!
Pride, not proud. Take pride in what you do. Everything I do, I want to do it real good!

> Organizing the Rhetoric Around Why to Go to College

Do you find it disturbing that many poly students are simply or worse, intentionally going through what they’re learning just to get a place in university? They enroll in any course as long as it entails them a possibility to get into college.

> On Work and beyond college

Graham Perkins asked if any of us really had any reason to fear, compared to say, a 17 year old youth from the UK who fears being one of the statistics in the knife stabbling epidemic. What is it we truly have to fear?

I love life. I love having time to explore nature, people, the surroundings, the different cultures. I want to find a home base that will let me do all these things, and it’s exciting to walk through town areas and seeing construction works going on. It’s exciting to hear any talks of new projects like the F1 coming to our shores.

All these are signaling mechanisms for me that the place I call home is experiencing some sort of winds of change… and I want to see more!

Tags: youthmarketing conference, life, singapore, education, culture, risks, time