My Revival

I realised that it's been a long time since I've posted anything. I've recently set up a company, Epiphany Education LLP., with a partner and time just seems to fly by when you have to handle school, work and life.

I've decided to start writing again but this time under my company's blog. I'll be commenting on issues relating to communications, entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship and financial literacy. If by the off chance you've stumbled upon this blog, check me out here instead.

Have a good one.

Reflections...

It's the time of the term when everything begins to slow down in preparation for judgement day.

I've come quite far in my digital media journey, with some success and failures along the way. In retrospect, I've learnt alot and I believe this knowledge will help me way into the future. When I first started the blog, I was skeptical about social media. I failed to maintain a blog with more than 2 posts prior to this class and am very happy to say that in comparison, this one is much more successful!

I would like to summarise my 3 learning points in this digital media class. It has been tough, but I have a good feeling about my newfound grasp of this technology.

#1 - Social Media is a lifestyle.
The tools are out there for everyone to use. You can sign up for any number of accounts across various social media platforms within minutes. Using them efficiently and effectively however, takes time and practice. Personally, I started with google reader, facebook, blogger, linked in, delicious and twitter. Currently I'm only active on my reader, blogger and twitter. I struggled to find time for these tools.

The point is, new social media platforms and tools will pop up every day. Signing up for every single one of them is pointless. The important thing is to incorporate social media into your daily life and only then will these tools perform their functions and be useful to you.

#2 - Social Media is communications in the future.
Much of the class talked about PR agencies and how they fumble their way in social media, trying to figure out the best way to use this new technology. Evident from Daryl's Blog, not understanding blogger relations will lead to serious consequences. The truth is, social media is still very new and PR agencies are racing for the right to claim to be the leader in social media. So far, social media platforms haven't found a business model that ensures profitability. Even so, its influence and impact has been proven to be immense.

Social media is THE future in communications and understanding how it works will become the basis of PR and Marketing work in the future.

#3 - Social Media is powerful and measurable.
In our final class discussing social media metrics, a classmate asked a very good question. Traditional advertising has been around for many years now and people generally accept that it's effectiveness cannot be measured accurately. (Current metrics are vague and untracable) So why is everyone making such a big fuss over measuring social media's effectiveness now? This is simply because for once, people have the technology to do so. With digital media, you can relatively accurately determine how many people have viewed your advertisement, how many people have given you positive ratings, how many people have propagated your content and even how long an average person spends looking at particular pages of your website.

I am fortunate to be a part of the measurement team in class because in doing so, I've uncovered the science of social media. Marketeers and communications professionals can tell what you view, for how long and what steps you take before you make a purchase. There are so many ways to use this knowledge, one of which is to earn more profit. Watch out consumers!

I guess to end the class, I feel proud to be doing the measurement project. I realised that this is unchartered territory. Even experts cannot agree on how exactly we measure social media. To know that I am part of this pioneer group and have the potential to contribute to this whole new science makes me honoured. May my team's hard work benefit the future generations to come.

Wow, noble eh? *hah*

whoops...

Whoops! I just realised that my "edit post" window has been on my desktop for the past few days. It's been a hectic few weeks leading up to this break week. I'm almost able to take a breather, just a couple of final assignments and projects to go before I officially try to begin studying.

Sometimes I wonder how effective is university education. We spend 15 weeks rushing through a set of syllabus, muddle our way through projects and papers, fumble around memorising content and when the final exams are done, everything goes out of the window. How much of what we learn is kept in our brains? How much that is applied? I'm really not sure.

Maybe I haven't taken any advanced modules that require knowledge from previous classes yet. When that happens, I might appreciate what I've been through before. For now, I'm just kind of jaded and dreading the viscious cycle of assignment-quiz-project-midterm-assignment-presentation-assignment-finals. Definitely looking forward to a break from everything when I go on exchange.

SMU, would you rather be somewhere else?

A quick post.

There has been some discussion about SMU and the general comments are rather negative.

Check out my reply.

I'm not blindly pro-SMU but if you asked me whether there's somewhere else better for me? I would have to say no.

A Weekend in School

Spending a weekend of makeup classes and meetings in school doesn't seem to be a foreign idea to the average SMU student.

Look, I get it. Business school students have been said to be "hungrier", taking on all sorts of different activities in and outside school. But where does it end?

I'm currently participating in a research that tracks the daily experience of SMU students. I get to rank my satisfaction levels of many aspects of my life daily, including the weather, amount of leisure time and social life. There seems to be one item in common for the past 7 days - low satisfaction for the amount of leisure time.

As I was walking to get coffee today, I started thinking... is what we're doing even possible? I know that a business degree is only as good as what comes along at the side but surely there is a limit to how much we can do.

I really want to poll some students and professors to see how much time should they feel they should devote to certain tasks like projects, studying for quizzes and preparation for classes. With some basic assumptions like 30 minutes for lunch, 1 hour for transport and 8 hours of sleep etc, add them all up and see whether its humanly possible.

Who knows? Maybe it will all add up to a healthy amount and prove that we're just complaining for nothing. Or maybe it will show that we really need more than 24 hours a day. What do you think?

Technology, Entertainment & Design 2009... Be Inspired.

At the beginning of class, Prof introduced an amazing website, TED.com. It is a conference which brings together the world's greatest minds, challenging them to make an 18 minute presentation of their lives. Speakers talk about a wide range of topics so there will be something up everyone's alley. Every year, 3 speakers will be crowned as winners and be granted one wish, called TED Prize. They get one chance to change the world with their wish and one year later, they unveil their wish during the conference.

TED2009 is now underway! Check out their blog as the conference goes on. First day speakers include Bill Gates who pulled an interesting stunt. Read more about it here.

Personally, I've been inspired by many TED videos. Will be talking about them in later posts as well as some thoughts on this year's speakers.

What will they say... when it all ends?

Morbid as it may be, ever think of what your eulogy will say? How will you be remembered? What will you be remembered for?

Many of us trudge through life chasing deadlines and "dreams". Deadlines imposed on us by ourselves, dreams thrusted upon us by society. If you are currently pursuing internships, joining competitions, running for leadership positions and taking part in overseas programmes, maybe you have entered a race... a rat race.

Sometimes I wonder why we do what we do. Call me sheltered but I am surrounded by a large majority of people who want the best things in life. A high-powered career, a luxury car, a beautiful house and quality items around them. Unknowingly, many of us have been sucked into a vortex. A hole with no bottom, a race with no end.

Remember how back in primary school your teachers used to tell you that primary school is like a 6-lap race around the school track? In primary 6, they motivated you by telling you that you've already run 5 laps and with the final lap in sight, you should work harder and finish with a bang.

Guess what? It's a decade later and you're still in that damn track. Running and running, never stopping because people beside you seem to have boundless energy and only stop to mock those who have lost their strength to keep running.

At this point I'd like to share an interesting article.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/01/scientists-find.html

"Researchers have found that low self-esteem and materialism are not just a correlation, but also a causal relationship where low self esteem increases materialism, and materialism can also create low self-esteem. The also found that as self esteem increases, materialism decreases."

I believe many will find some truth in this article but won't have the strength to take a stand. Hey, I'm one of them. Still, sometimes I wonder whether there's more to life than running this race. There must be a reason why I'm here in the first place. Maybe that's why I'm venturing into social entrepreneurship... to use what I've learnt to benefit people. How? I shall write about that in the next post. For now, back to that one thought...

What will your eulogy say? How will you be remembered and what will you be remembered for?

Too Many Tools... Too Little Time

I've got a couple of thoughts I really want to lay down on this blog but before that, this one thing keeps bugging me.

Where does everyone get enough time to explore all these social media tools?

There's always the argument that we have tools to combine everything into one easily accessible page/program. The only problem is, new versions of these tools seem to keep popping up everywhere.

There has been quite some buzz about social media and web 2.0 being the next big thing in communications. I cannot claim to be an expert in the subject at present, but as a beginner, I can say that everything is overwhelming. Whilst I can visualise the benefits of employing such tools for communication, I believe it will take quite some time, effort and resources before it becomes really applicable for the average business.

After a couple of weeks trying to play around with what's available in the market, I only have one conclusion - Web 2.0 is a lifestyle. Without immersing yourself into it, there is little chance and hope of being able to fully benefit from its functionality. The only problem and difficulty is, how to find the time to make it your lifestyle.

More thoughts on social entrepreneurship, social innovation and presentations coming up in the next few days. In the mean time, here's hoping that I succeed in becoming 2.0... that's Web 2.0.