Social Media Club KL Meet & My 'Speech' #SMCKL
Well I say 'Speech' and not a presentation cause I didn't exactly present anything. The first SMCKL meet (#0) was brilliant. Got to meet a lot of new people and put a face on many old tweeple. The speakers were great, Namely Pete Teoh of 15Malaysia and also James Chong from Ruumz. SMCKL meet this time around (#1) brought back many familiar tweeple and many new faces as well.
For me it all started with Rachel, who called me up and asked me if Spicy Corner could sponsor the F&B for SMCKL and also give a presentation on how I'm leveraging Social Media for my Business. As this was the 3rd customer sponsorship request this month (and we had already said yes to one before this), we were unable to sponsor the food for the event but I assured Rachel that I would like to go ahead with the presentation. Thanks to the good people at Edelman, who picked up the F&B bill, Spicy Corner eventually did cater for the event (Forza Edelman!).
My first question to the SMCKL team was "Are you sure you want ME?". They assured me that they want me to speak, my second question was "Who else is presenting?" to which the reply came "Nokia, Digi & Foldees". The sheer Idea of being on a forum with behemoths the likes of Nokia & Digi and also a successful local startup like Foldees was quite daunting. After all, I'm not the corporate type. To the credit of the SMCKL team, I must admit that Rachel, Carolyn, Ben Israel & YH Lim were very encouraging and kept telling me that they not only want to hear from the "Big Guns" but also from the "Small Guys" as well. Personally this was very amusing to me as no one has referred to me as 'Small' before. Coming in at 6' 2" and weighing in at a mind'blasting' 0.12 tonnes I'm a bit of a behemoth myself ;)
Okay regarding my presentation I must confess, I am not a slideshow kinda guy. Even back in college, I avoided using slideshows as much as possible. Not that I didn't know how to use them, I'm a lil bit of a techie & a geek so it wouldn't be too much of a hassle to figure it out. But I was never comfortable using them unless theres genuine information that only a diagram or image can justify. Having said that, I still enjoy good slideshow presentations like those of Jacek Utko & Bjarke Ingels but the mother of them all has to be the one by Hans Rosling whose dataset will help change many mindsets. But the talks I remember the most are usually the ones where no slides were used, like two of my favorite Ben Dunlap & Mike Rowe . So I thought there is place for this type of presentations in our technology laced life.
But Zhiq did expressly request that I have a slide show, Carolyn instead suggested just going with a slideshow of photos from Spicy Corner's archive. I liked that a lot and was figuring out a way to incorporate the two. I only got around to it the morning of SMCKL, and boy did I try. I did come up with a few slides but I told myself that even I might doze off to these slides half way through the 10 minute talk. So I decided to use the photo slideshow idea instead and compiled a bunch of photos, ironically i didn't use this either. To be more accurate I forgot (story of my life) to use them, they were up on the screen but i never hit the 'SlideShow' button (will post up those photos on this blog next). In my defence I was repeatedly told that having a photo slideshow go on during my talk would only distract audience from me... my first reaction was "GREAT! ... lets also put Beyonce's video up on screen so that they wont be looking at me at all." but i realized that in the spirit of SMCKL its better to 'un'distract the audience. So even though I planned to play the slideshow, I think subconsciously i didn't want to.
So here I was, absolutely un-prepared & no slides nor guidelines to adhere to. I knew that I wanted to share my experience via Spicy Corner & Spicy Guy in social media and would just basically tell our story to the audience. I thought the talk itself was ok, I roughly covered all 6 key points that I was going for, namely:
- SpicyCorner's business Background
- How we got onto Social Media
- What we did on SM
- Results
- Hurdles
- Do's & Dont's / Whats Next?
I have to wait for the video to come out to see if I was any good. I apologize if you found my talk a lil too casual, but thats just the way I am. I look forward to your feedback if theres any, so feel free to drop a comment.
Azizi Jennis from Digi was up next and I loved how he made Digi feel small and comfortable... friendly even. He shared possibly my favorite quote of the day: "Try & Fail fast". In many ways i think i already practice that, would try anything once at least. If it works, then I explore it further. I think that attitude is what has kept Digi as the most innovative among our local telco's. Azizi mentioned that the corporate code of conduct at Digi is to use your "Common sense", but if you ask me - these days common sense is not so common anymore :P However I like the simplicity of it and I think it is the best corporate code of conduct I have heard yet!
I have been a Digi user all my life and short of a major muck up, I don't see myself switching in the near future. Azizi also touched on how Digi is turning their employees into somewhat brand ambassadors. I think this is key, one of the reasons I am such a loyal Digi customer is cause a close friend of mine Kelvin Kolandasamy works for Digi. He has been a fantastic ambassador for the company and always kept the rest of us hooked on Digi. Despite working in the customer service dept and hearing from a barrage of difficult customers he enjoys his work and never complains. A companies best & most trustworthy marketing assets are their employees themselves, Digi has hit the proverbial nail of corporate culture right on its head here. Kudos!
Next up was Chak from Foldees, Chak engaged well and managed to showcase his company & its services in a fun way to the audience. I enjoyed his presentation, was tempted to take and keep one of the Foldees card but decided to pass it around instead, and if its meant to be the card would come back to me... but it didn't! He also shared many ways that Foldees interacts with its community, I will let you hear it from the man himself when the video comes out.
Hazel Abu Samah from Nokia confessed before her talk that her ambition was to become a "Beach Bum", Awesome! She went on to talk about the Nokia Insider program where they engage with the local Blogger community and in turn their followers and etc. Boy, would i love to be on that list. Been a Nokia fan for a while now. Started out with the infamous and almost godly Nokia 3310 and have gone through a few Nokia's since then. Used Ericsson, Motorola, PDA's & etc but none are as user friendly or built well. The only phone that can get me to switch is probably an iPhone but even then I reserve my qualms on not having a keypad & etc. All in all, it was a insightful presentation.
Next came the Q&A session. I knew pretty much that being a Techie audience they would be pouncing on Digi & Nokia, so I (and I guess along with Chak) was prepared to just sit on the stool look like one of the Eagles (w/o a guitar) getting ready to play Hotel California. But the audience was kind, and gave questions to the floor initially and only later started directing them to the phone people.
After SMCKL ended we went back out to the foyer for some Makan thanks to Spicy Corner (self plugging ;) The actual dinner was held before SMCKL, we had Chicken Curry, Vegetable, Rice & Bee hoon. For after the event, we had Tea, Nescafe with Samosa's & Coconut rolls. Now as a something special, I decided to provide complimentary "Carrot Halwa" for SMCKL. I love it, its moms recipe and every time she makes it is a complete treat for the family. I didn't get to taste the food before the event, but heard a few people mention it was too sweet... I quote Amitabh Bachan when I say this but "There is no such thing as a Sweet that is too sweet!". I did eventually get to the Carrot Halwa, and believe it or not I found it not sweet enough for my liking, haha! Mom, knowing everyone else's sweet tooth is only a fracture the size of mine pulled a 'Kurang Manis' on me! This is why I gym everyday guys, to keep my diet in check.
All in all, If I had to summarize all I can say was that I really enjoyed myself had a lot of fun. Met so many new people and learned some new things as well. Yes, SMCKL did go back to school that day, literally and figuratively! Looking forward to the next one!
I would like to thank Carolyn, Chris & others for some of the photos on this album. Needed it to complete the experience.
