Creative Idea Powerhouse

Master Card recently published a study paper on Asia Consumer Confidence Index. Out of all the major developing and developed countries in Asia, Japan is one of the country that suffer badly from the economy downturn, follow by South Korea. It is understandable that these two countries required more time to recover. However, one of the surprising fact is that Philippines also suffered badly and been the country after Japan, to have negative consumer confidence level among the other countries. Out of the survey conducted, Filipino response on the job employment with 43% response that employment in Philippines is getting worse. Is this the real fact, or the after effect of Typhoon Ondoy causing the people who did the survey feel hopeless and helpless and response with such negative result? As my observation from my stay in Manila during past 3 months, I noticed that the Pinoy spending power is much stronger compare to our Malaysia market. Their earning is 30% lower compare to Malaysiabut their spending power is either equal or even higher then our people working in KLCC area! Average spending per meal in Makati is approximately RM30 per person on average, and the occupation of their restaurant is mostly 80% full!

Is this a signal that Philippines require more time to recover? the people are lossing confident on overall job market? or the pinoy is waiting for the new president in this coming election to make a change to their living standard? Is it a good sign from economic point of view as more opportunities will arise in Philippines in next 3 years? Or otherwise? Worth a moment or two to think about it.

Here is a very good sharing of Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. Some very interesting secrets of Steve Jobs presentation - Preparation, Demand for Best, Practice, and Practices. This may be no secret when you pick up any one out of millions books out there teaching about Public Speaking or Public Presentation, everyone talks about practices and rehersal, but go ask any good speaker their secret to deliver a good presentation, they will tell the same thing.

Personally, I did public presentations for many times,and I have to admit personally that when I able to put the entire slides from sequences, contents and visualize the entire process into my brain, I can always give a good talks to the audience. When I did a last minutes ramp up of slides, the result can tell, it is normally either boring or 'the moment of I should have include this point into my talks' came after the end of my presentations.

Another thing impress me is that the concept of telling story instead of selling products works and rocks me~! 96 hours to put up a story line presentation... well I cant agree more on this. Normally it took me 72 - 96 hours to really put up the entire story line of a presentation (not full 96 hours but normally took me 2 - 3 days); and the another 1 day to have my slide in place and finding good 'impact' picture that allow audience to associate the picture to my points, avoid using bullet (I try to limit max 2 - 3 slides to have bullet... Still improving). 

As far, I am very passionate about public speaking and looking forward to continue improving in this area. Lastly, am very happy with overall efforts and resources I have spent during the preparation of the recent Digital Filipino e-Commerce Summit presentation. Finally able to reduce my slide to 30, and have no bullet point in content I wish to deliver (except the last announcement part where need audience to write down some notes). Looking forward for this coming Monday event, and hope to once again give some good time and infortainment to the dear audience who have invested the time and resources to come and listen to me

Lastly, what make a normal presentation speaker to the good one, and to the best, and world best is all about practices. It took Jobs 30 years to be the best of the best in the world, compare to what he did during the time he launched Mac in 1984. No secret, is all about practices - according to the book, about 10,000 solid hours to make us pro... so I just did my 100 hours public presentation, still 9,900 more hours to go.. ahaha!

I have been absent from here since during the CNY, reason being that things are moving faster than I have expected. No feeling about economy downturn, and no fear of what economic downturn will bring to our nation, my surrounding, or my family, or more precisely, myself, my career, or my future. I have also stoped submitting to Preseed starting from Batch 15, after Batch 14 ‘bail-out’

If you ask, am I give up on fighting for my career, or my future, or to take good step to ensure I’m well protected or immue from this round of crisis, No I’m not giving up. Am I giving up on Pre-seed? No. I’m not giving up too! It just that in this early CNY, I have new plan in my mind. I will talk about this later on my CNY Plan, but first to talk about MSC Preseed program.

I enter Pre-seed solely to train up my presentation skill, pitching skill, writing proposal and so on. Since last year Aug, I have been going through 6 months of these kind of pitching session in Preseed, mainly to get the feel or rejection, and feel of been ignored by the people you are talking to. It is interesting and I think my lesson has come to a stage where it need a semester break. I need to go out and do the real ‘stress test’ on public, and get a feel of what I have make a different on myself from past 6 months and now. I am really fortunate that the first 3 rounds, I have a chance to talk to some real industry experts who are more ‘professional-being’. Now the entire business model is taking-off, and ready to fly high. It is been interesting to see the hardword on the ‘training’ never went wrong  

As for what I have done during CNY, 2 book title on Alibaba.com founder success story, Jack Ma; 1 book on Taobao.com success story to K.O. E-Bay China; 1 book on BaiDu success story; my interesting holiday daily routine. A lot of mind sparking, and it make my mind getting clearer on how to space the idea of B2B2C2C. More interesting thing comes back later when my Boss talked about Long Tail, and how to blend the idea to shape the future digital marketplace. A model we have been working for very long-long time ago, and finally get shaped out in good look. We put up this idea with all our efforts in last two weeks, and start to work on this. It become very interesting that the idea is widely acepted by public when we go and pitch the idea to some investor.

For the next coming two weeks, we already have our initial plan on hand, 6 different presentation deck targeted different market segment, and we are ready to go. What’s cool, the key word Long Tail, Blue Ocean Strategy, will soon return to become a big buzz word again in Malaysia, and other 13 countries in Asia.

Looking forward to share more soon. P/S, I will be slowing down in Preseed application, but do email me if you need information from me. You can also email me to request for my past-proposal and slides as reference purpose (anyway the idea is total reject at this moment and I don’t intent to repackage it to sell in future). I just get the idea in for training up my pitching…

Cheers!

Nothing to be proud of, this is an experience sharing from my past 9 times ‘Unsuccessful’ presentations to pitch the MSC Preseed Grant. Due to my friend keep telling me there’re many people interest in applying this fund but don’t know where and how to start. It is easy to write the proposal for Preseed and you can always refer to the friendly Preseed Account Manager for helps and clarifications. However when come to preparing the presentation slide and pitching, the challenge comes. I’ve been axed out for countless times from evaluation, and also approval pitching.

I have gathered all these real experience and put into the slide below sharing of how to prepare a storyboard to present your idea. I will continue to improve the guide from time to time. For those Batch 14 applicants, best of luck once again, and I shall see any of you in the evaluation pitch soon… Cheers!

For those just get ready with your idea, Batch 15 just open and it is your time to ‘try’ your luck although I dont really believe in luck but hardworks… Cheers. Drop me email or comments to help improve this slide if you can, for those senior or approved applicants.

Me and my best buddy have submitted in total of 4 business idea proposal since mid of this year and I can said that we are pretty aggresive in hunting down for this fund to jump start our idea. We have been entering the Technopreneur Pre-Seed evaluation pitching sessions for more than four times with four differen proposals, and only one time we successfully survived through the approval committee pitching session. As result, none of the project get approved so far, but the experience is pretty interesting and fruitful.

This coming monday me and RB is going for the fifth time pitching session on Intelligent Email system. We have downgraded the solution design, upgrade the development costing, and finally, normalize it to industry or Malaysia’s standard

We have once been challenge by one of our VCs friend on the statement that ‘if your idea is so great, why can’t you dump everything in and make it works? Why wait for the 150k?’, that strike me, and deeply inside my heart, I know the answer, the ‘secret’ answer.

There will be two pitching sessions during this ‘Season’ 12th episode. After so many submission, resubmission, pitching, hope that we can finally get into the ‘action’ time and get something on the track to prepare for better Y2009.

I will open up all our four ideas ‘as if this round we continue to be boosted out from the picthing’. Stay tune… and of course, if the ideas are not open here, stay tune too on our success stories, and also be ready to sign up for our BETA … Wish us luck on this coming monday, 10th Nov 2008…

For those who are like me preparing for pitching and sharpening the saw, feel free to find out some cool stuffs at Garage Resource Center
To find out the Preseed fund, check out here