kelvin quee

I’m very excited to announce that InteresThink is happening next Saturday on the 23 February 2008!

For those of you who are in Singapore next week, here are the details -

Briefly

Date: 23 February 2008
Time: 10am - 3pm (Lunch is included)
Location: The Pod, National Library Board @ Bugis
Details: http://InteresThink.com

InteresThink is a multidisciplinary, TED-like conference. The conference aims to bring people from different disciplines together to build understanding and collaboration. Both our speakers and audience come from a variety of different fields. Throughout the conference, we will be using various dialogue facilitation techniques.

Speakers include Speakers - Alex Au (gay activist), Larry Francis (ethnomusicologist), Lim Choo Hin (President, Voice of Cancer), Leong Sze Hian (political commentator), Kan Lume (film maker) and Grant Pereira (Head, Green Volunteers Network). Our audience (see list) is also equally fascinating!

My greatest joy is the enthusiasm with which this Conference has been received. We are receiving a lot of support from previous attendees. A lot of expertise, time and networks are volunteered by people who see value in what we are doing. Many of them will not even be attending the Conference in person due to commitments. To all those who have been supporting us - Thank You!

Register and join us in a Saturday filled with exploration, meaningful conversations and possibilities!

This is a followup to Speak Out on ICT 2006. The video of the speech given at SMU at the competition (not the one at iX Conference) is above. Slides are here, while the text for the speech is here. Note that the actual speech varies rather wildly from what I intended to give, but the essence is essentially the same.

I had the fantastic opportunity of speaking at iX Conference last Thursday (22 July 2006). It’s a really huge stage for me and I’m deeply honoured by the opportunity.

Unfortunately, I didn’t do as well as I had expected myself to. I didn’t meet up to expectations.

My lack of experience is chiefly to be blamed. I had given numerous small room presentations before and have often been able to built a rapport with the audience halfway through the presentation. That rapport helps me to bring in the spontaneity, which I strongly believe is the strength of my presentation style.

Up there, on the stage, the audience is one dark mass. Add to the fact that the audience is probably very much more knowledgeable and the fact that I’ve over-rehearsed my material, I merely regurgitated material.

Probably not. As always, I try to push the limits. I added in one slide, speaking about Collective Intelligence as a Market Place. Bad idea. I stumbled.

Then I tried to add-in spontaneity. Artificial ingredients. Really bad idea. I simply wasn’t delivering well.

Good thing, as I’ve found out later during the networking sessions, that the audience seems wowed by the slides, those were the only saving grace.

Looking back, there were some very impressive speakers who managed to capture the audience’s attention with material that they’ve probably used countless times and still managed to sense of freshness, earnest and sincerity. These are masterclass speakers that I need to learn from.

I would like to thank William Claxton for organising and allowing mere students like us to address professionals on a stage like this. Also, to all the great people that was there to support me. Thank you!

The videos, slides and speech will be posted soon.

I’m very lucky to have won the competition, since the competition was so strong. Both Ming Yeow and Pin Quan are very strong competitors that delivered a speech saturated with insights. It really was humbling.

But all of us had a great time knowing each other and to hear from the leaders of the IT industry in Singapore.

I will also have the opportunity to speak at the iX Conference Congress. It is a great honour, but handling the scale of the stage will be very challenging. Nevertheless, I will treasure this chance.

Here is a summary of what happened and a press release, together with the judges’ critique of other worthy competitors.