YouthMalaysia’s National Youth Entrepreneurship Convention – Report Back

You can never be too overexposed!

– Kid Chan

The National Youth Entrepreneurship Convention was surprisingly well done. There was a large crowd and a good group of interesting and fun speakers. Mostly everyone was relaxed and jovial and were open to questions and light banter. Kid Chan had TONS of energy, Kenny Sia was very “boy next door” and gentle, and Mia Palencia and Khai Lee were very obviously passionate. It’s funny how a couple of them credit their mother’s negative reaction as the catalyst to their success! It was also nice to hear from YouthMalaysia’s founder Joel Neoh (who became “Noel” tons of times thanks to Chris the MC) – he was a bit more humble than I imagined him to be, which is quite good. Overall it was a pretty interesting session, and far better organized than many other YouthMalaysia activities. Let this be an inspiration!

The only main complaint would be the “Millionaire Sisters”, who were utterly misplaced in the Social Entrepreneurship/Leadership category – they didn’t belong to either! They came off as very fake and materialistic and cared more about their wealth then with actually helping people. They seemed to have come from the same presentation school as people like Sarina Russo, Kathy Ireland, and basically anyone working in the “make more money now!” industry – overacting, silly interaction, lots of “LOOK HOW WEALTHY I AM”. I don’t think anyone was pretty impressed with their presence (nor was I impressed with one of their staff members who cornered me after the convention and tried to get me to come and “listen to more of what they had to say”! Urgh, creepy). Also wasn’t totally impressed with Dato’ Ong Ka Tiek’s luncheon speech – his cries of “we encourage young students to be DIFFERENT and to VOICE THEIR OPINIONS” ring really hollow when you consider that it’s his department (Higher Education) that enacts laws and rules severely restricting students’ freedom of speech and assembly.

Ern Sheong has a great writeup on all the speakers and their presentations, so check his blog out for some quick notes. I was also happy to meet some EducateDeviate readers and friends – Chong Chuan, Daniel CerVentus, Karin Cheng, Delwyn Lee, John & Michael (sorry didn’t catch your last names), Nabila, Su Ann. Turns out that the discount could apply to more than 3 people, so apologies to those whom I turned down for the group!

If you were at the convention, please feel free to share your stories here.

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TAKEN – One More Spot Available for the EducateDeviate Young Entrepreneur Convention Group

EDIT: The spot has been filled – thank you Delwyn! There are other people looking for groups, and I’m not entirely sure if groups of more than 3 are actually OK, so I’ll connect you with any other stragglers. Thank you!

There’s one more spot available in the EducateDeviate group for the 1st National Youth Entrepreneur Convention. This allows for a cheaper rate of RM50 instead of RM100. Technically there can be more than 3, but I need at least one more person.

If you are interested, contact me now and I will advise you on further details.

EDIT: Serious enquiries only PLEASE. I’ve been getting a couple of dud emails from people either flip-flopping or suggesting unreasonable ways such as registering but not paying/not showing up. We still need one more person and I’ll be ultimately responsible for the group, so I can’t afford such nonsense. I can understand backing out due to unforseen circumstances, but if you’re not going to be serious, then please don’t waste our time and get our hopes up.

Also, EducateDeviate has been shortlisted for the YouthMalaysia DotCom Search, with awards being given out on the 18th of January. I’m supposed to have a tracking code up, but their code is in Javascript and WordPress.com doesn’t allow Javascript coding on their blogs, so there’s not much I can do about it. Accept this as my formal (belated) acknowledgement of the award 🙂

Malaysia Youth Lifestyle Showcase ’08 – So Much To Do

Today is Multi-Post Day for me! That’s because a lot of things are happening at the same time, and one of them is another YouthMalaysia project – Malaysia’s Youth Lifestyle Showcase 08.

Subtitled “We Are The Trendsetters”, the showcase has plenty of youth-organized activities (from an earlier competition) on offer – careers, cosplaying, puzzles, Battle of the Bands, all sorts. There is also a very extensive Talent and Style competition, which is essentially a contest to get as many supporters of yourself on Friendster and show off your talents. They don’t make it clear what the prizes are though! (I wonder how you’d show off your style and talent if you’re a blogger, which is an accepted category…just type a whole lot of stuff?)

The showcase runs from January 18 to 20 2008. Their website was a lot better than when I first saw it (otherwise I would have promoted it earlier), but there’s still a lot of info missing. YouthMalaysia, if you’re reading: fix your websites! But otherwise it seems like an interesting concept, and one worth checking out at least.