Youth Engagement Summit 2009 - Part 2

This is the 2nd part of the Youth Engagement Summit 2009 sharing.

Biz Stone - co-Founder of Twitter
a) Twitter is a 10 years in the making, and not something that happened over night.
b) It is meant to be an agent of change and solve problems. Would look at Twitter as a social innovation/social responsibility.
c) Happy mistakes are the best kind. Twitter is a happy mistake.
d) Opportunities can be manufactured. Don't wait for opportunities. Initiate it. Create the opportunities.
e) Creativity is a renewable source. Biz is a artist first, and then only techie. He started with graphic design, before moved to web design (when he started Xanga).
f) Entrepreneurship means becoming mortal. In order to have dramatic success, need to have dramatic failure. Learn it the hard way.
g) Social alchemy is taking place. From blogging to social networking and now twittering. Started blogging on catcha and write about blogging itself, and was invited to write a book.
h) From a simple tweet "I am having a cup of coffee at Logan airport." People meet up and start a conversation and meet up with new people.
i) The open exchange of information has a positive global impact. For Twitter, all the info are public info and anyone can search, and it makes people more informed and more engaged. Hence, positive global impact.
j) Really love and use the tool that you build. Build it for ownself, and you will find it useful. Build a prototype over weekend and try it out.
k) Some says that Twitter is fun but it is not useful. In essence, build something that fun and thrilling and then would only think about business aspect.
l) Is Twitter just a rudimentary social networking or something more? In Texas, food operators tweet about the location they would be at, and can move large group of people around.
m) Tiny bits of information can have a profound impact. People help one another for instance during earthquake, when quick update on Twitter helps.
n) Twitter is about the triumph of humanity and not the triumph of technology. Twitter is what people do with the service, and not what it is meant to do.
o) A rich and diverse ecosystem has emerged. Twitter provides open source for its API. Allow people to create applications. Many companies are created to build applications or Twitter-related products.
p) The potential for impact increases with a focus on mobile. Hence, Twitter is created with 140 characters (as the total limit for mobile is 160 characters). There are 1.5 billion web users, but 4 billion mobile users. Twitter offer SMS access to users in many places, with no additional cost.
q) Giving back is in Twitter DNA. TweetOut was organized in 200 cities in the world, to raise quarter million on a Thursday evening.
r) There is special pinot noir for Twitter, and the profits are used to help to build library.
s) Indirectly, Twitter helps in literacy. If you can't read, you can't tweet.
t) Twitter allow companies to spend as much money as they want, as long as they get more back.
u) To start-ups, bootstrap first and show early sign of growth.

More to come soon. Stay tuned.

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Encourage any of my blog readers to share with me any event that you come across. As long as the event/activity/initiative is education/charity/youth oriented and is not-for-profit, I will be more than happy to post it to share

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Youth Engagement Summit 2009 - Part 1

Congratulations to Khailee and team for successfully organized Youth Engagement Summit 2009 (YES 2009) at Putrajaya International Convention Center on 16th and 17th November 2009.

A few things that really stand out in the Youth Engagement Summit:-
a) The quality of the speakers
b) The spirit of the youth across South East Asia
c) The volunteers (especially those youth)

I was lucky to be able to be there to listen to those speakers and also to meet up with 20 of our JobStreet.com job seekers, who came from Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand through the partnership with SEAChange. JobStreet.com is the Official Job Board of SEAChange and official partner of YES2009.

This post is going to be long and I will share a few points that I learn from each of the speaker.

--> Lorraine Hahn (Host)
a) Youth are now effecting and embracing the changes around. They are daring to spark a change, and many youths are already a leader today.

--> Datuk Johan Jaafar (Advisor of YES2009)
a) If youth do not speak up, the voices would never be heard and get lost in the noises.
b) There are 200 Million youths in the South East Asia region, and it is time to empower the youth. Share views or ideas around.

--> Harmandar Singh (Organizing Chairman)
a) This event is organized due to inspired by change. Hope to create new generation of leaders. If we try, we may succeed, and hence embark on this summit.
b) It is great to see 600,000 youth from South East Asia step forward and get heard.
c) This was planned 4 months ago, with the dream of getting Barack Obama to be here to address the audience. Met up with US State Department for 3 times.
d) Lets not give up on hope. Provide hope to shine and hopefully it would sparkle and the youth would be fearless leaders.
e) Get together to create miracles beyond the mission.
f) Have fun, share your experience/knowledge and learn. Hopefully the youth would go home a little wiser.
g) The duty of the organizer is not to fail the hope of the youth.

--> Khailee (Youth Asia and SEAChange)
a) Total world population - 6.7 Billion. Of which, 200 Million live in South East Asia, age between 15 and 35 and ready to bring the change in their career, education, family etc. Hence, there is this movement South East Asia Youth For Change (SEAChange).
b) The Vietnamese saw war destroyed their nation, yet the youths meet up to speak in English and this network of meet-ups spread across the nation and it is small step to make Vietnamese more accessible to the world. (Note: Speaking English Meet-ups (Malaysia) Facebook Page was just created to encourage Malaysians to practice English Language.)
c) The Indonesian youths bring together to protect the rights of the children and have their voice heard by the government. They advice and help the government to understand more about the younger generation of Indonesians.
d) The Malaysian youths get together and make a difference.
e) In total, 105,552 stories were told from various groups in South East Asia.
f) For the youth, when we don't know something, we google; when we want to spread the news around, we tweet; when we want to connect with others, we facebook. The power is now in the hands of the youth.
g) The world has passed judgment on the youth, saying that the youth are apathetic. Employers have no faith on the youth. Many businesses pay millions to buy artificial relationship with the youth.
h) SEAChange has brought together 120 organizations to make the change for South East Asia youths. Millions of words and thousands of videos were shared. It is a network of believers.
i) SEAChange Facebook group has more than 41,000 youths.
j) We have come too far to not go all the way. We should groom the talents and champion the needs of the youth. Youth should start to believe in ourselves and there is no excuse for us to go all the way. We have come too far to not go all the way.

This is the part 1 of my blogging on Youth Engagement Summit. More to come on the sharings by all the speakers.

Hopefully that this would be able to enable those of you who were not able to be there to learn a bit about what happened there.

-----
Chen Chow's Other Posts
Subscribe to Chen Chow's blog

Encourage any of my blog readers to share with me any event that you come across. As long as the event/activity/initiative is education/charity/youth oriented and is not-for-profit, I will be more than happy to post it to share

Feel free to quote any post within my blog, as long as you link it back here. Sharing is always a good virtue. :)