Colin Charles Agenda

“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” – Thomas Jefferson

A lazy Saturday, I’m taking a break from most things, and I figured I’d fire up Twitter and see what’s on. Many people pointed me to: Malaysians advised against being immersed in Facebook, Twitter (a href=”http://malaysiakini.com/news/122094″>Malaysiakini picked this up too). It features Rais Yatim, being more pompous than he usually is (yes, please watch that video – its highly amusing).

He added that facilities like internet could not be accepted wholly because it was a form of business introduced by the West and “Malaysians were just users.”

Malaysians were just users. Why were they not the creators of sites like Facebook and Twitter? After all, with organisations throwing money away in the form of grants, so readily to companies, why haven’t we created the next Facebook or Twitter? Ping.fm had only two employees, picked up some angel funding, and have recently been acquired by Seesmic. RM150k for a year, is enough for two founders to hack on something, and make it worthwhile, yet, we see higher amounts of folk gaming the system. What about Twitpic? This list can go on, but that’s not going to be the focus of this post – Malaysian’s can create, if they put their mind to it. To boot, there are also funds that they can have access to.

He goes on to talk about how one must upkeep religious values and be mindful of them when using social networking services. Wow, whatever he’s smoking, I want some.

“We must be strong in our believes and culture because the identity and image of our country depends on us.

Yes. The image of the country today, largely depends on what the people say. Politicians can go overseas and lie to others, but what do people do before the want to visit a country? Invest in a country? Move to a country? They check up on the prospective new place on the Internet. They use Google search. They’ll read Google News. Heck, they might even go read Google’s Blog Search. Others will check out Flickr and Picasa to find good photos, some will check out YouTube. Others will look at TripAdvisor to find a good hotel. Others will check out the newspapers. The list goes on. However, what citizens do, is they speak their mind, when online – so the government clearly lacks control of their old one-way-mediums.

His next statement makes absolutely no sense at all. Maybe he should have spoken in his native Bahasa Malaysia?

“They are just selling Facebook, Twitter, L-Band and various other services, even through space, as a product but we do not do such business. We accept all this in a state of cultural shock,” he said.

Culture shock, eh? Seriously. He continues…

“We should not be quick to condemn or look down on those who do not use Facebook. Newspapers are still relevant, so is Facebook, but do not be carried away with everything and disregard the old system,” he said.

Of course. That would be plain wrong, and ageist. Not everyone needs to be on Facebook. Or Twitter. Or read online media. Its fine that people have a choice. Today, if one chooses to go “old school”, all one has to do is wake up in the morning, buy a dead tree edition of your favourite newspaper, read it, then go over to the boob tube, watch the myriad of programming available on free-to-air channels, and suck in all the propaganda. However, as a society matures, they do tend to disregard the old, and check out the new (for example, if I’d had followed the old system, I’d be seeing this silly media article in the dead tree edition of The Star – I saw it half an hour after it was published because I was on Twitter). Societies mature, and their needs mature, so they do outgrow the old (same applies to political regimes).

It continues, in where he says things about how one shouldn’t use Twitter, Facebook and SMS messaging for the wrong reasons. He tells us that we cannot escape from the law for our actions. And that most people understand the whole 1Malaysia concept. Drivel, in general.

Anyway, newspapers in their dead-tree form are losing relevance. We have two that are free now – The Sun and The Malay Mail. The Star has pretty much all its content online. And Malaysians can read The Malaysian Insider (Malaysian creation) for free, or subscribe to Malaysiakini (Malaysian creation). As the Internet penetration rate goes up, we’ll see more of this. The magazine industry in Malaysia has been suffering for a couple of years (no eyeballs, no advertising ringgit).

So, there are Malaysian creations, used by people, where Malaysians are not just users but creators. I’m sorry Rais, you’re so out of it.

Yesterday, local politician, Khairy Jamaluddin was given some advice about his usage of Twitter, from a senior media figure:

has been given unsolicited advice by a senior media figure to stop tweeting if I want to be taken seriously as a politician. :(

Khairy is not just any ordinary politician. He’s young (33), the leader of UMNO Youth (the youth organisation for the largest political party in Malaysia, that creates the majority of the component party Barisan Nasional), overseas educated from young, and seems like a smart chap. He’s tomorrow’s leader. He’s got a pretty lengthy Wikipedia entry, if you want to know his credentials.

The media in Malaysia has painted nothing but a fairly negative picture of Khairy. When his father-in-law was the Prime Minister, he was widely criticised. When his father-in-law left, the current Prime Minister decided not to pick him for a position in the Cabinet, despite being the leader of the UMNO Youth (first in history, I believe). So to be fair, I myself have never held Khairy in high regards.

OK, let’s go back to the fact that Khairy is young. And he’s the leader of the young guns (aka future voters). So he’s more versatile to adopting to the communication mediums of the young. And that’s something the rest of his archaic party members just don’t seem to get.

Thanks to Twitter, I’ve seen the human-side of Khairy. He appeals to me more as a politician now. In fact, if more from his party do that (and more importantly, do it correctly), there’s going to be a swing to getting more people voting for the Barisan Nasional.

Politicians have never really been very accessible. With Twitter, even though Khairy only follows 55 people, he has 2,589 followers. Why? He reads his @reply queue. He occasionally responds to them (in a very politically correct fashion — he never engages in anything that may seem detrimental quite naturally). So even if he doesn’t respond, you know he’s reading your comments. So you can choose to be snarky, you can choose to have your own opinions, and he’s going to read them (short of him blocking you).

Anyway, back to the point. I take Khairy more seriously as a politician because he tweets. Another Twitter user @kamal, basically said: “Fox Communications is just being a spoiled sport you are handling your own PR”. That could very likely be it. Eight minutes later, Khairy tweeted: “Notwithstanding +ve tweet replies from tweeps, KJ is re-evaluating tweet career in case “seriousness” is KPI at next reshuffle. :p”. Good to note that people told him to continue using the social medium, known as Twitter.

Oh, and I’m young. The other youngsters aren’t bothered about listening to government propaganda. They’re getting information off the Web. They want to be interacted with. Perils of the Gen Y voter, eh? And Khairy understands them… because he himself is a Gen Y voter (I should think).

Kudos Khairy. Continue Tweeting. Continue utilising social media. And good luck in your political career.

For those interested, I’ve started a list with regards to Politicians in Malaysia Using Social Media. Its far from complete, but you can help!

Today at BarCamp KL, I presented a brand new talk: Advertising and PR, Bloggers and Integrity: Making Money, While Being Honest.

The back story

On April Fool’s Day, I sent out a feeler to see if anyone was interested in a talk titled “Advertising & PR, Bloggers & Integrity: making money, thru honesty”. It seems like the response was positive, and it was to be scheduled on Saturday for BarCampKL. Wow, a few days to come up with a brand new talk… naturally, I asked people for feedback, and received them (right up till 7 or so hours before the talk was scheduled to be given).

Preparing for the talk

On Friday, I posted a bunch of notes that I had taken down in OmniOutliner. I gathered some feedback, and then implemented the whole thing into Keynote (this is incidentally also my first presentation in where I am not using OpenOffice.org Impress, a software package I had helped contribute to for a significant portion of my life). To boot, I also purchased the Keynote Remote application for the iPhone/iPod Touch, for USD$0.99. This moves me away from using the usual Logitech Presentation Remote. So let’s just say all this marked new ground for me, as I got to learn new software in an evening, including using the presenter notes, and so on.

Giving the talk

Considering I had never given the talk before, and was winging it based on notes I had created a day before, let’s just say it was a little rough on the edges, lacking statistics that I would have liked, and lacking graphics that I should have included. I’m sure there will be a 2.0 version of the talk, if I’m to give it elsewhere.

I was pleased that the talk had a standing room audience. During the talk there was active discussion. That’s what made it fun. Lots of participants shared their experiences, and it was people representing media buyers, PR firms, as well as the bloggers themselves.

Generally speaking, most people believed that disclosure should be the way to go. There is nothing wrong with making money from your blog, but telling your audience that you are doing so, is a duty to your readers. Its the right thing to do!

Conversation about the talk went on even during lunch, and I seemed to hear lots of positive feedback about it. Its a pity I didn’t get the whole talk recorded!

In closing

Expect a series of blog posts, that are more well thought out, and are logically separated on this topic in the near future. And to think, all this talk started with what I told David Lian, a few weeks ago, at the KLTweetup, about how I believe Nuffnang will be irrelevant in 2 years if they don’t change their business model. Not existing is hard (both founders have got deep family pockets), but becoming less relevant, I guarantee it (or I’ll eat a shoe — one made of cake, nonetheless ;-))

I’m fielding thoughts/comments. What do you think if we had events like Social Media Breakfast in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia? Would you go? How would you contribute? What do you think you will get out of it?

Our neighbours down in Singapore have their own SMB.sg, and they seem to have a very rah rah styled event, that includes sponsors, venues, and when things start involving money/expenses, it takes a little more time for something like this to be organised (especially, in this dud economy). Just take a look at their public ledger.

Not far off, there is the Social Media Coffee Mornings in Sydney, and Melbourne. These happen on a Friday morning, which probably won’t fly in Malaysia, as people need to go to work :-)

My proposal
We have a similar event, held once every two weeks initially, on a Saturday morning, at a coffee joint that we wish to take over. There is potential for fun at Starbucks, in the Gardens, but better yet, you’ll find that the Coffee Bean in Mont Kiara has got a lot more space, parking, and is a bit more secluded (so its easy to move tables around, et al).

No projector/screen, bring your own laptops. There should be WiFi, which makes having it at a Starbucks better than a Coffee Bean, as the WiFi would then be free (and not provided via Airzed). One would need plenty of power sockets too, but if we keep it breakfast styled, let the event fizzle out in 2-3 hours, so that you can go and get lunch with your loved ones (or hook up the next great business with someone you met!).

Would you find value, talking to Web-types, into social media, entrepreneurship, technology, or even just making extra income via the Internet, every fortnight, all for the price of a coffee? Is 9am on a Saturday, too early for this sort of thing?

I envision this being a mashup of Social Media Breakfast, Social Media Coffee Mornings, and even OpenCoffee Club.

If you’re into Twitter, Facebook, blogging, building up web services that benefit others, and create a conversation, FriendFeed, community, entrepreneurship, making money via the online world, new media, advertising, and more, this is the kind of event for you. Field thoughts via comments, or a Twitter message :-)