Colin Charles Agenda

I caught Mamma Mia on Sunday. This wasn’t my first time seeing it; the cast was new. It was a lot racier compared to the previous one about 5 years ago in KL.

Then, I sat within spitting distance of PM Najib & Rosmah, using the intermission fully to crack jokes about explosives. This time it was on the second row from the stage. I enjoyed both thoroughly.

I wondered why the hardline minority Islamists didn’t comment about Mamma Mia. They seem to take offense with plenty. Figured it’s probably because they’d have to pay for a ticket and that’s beyond them (lovers of freebies). They always have to remember the relation between tolerance and prosperity.

An arts scene is important for KL to become a world class livable city. This is something that is strong in New York or London, and I wish KL had more foresight. From what I see, Singapore is leading the way in South East Asia.

I don’t expect these things to develop overnight. It comes with work from both developing the local scene & inspiring the experienced to come for shows. It’s like the gallery/photography scene – again nothing to be developed overnight but I’m starting to see more interest and there are clearly auction houses at work. I find here that people try to leapfrog the basic collectors (which is a big mistake – that RM100 piece I buy today will help me buy the RM1,000 piece later on in life, and so on).

I reckon we will be building a base in the next decade. Yes it will shoot past 2020, but we have to contend with other issues (politically, etc) before Malaysia enjoys such first world livability. Then it will be another decade before things just work.

So people bearing kids today – don’t leave the nation. Make it better, for our future generation. Don’t be complacent, always question the status quo. It’s our nation, and we’ve got to lay claim & take it back.

Where possible, the only card I use is my American Express charge card. Of course, recently, Maybank has upped the ante with an Amex card that provides TreatsPoints (and if you’re after air miles, they are better than the charge card membership rewards – go figure).

I especially like purchasing electronics with the Amex. Purchase protection, return guarantees, but the most important to me is the extended warranties (which cover mobile phones, but not computers!). So its great to see that a complaint that existed in early 2013, is now fixed. The Apple Store in Malaysia finally accepts Amex cards for purchases. This wasn’t true earlier this year (say March?). So a positive move.

In other news, I walked into a Machines store the other day and the only iPhone 6 they had for sale were the 16GB iPhone 6+’s. Everything else was sold out. I lamented that you could pick this up on the Apple online store, and it ships within 1-3 business days. Apparently Apple is making the lives of these resellers a little tougher by not releasing stock to them. Oh well.

“My father was the first entrepreneur in the family,” Rohan Marley, the sixth of Bob Marley’s eleven children, said the other day. “He started his own record label, his own restaurant. He knew that, in order to give something back to the people, he had to create. You can’t be no philanthropist, no Warren Buffett, unless you make something first.”

Bob’s Boys – All Natural in The New Yorker

The article focuses a lot on the marijuana trade, but the choice quote here is about creation. You may read many books and articles about giving back, and they’re usually written by people that have created so much value already, that it makes sense to give back. Some of the best books on this topic that I’ve read include Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized an Industry by Marc Benioff and Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur by Richard Branson.

This is also like mentorship. Sometimes you can’t mentor each and every opportunity because you’re stretched for time, and are still creating.

This comes back to my thoughts on advisors. How can you dole out advice if you’ve never been there (and done that)? How can you dole out advice if you yourself haven’t created? Sure, there are textbook examples at work, and people learn at schools (MBAs, etc) but sitting in a classroom is no substitute for experience.

So whether you’re looking for a mentor, an advisor, or a board member, remember that having some form of requisite experience (not just textbook knowledge) is something that will probably take you further.

The last couple of blog posts have been written on my iPhone. Before that (and this) was composed on my iPad.

Sure, adding links seems to be quite difficult. Alt/Mac+Tab is generally quite handy when it comes to sitting by my laptop.

The new workflow feels very much like writing on Facebook. I just write. Let the words flow. It doesn’t matter where I am, I take it all like it’s being a status update. And then when I hit publish, I come back to it later on my laptop (the reality is that I sync it with MarsEdit and edit on the desktop client) to add relevant links.

This kind of method probably works well when I’m not doing a technical blog post, but something that resembles a status update or a story.

I still have to work out how to automatically post the posts to Twitter, and if possible post to Facebook as a status update (I recall that we could sync Notes back in the day, but that feature was removed). I’m thinking either the body makes it, or the first 2 paragraphs or I make use of excerpts wisely.

It’s not that writing on a laptop is a bad idea. It’s just that when I’m on my laptop, I’m usually online and have other work to do: emails, terminal, etc. I’ve used my iOS devices mainly for consumption of content (WSJ, NYT, FT, New Yorker, The Economist, Instapaper, Kindle, NewsBlur) — but with a lot of dead time, it’s not a bad device to also be a device to create, to some extent.

The WordPress apps are pretty good. They don’t handle images well, i.e. They don’t resize them to be sensible for web. Plus I very much like my images to also be on Flickr (I can live without that though). But posting 3MB photos in the main body just seems silly.

I’m sure I can eventually improve this workflow by posting items as a draft first, so they don’t reach the public till the links are added. It’s all an experiment, but I’m already liking the new additional ways to push content to this site.

As the year wraps up, I have to take my hats off to MaGIC for running so many concurrent events in these weeks. Cynics would say they are spending this years budget to ensure they get next years allocation; my only complaint is that their events all have about a 5-day lead time from announcement (on their Facebook page) to the actual event itself.

For Malaysians in Kuala Lumpur, it makes sense to visit one of the two events tomorrow (a pity they’re back-to-back, so basically clashing):

1. MaGIC e@Stanford attendees presentation on Silicon Valley culture – Warren Leow, a VP at MaGIC referred to the batch of 60 as the creme de la creme of Malaysia, and with enough pressure, they launched not only a website so you can keep track of them, but also are organising this public event that people should attend, listen, ask questions, and hopefully write about. I’m personally very interested in what happens in an all expense paid (minus the cost of the visa) 2-week visit to Silicon Valley.

I think it’s important to attend because the second batch are likely going within Q1/2015. Mentioning that this brings positivity to the ecosystem in 2-3 years seems rather fluid. Things have to be measurable from the get go, especially when they involve public funds.

2. DNA Disrupt – they’re looking towards the future, i.e. 2015 by looking at the past (2014 has been an interesting year). It’s no secret that one of my favourite publications to read is Digital News Asia (DNA). Unless you’re living under a rock, you probably already realize that Malaysia is facing tougher times (currency at it’s lowest to the US dollar in years, oil prices slipping, cost of living going up, etc.), and 2015 should be a really challenging year ahead for entrepreneurs (either looking to fundraise or looking at working capital from the banks). The discussion that will happen here should be invaluable, and probably very forward thinking (by judiciously studying “history”).

Two exciting events, which do you go to? I personally wish that there would be some live streaming, like some old DNA Disrupts used to have (hook up a cheap video camera, have an Internet connection, and let YouTube do the rest) so I can watch from afar.

Whichever you pick, I’m sure the networking will be invaluable. Have a great Wednesday ahead.

I’ve been following MaGIC on & off since late 2013. I was very excited with it’s initial launch but with mostly everything Malaysian, I usually end up with having more questions than answers.

While shuttling between hotel lounges in Germany back in October, I started a thread on my Facebook wall, which garnered over 185 comments & numerous private messages. The discussion was initially positive till someone hijacked it on a tangent; it turned out he just didn’t comprehend the English language.

My simple reason for wanting to care again: I’m a proud Malaysian & want to see my country succeed. There are no shortcuts to success; it’s going to require a lot of work, not rah-rah smoke & mirror operations. I see a lack of critical thinking & reportage on this topic.

I believe in sustainable movements that have learned from history. After all, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. I believe in fixing things from the core – I may sound like an idealist, but multiple businesses & participation in distributed opensource communities has taught me to be a pragmatic idealist.

Time these days is limited, with me spending increasing amounts of time on the road. I’ve been wanting to write more for a long time, so why not reboot it here on the blog? Comments here (via Disqus) are a lot more manageable than Facebook’s system (no threading, hard to stop people from being silly, etc). Search is also a lot better. Who remembers the time we fought the Computing Professionals Bill (CPB2011)? Probably no one, since most of the work was spread on Google Docs and a lot of the “activism” was done via Twitter & physical meetings – we just forgot to catalogue/write about it.

So, with that, here’s a new category: The Malaysian Scene. I intend to cover technology, business (entrepreneurship) & policy thoughts in this area.

I’m open to topic suggestions – via comments here or via email. Sharing with me via private messaging will always ensure your anonymity.