Month: March 2009

Categories
Experience Sharing

So I Conduct Global Training Over The Internet And I Look Inside My Stomach Hard for The Butterflies

WebEx Screenshot

I am not trained as a trainer but the training opportunities find their ways to me, over the years, since I have started my humble career.  It’s always a full circle, from one end to another, from another end to the same one I have started from.  You strategize, you design a new business process, you put in place a piece of technology, you create a communication and marketing pack, and then you train.  It is because ultimately it is human who is going to be trained on how to use that shinny new piece of technology to enable a new business process that is aligned to a strategy.  That pretty much summarize what I do for a living.

Over the years, I have learned much on the art of training, from my peers, the people below and above me, and my audience.  Over the years, I have trained a small classroom of people to a crowd that filled a hotel ballroom.  I love to train.  Especially those that have a dose of uncertainties like the breakout groups.  Time and time again, people pull me aside and ask if I find talking about the same topic boring.

Not at all.

Each group is different.  The rapport and the effort put in to build the rapport is different.  Each group has its own challenge.  And in as much as my objective is to impart knowledge, my personal goal is to learn from my audience, through group sharing, through the questions they ask, and through the observation on what works for them.  I love the accumulation of war stories and confidence and success as I maneuver from one group to another.

One good friend of mine used to tell me that if we can feel the butterflies on our stomachs, it is a good sign.  It shows that success matters.  It keeps us on our toes.  She told me that each of us has a personal ritual to go through prior to the conduct of the training.  I have not shared mine with her.  I used to pray in the toilet prior to showtime.  Yes, I too used to feel the butterflies.  It’s a feeling that can be unsettling.  What if I couldn’t deliver the speech that has been written and rewritten a thousand times?  What if I couldn’t connect to the audience?  What if they see what I don’t know instead of what I do know?  What if …

Though I dreaded the butterflies, thank God most of the sessions I came out OK (some with good recognition).  These days, I am at that one end of the cycle again: It’s training time.  What is different today from the past is that due to the duration and depth of this global initiative that I have been working on, I am very comfortable in conducting the training.  And after all the local classroom training I helped to conduct, the next step is to reach out to the rest of the world.

Since I am not that keen to travel – love Singapore too much! – I am happy to conduct training over the Internet (we use WebEx just in case some of you may be able to relate).  It is a whole new experience.  At my laptop, I can see who have dialed in, I can punch in a telephone number inside the software and it will make the necessary call to the participants who can’t get connected, I can mute individual phone lines (you’ll be amazed at how many people accidentally put their phones on hold and all of a sudden, everyone logged in hear some music played), I can present a document, share an application, see the Q&A window gets populated, chat room that keeps the private and public messages popping.  Wow … very funky!

Initial excitement aside, it can be hard.  At times I feel like I was a DJ talking to myself.  Imagine this: you are in a meeting room, alone, in front of you a laptop and a speaker phone.  Everyone is on mute.  And you keep talking, no faces to be seen, no responses to be heard, just you and your voice hoping that someone is awake on the other side of the telephone line.  Do they like the pace?  Can they understand me?  Do they get my lighthearted comments?  Are there VIPs in the call?  No idea.  Silence.  Just me and my voice and the speaker phone.  All the way from “Welcome to our today’s training session” to “Thank you for your time and you may disconnect now”, do people get fired for delivering a lousy training over the Internet?

No idea.

At times I wish there were a few butterflies in my stomach, to get me in the mood with heightened alert.  Sessions after sessions, I look forward to the online Q&A the most.  Because that is the only variation I encounter.  Oh gosh, wouldn’t that become really … boring?

Well, you know me, I can’t stand boredom.  So, each web training I conduct, I always tried to crack a totally different set of jokes (like instead of meeting Bill Gate for lunch, for the same scenario, I golf with Steve Jobs … and then, I drop this scenario altogether and crack another joke on a different situation), share a different set of stories, deliver the same message in a slightly different way, rearrange things just a little bit – do something that keep my sanity.

I am not trained as a trainer but I love to train.  And no, I am not a full time trainer.  I just step into a role available while having another role to play.

Categories
Memorable Events Photography

My Sister’s Wedding in Singapore – Thank You For Your Warm Wishes

We wrapped up the night with a group photo

It is amazing how pressure can propel us to do the seemingly impossible.  I woke up this morning barely 8 hours after I shot the last photo of the evening and my parents were already pacing around my living room hinting or rather strongly hinting that they wished to take all the photos I have shot for my sister’s wedding as they are.  As they are?!  It is hard to explain to them why they can do that for point-and-shoot photos and not for the 500 pictures I took with my dSLR camera.  I find it hard to believe that too.  It has got to be my skill, or the lack of it.

And because it breaks my heart to see my parents fly back to Hong Kong disappointed, not only have I done the necessary photo shortlisting and touch up in record time, but also have them published online with a less than 24 hours turnaround time.  I am happy with the results.  Some of the shots I really like.  I suppose Benny and Lora may have passed this blog entry to you for viewing.  Maybe you were there, maybe you couldn’t make it.  As a proud brother of Lora and a good old friend of Benny, I thank you for your warm wishes to the wedding couple.  I am pretty sure in time to come Benny and Lora will share the professionally done up photos of the event with you.  Meanwhile, here are some of the candid shots I have taken to complement the event, arranged chronologically in three albums.

PS. Stay tuned for a little write-up on how the day went.  Thank you for viewing the pictures and as always, feedback is welcome.

Categories
Diary Photography

For My Parents With Love In The Beautiful Landscape of The Singapore Botanic Gardens

My Parents at the Singapore Botanic Gardens

My 74 years old dad said the funniest thing.  He told me that these days when he went fishing, along the harbor of Hong Kong, young photographers often take him as their photo subject.  And in his tone of reminisce he said, “When I was a young photographer I was doing the same.  Now that I am an old man, it’s my turn [to be photographed by the strangers]”.  We all laughed.  But on what?  We don’t know.  I don’t know.  I don’t want my dad to be old.  I want everything to stay the same.

Reality is, we all get older as time goes by.  Decades ago I was my dad’s photography subject.  Who doesn’t like to see little babies, little kids, so full of innocence, so full of joy on pictures, on prints?  Decades later my parents have become my photography subject.  Kids and old folks – the two most common picks for the photographers on human portraits.  It is the innocence and the wisdom; it is the sign of creation and the mark of time; it is a blank story book filled with possibilities and a memoir that inspires.

Why the Singapore Botanic Gardens?  It’s rare that both my parents are in town, thanks to my sister’s wedding.  It is the green and the fresh air, the flowers and the butterflies.  My family loves to visit parks.  Back when I was in Hong Kong.  A tradition that I still carry with me today.  Some of the happiest moments of my life happen in the parks.

That’s why.

For the viewing of a personal photo collection dedicated to my parents, please click here.

P.S. An entry written with my Nokia N96 the sms style hours before my sister’s wedding dinner at a cafe at China Square Central while waiting for Cynthia’s make up session at Raffle City to be done, synchronised with Nokia free OVI service using the free Wireless@SG wi-fi network.

Categories
Fantasy & Sci-fi Foreign Movie Reviews

K-20: Legend of the Mask – A Japanese Batman?

K20

It’s Takeshi so Cynthia has got to watch it.  So I have got to accompany her.  And I had no idea what to expect.  Besides, I reckon since my parents are going to be in town this week, my sister is getting Singaporely married this weekend (for her wedding tour, click here), I’d better catch up with my Movie Review Squad for a movie, this week.

Nope.  There was no tears.  No Japanese female eye candies either.  Just Takeshi in what seems like a Batman meets Thief Guild kind of western concept set in Japan when World War II didn’t happen.  Cynthia loves it, I love it less.  Just because I feed on tearing moments and eye candies, and none in this.  The film though, is quite a classic.  There are moments of memorable acts.  Moments that I could visualize decades later when some of us play back the scenes and recite the dialogues with the actors.

The special effect is jaw dropping.  No doubt “K-20” is one of those rare big budget Japanese movies.  A fantasy story with the background of Japan entering a class movement separating the rich and the poor.  Naturally – I suppose – someone would stand up and redistribute wealth in his own way.  Lack of originality aside, “K-20” is blessed with the right kind of humor, a storyline in suspense, amazing backdrops, and Takeshi.  I kind of enjoy watching Takeshi in his not-too-pretty-boy look (did someone just stepped onto his face in the set or was it a double?).  He is as hilarious as ever, someone can who put a smile to my face even in his most serious moment.

While watching “K-20”, I couldn’t help but to have flashbacks to Batman, Zorro, Robin Hood, Spiderman, and V for Vendetta – the fighting, the flying, the stealing, and the mask.  It is good to watch Takashi taking a leading role again.  An enjoyable evening, early this week.

Categories
I See I Write

The Outlook of Digital Music Media in 2009 – Comes With Music Part 2

Cynthia and her Nokia phone and her music collection

Before I dive into my personal thought on the current outlook of music industry, here are some interesting facts.

The big four major record labels that Nokia has struck a deal with account for over 80% of total sales worldwide (read previous blog entry for details on “Comes With Music”).  Revenue from CD sales has been heading south.  That is old news.  The big boys blame piracy.  Some disagree.  In 2008, 2 billion dollar revenue was generated via digital music sales.  70% came from Apple iTune Store and the pie is split three-way: 61-29-9 cents between the record industry, Apple, and the artists respectively.

So how does Nokia come into the picture?

Apple’s foray into wireless phone business may have accelerated Nokia’s counter response by setting up the OVI Store to rival iTune Store that currently contains over 10 million song titles.  The new Nokia service “Comes With Music” allows users to freely download any of the 4 million song titles within OVI Store for the first year.  The new touchscreen Nokia 5800 XpressMusic together with the upcoming N97 take aim at Apple iPhone covering both high end and mid segments.  And Apple’s response?  All tracks sold in iTune Store will be free of DRM (digital rights management) and will be encoded to 256 kbit/s.  The game is on.  It is round one in year 2009.

In layman’s term, what Nokia says is this: look, just buy our phone and you can download all you like for a year (but you can only play them in your PC or your phone).  And Apple’s reply is: you pay for a higher quality music that you can’t find it anywhere (except CDs) and your music is for you to play in any device.

Tricky situation we have here in Singapore.  There are still a group of people who balk at the Comes With Music’s comes with DRM (digital rights management).  And the discussion on Apple iTune Store is purely academic because, well, it is still not available in Singapore.  Nokia has provided us a legal channel to download music online here at home.  Apple has not.

DRM is a thorny issue – both in music industry and in PC gaming industry.  It is a last ditch effort for the big boys to battle piracy (the very last resort is prosecution).  Without going into the nuts and bolts of DRM, its original intend is to deter piracy.  Well, it doesn’t work.  What DRM hurts most are the legitimate users who pay for the products.  At best, DRM inconvenience paying customers.  At worst, it makes the products unusable for the unfortunate few – the ones who paid.

I talk to those who constantly download music illegally and I have the following observations.  Most don’t see anything wrong with their action.  Most have lots of honorable reasons such as “I will buy the CD later if the music is good”, “I can’t find the music in the local market”, “It is for personal use and not for distribution”, “The music industry is evil and they don’t deserve my money”, and more.  Most tend to massively download music round the clock and I always ask them in puzzlement, “Can you really consume all that you download?!”

Maybe the world has changed.  It is the way we consume music.  I have difficulties in thoroughly understanding and internalizing each music album with my average purchase rate of one CD a week.  How could those who massively harvest all the the tracks out there illegally get to appreciate the artwork within the 24 hours we have a day?  What happens to the days of us listening to the album again and again till we memorize all the lyrics, till we can sing along with the tracks, till we can interpret the messages the artists are trying to convey?

To be fair to the old dinosaurs like I, there are still quite a few friends who purchase and collect albums, go back in time to appreciate certain tracks from an album published a decade or two or more ago.  Maybe these days, there are more and more listeners out there who would briefly listen to some tracks within an album and stick to a few tracks they like.  And then they move onto the next album.  To me, paying for a music album knowing that I would listen to it again and again seems worth it.  To some, maybe not.

Personally, I don’t think it is right to download music against the will of the owners.  If you expect people to work for free, would you too work for free?  Having said that, the business model of the music industry needs an overhaul.  Using revenue generated by sales to fund lesser known artists, to fund all the middle layers in the name of music promotion needs to be changed.  Awareness on respecting the intellectual property of others needs to be raised within the mass public too.  One can never fight greed [of the music industry] with greed [of one’s illegal download action].

In 2000, horror book writer Stephen King published a serialized novel “The Plant” online.  It cost $1 to download each installment.  But here is the deal.  You could download the installment without paying a dime.  Or you could pay the nominal sum of $1.  120,000 paying readers downloaded the first installment.  By the fifth installment, only 40,000 were paying.  Most no longer paid.  I did pay for all 5 installments and after such a disappointing result, Stephen King stopped the series briefly.  Paying readers cried out loud as we wanted to read the ending.  If my memory serves me right, King did publish the remaining installments free.

So, what’s the morale of the story?

In an online world, honor exists, but is rare.  The fact that digital media can be duplicated poses challenges to the art creators, the publishers, and the paying consumers.  The key to success, in my humble opinion, is to give the mass public what they want, their most preferred mode of accessing the media.  Consumers are willing to pay if the experience enhances their lives, and not to cause inconvenience.  The Amazon wireless reading device Kindle and the new Kindle 2 is a good success story.

Nokia’s “Comes With Music” has taken a major step to the right direction.  Even with the cost of music factored into the phone, having the entire music collection at our disposal 24×7 is as close to what some are experiencing today.  As a market leader having a market share of close to 40%, the first year result of “Comes With Music” is expected to be spectacular.  People would still buy their new 5800 touchscreen phone or the high end Nseries phones anyway with or without “Comes With Music”.  I am keen to see that one day Nokia stripping the DRM technology away to give the consumers total freedom to play the downloaded music in any device.  Whoever – be it as Nokia or Apple or any other brand – able to grant the consumers a complete freedom while having a sustainable business model will be the ultimate winner.  But till that day – since my N96 and N95 are still in pretty good condition – I will stick with CDs and stay away from illegal download like I always do for now.

Categories
I See I Write Photography

Part One: Nokia Comes With Music – Too Good to be True? – A Media Event

Nokia Come With Music - Media Event

Imagine this: you buy a phone and it comes with 4 million songs for you to download for free for a year – via your PC or your Nokia phone.  And you get to keep all the tracks even after the service period is over.

It is not a question if what Nokia is attempting to do is revolutionary.  It simply is.  No doubt about it.  The questions are: Is this a step towards revitalizing a dying music industry that the existing business model is unable to cope with the way the mass public consumes music?  And more importantly, what is it in for Nokia and what is it in for you and I?

October last year, I had the privilege to attend the Nokia Remix event when the upcoming Nokia model 5800 XpressMusic was announced.  Last Friday, I have attended the media launch event of “Comes With Music”, had the opportunity to try out the phone one more time and find out more from the Nokia team on this new service.  In part one of this blog entry, you will get to read more on what this service is about.  And in part two that I will publish next, you will get to read my personal take on the impact of this new service in a larger scheme of work.

Comes With Music and the New Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

The new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic touchscreen phone is awesome.  I will not repeat what I have experienced last October.  What I did try out last Friday though was the browser capability.  Intuitively, I touched the screen, moved my thumb up and down and the web page was scrolled accordingly.  Neat.  I tried double clicking onto the page and it zoomed right in.  Very cool!  All by intuition.  I could zoom in and out smoothly via a side bar too.  In case if you wonder from the pictures below what kinky video I was watching, it was nothing R rated.  I opened up YouTube and watched one of the videos from my favorite French artist Mylene Farmer.  When I double clicked onto the video, the player went into full screen mode.  I may consider an unlimited mobile data plan if I have one of these hot babies.

OK.  Some pictures to show taken during the event.  The band All American Rejects was in the house, our local DJ team The Muttons was in the house, the event was held at Velvet Underground, and many were queuing outside for the band to perform live!

Below are some key facts about the new service “Comes With Music”.

  • Selected Nokia phone models including the new 5800 XpressMusic literally comes with music.  You can download any of the 4 million tracks from the Nokia Store for free for a year.  And you get to keep all that you have downloaded via your PC or your mobile devices.
  • Nokia is yet to announce what the service fee for subsequent years is going to be.  I am not sure how often people upgrade their wireless phones.  Personally I hope that Nokia will take this into consideration when they create a service model for “Comes With Music”.
  • You can only listen to the music downloaded via your PC or your wireless phone.  I asked: what if I upgrade my PC?  According to Nokia, I can deactivate my old PC and then active my new PC.  Pretty much like the DRM (digital right management) model that the gaming industry has adopted.  DRM doesn’t go too well with the legitimate paying gamers.  “Comes With Music” is an interesting case because of the shear amount of songs you can potentially download over the service period that come with the phone.  But if “Comes With Music” comes with a price after the first year, it all depends how much it would cost to justify the inconvenience.
  • No, you can’t burn the music onto the CD.  Again, you are not paying a lot for that 4 million song list at least for the first year.
  • What if I need to upgrade my PC after my “Comes With Music” service period is over?  I was told that there is quite a long grace period.  You can still transfer your downloaded tracks from one machine to another.
  • Which are the music giants on board “Comes With Music”?  EMI Music, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music, as well as Asian independent labels.

Closing Note and Coming Next

Now you have read what “Comes With Music” is as well as get to hear more about the new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.  I am a passionate music listener and I have had the opportunity to talk with many on the current situation the music industry is facing.  I get to have a better appreciation on what are the different types of listeners out there and their preferred mode of music delivery.  In part two of this blog entry, I will share more on my take on how brilliant Nokia’s move is going up against the successful Apple iTune and its products by defining their own rules and what are the implications.

When Cynthia read the advertisements on the Saturday papers, she got very excited by the new Nokia touchscreen phone that comes with music.  And she asked, “So I can download the entire album of Pussycat Dolls for free?”  I smiled and replied, “Not only that, you have 4 million songs to choose from!”  I looked at the pricing of a new “Comes With Music” Nokia phone and it doesn’t seem excessive.  For what it is worth, you can think of paying a nominal amount that is factored into the price of a phone and that opens up a world of music for you to listen to, a freedom that now you can legally experience.

As you may have noticed by now that I always love to write a small thank you notes on most of the events I have attended.  It is because what I usually enjoy most is the people I come to interact with, time and time again.  So, cheers to the Nokia team especially to the one who was so patiently showcasing the new phone to me last October and again showed me what else 5800 can do last Friday.  And of course to the lovely Text100 team, thanks for the chat and the little walk around at the stage area.  Yes, one day our band would be there and I will get your help!

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for part 2.

Categories
Book Reviews Non-Fiction

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby – Getting the Most from Your Software

Lightroom 2 Book by Scott Kelby

I own the full version of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 and have bought and read this guidebook prior to trying out the software, when I was holidaying in Bandung.  And it was not the first time I read a guidebook before even trying out a product.  I read a book on Canon 40D and have decided to buy a Nikon dSLR instead.  Bizarre as it may sound – as people normally do it the other way round – I reckon I value tips and advices from the experts with hands-on experience more than my own initial discovery journey (besides, I am a lazy guy at times).  Also, if I don’t find things that excite me from these experts, I wouldn’t find the product exciting anyway.

But that is just me.  If you are interested in buying a guidebook, I reckon you must have started playing around with Lightroom 2.

As a side note, this is not a review on the product itself.  Stay tune.  I am writing an article on that and more.

If you have read the previous works by Scott Kelby, this book does not disappoint.  Perhaps more a step-by-step approach compares to the short and sweet and humorous style of his Digital Photography Book Vol. 1 & 2, his personality and honestly still shines the same way.  You can clearly see that Scott Kelby has a lot of passion using this software that is designed from ground up for the digital photographers; you can also feel his frustration on some of the functionalities and features that Lightroom 2 does not do too well. 

I know your time is precious.  So here are my thoughts after reading this book once, and then more.

  • In theory, you could learn all the hot keys and where is what from the online manual.  In reality, I find it hard to internalize all these to put them in good use.  This book is a wonder.  It is as though you have a tutor siting by your side walking you through what you ought to know while sharing his experience along the way.  When I first downloaded the Lightroom 2 trial version, I was just a little bit overwhelmed.  I referred to the book every now and then and in no time, I surfed through what I need to do at ease.  In short, I spend more time developing my photos than trying to make the software works for me.
  • This book is organized much like how the software is structured: library, develop, slideshow, print, and web.  In each section, not only does the author tell you all that you need to know, Scott Kelby does share much of his wisdom beyond the step-by-step guide.  From his advise on the digital format that he would use and why, to getting that trendy, gritty portrait look that is highly sought after in the commercial market these days.  And there are lots of tips on how to add punches to your photos.  There is even a chapter on how to merge HDR images in Photoshop.  As a small disclaimer, I did try out some of his highly skilled tricks and somehow, the results are not as fantastic.  I am pretty sure that it was my photos and less on the author’s wisdom.  Most of the tips they work as they should be.
  • What I find most fun (and inspiring) to read is the last chapter on his step-by-step on-location portrait shoot process.  I think in time to come, all of us photographers would develop one work-flow that works best for our individual need and artistic inclination.  But it is good to read how the professionals work in real life, what they use, how they do certain things, and why.

If you feel that you may wish to get the most out of your software, this book is it.  You can spend S$63 to buy one in Singapore.  Or order from Amazon.com, it is US$30 before shipping –The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter).