bridging people with ideas
Dear all,
You will be receiving news on pre conference interaction activities soon. The organisers are getting nervous as the date nears. It will be a major milestone for the interesTHINK team.
A huge thank you to Blog2U and National Library Board for their kind support.
We visited the Pod just a few days ago and we are extremely excited about planning the operations.
Alex Lew
Team InteresTHINK
Alex and I had a very meaningful discussion with Prof Ho last Wednesday ( 23 Jan 08), and I’d like to share with you some of the keys points we discussed. We raised the concern that Interesthink’s discussion may turn too political and we might get into some troubles with the government. He thinks that we are responding to the call of PM Lee to become active citizens, and this event is an excellent platform to exchange our unique perspectives, to promote interest in the nation’s matters. However, we all agreed that we need a well-learnt and experienced chairperson for effective exchange of ideas during the panel discussion. Hence, he recommended Dr Tan Tarn How, who a senior research fellow from Institute of Policy Studies, and had experience as a script writer and journalist. We are currently trying to contact Dr Tan.
We also talked about he possibility of setting up a public policy society in NTU, and how it can benefit InteresThink. For instance, we will be able to make use of the school network to gain access to outstanding students and academies who may join us in the future, which will be a great networking opportunity for us. Furthermore, we can have collaborations with other NTU societies in our events.
Finally, Prof Ho agreed to give Interesthink’s opening address, and will be happy to be our mentor should the public policy society in NTU be set up.
Yunyou
I’m mighty glad that we are 80% done for this coming event. For those of you who indicated interest through our site www.interesthink.com, our audience manager, Xin Min will be contacting you soon. And yes, she will be blogging too!
The speakers manager has just been appointed by the committee. Her name is Rou Hui. She’s a sweet lady.
Now, introducing the current committee members, we have;
Kelvin Quee, the leader of the committee. Lets expect to hear from him very soon!
Jia Yi, Yun You and myself (Alex Lew).
It has been a sensational experience to work on this project so far. Honestly.
Good day!
Just a few months ago, I had the privilege of discussing with Kelvin about organizing a conference where people could come and take away something invaluable. What is this thing? Information? Knowledge? Quite the opposite! While the world is screaming for meaningful breakthroughs in creativity and ideas, the society has been preoccupied with instructing (note that I didn’t use the word teaching) and imparting head knowledge. This thing that we are determined to give, is a spirit of sharing. And specifically the sharing of ideas, dreams and the unseen.
The faculty of marketing teaches us to identify markets and develop the right mix for the purposes of satisfying the emotional and physical demands of consumers. What they have failed to do, is to provide soul nutrition for our dimming ideas and courage. I’m not a fervent advocate for the government, but I support “teach less, learn more” (The new MOE objective). There is no better mentor than TED.com where ideas converge; where the notion of “nothing comes free” pales.
Let us bear the courage to reverse the learnt concept of scarcity. On the 23 February, let us learn together, the values of our ideas and the act of sharing them among our friends.
Alex Lew
Organiser
For Interesthink