shenanigans

Monday, April 24, 2006 :: 1:38 am

NUS Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2006 ( Jan 16 & 17)

http://www.nus.edu.sg/nec/nges/spkprofile.htm

there were less than 10 students ( we were referred to as "budding entrepreneurs") in the hall filled with mostly old farts who were/are still either really rich or really smart. we sat amongst these 'angel investors', 'venture capitalists', 'entrepreneurship professors' and the 'successful entrepreneurs' themselves, trying to fit in and pretend to understand everything they were discussing. it didn't help that they came from different parts of the world and brought with them their thick accents.

it was a definite eye-opener, but i suggest a crash course or at the very least, a handbook which some clueless individuals could refer to when faced with rather obscure terms. 10 minutes into the first plenary session and i started to wonder if entrepreneurs used some kind of alien language non-entrepreneurial-by-blood people didn't know about. they started breaking out into some kind of code-breaking game! i started panicking 'cause i thought the whole 2-day summit was gonna be 2 days of deciphering alien languages and codes, but it turned out fine. i found myself enjoying the summit. partly 'cause we students only had to pay $100 while the old farts had to pay $400 each. 2 days of talk & good food.

my favourite speakers would have to be:

Bob Lin, Co-Founder & General Partner, Acorn Campus

Mark Chang CEO and Founder, JobStreet

these two men are rich, successful, humble and inspiring. i was so inspired when they were making their speeches and kept going (silently) 'WOW".

oh and not forgetting,

Wong Meng Weng CTO, Karmaspere, Inc
(he had hair when we met him)

i saw him moving around in his human transporter during one of the many tea breaks and i said to no one in particular, "Hey, that looks like fun."

He heard and replied, "It is fun. Wanna try?"

Heh. of course, i tried it. it really was FUN.

Another thing that amused me during the summit was how it seemed as though the more highly educated + older the speaker was (namingly the professors), the more monotonous, dull, boring their presentations were. Hello Uncle, being extraordinarily smart is no excuse to be boring.

And there were more than a few spelling errors too.

You see? Even old rich geniuses make mistakes. So, we got nothing to worry about. Heh.

The guy sitting on my left is an entrepreneur from France. His accent wasn't that bad, so I was able to understand him when he introduced himself. The guy on the right is Magnus Aronsson. Managing director, Entrepreneurship and Small Business Research Institute, (ESBRI) from Sweden. Dead ringer for Chris O'Donnell.

An overall enriching experience. Definitely worth skipping 2 days of school for.

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