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Bangkok - Part 1
Sunday, 26th October 2008
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Hi Folks,
first let me apologise for not being able to post anything last week. It’s been a crazy busy week as I’m catching up on work and just generally getting used to being back in Darwin. So to make up for it, I’ve posted last week’s entry along with this week’s so you’ll be able to hear the full story about Thailand. Hope you enjoy!
PART 1 - The HP Micro Enterprise Summit 2008
I just got back from Bangkok after an amazing time full of stories and photos and adventures. There’s a lot to tell so I’ll be splitting up my adventures into two parts. This week you will hear Part 1 - The HP Micro Enterprise Summit and next week you’ll hear about Part 2 - The HP Training of the Trainer.
As you all know, earlier this year I won a grant from Hewlett Packard (HP) to establish a Technology Training Center in Darwin in partnership with the Business Enterprise Center (BEC) to educate small business owners on the use of technology and part of that deal was that HP would provide me with a technology training curriculum that we could use within our training center. So my trip to Bangkok was to officially attend the training course, but unofficially it was an entirely different story!
Bangkok is the capital city of Thailand and this was my first visit over there so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. When I landed at Suvarnabhumi Airport I was surprised at its unique design but inside was a little too bare for my liking. It’s quite a busy airport with plenty of tourists floating in and out of the place. I managed to collect my bags and proceed through immigration and customs without any issues and then I had to wade through the sea of people to find my ride to the hotel.
My driver was a great guy. He had lived in Bangkok his whole life and his main business was providing his van for airport/hotel transfers as well as providing tours within the city. As we were driving through the major freeways of Bangkok I was suprised at how modern everything looked and this was definately a fast developing city. Unfortunately with all developments there are prices to pay and even though the freeways were quite impressive, when I looked over to the side I could see lots of simple houses where lower class people lived and it soon became apparent that these were the people who did not understand or support progress and refused to leave their homes. I’m not sure how long they could actually survive there as the carbon monoxide generated from the car fumes could not be a pleasent scent to have around all the time.
The drive to the hotel took just under an hour and then it was time for me to check in to the 5-star Conrad Hilton hotel. It was AMAZING!!! And my suite was quite impressive. They put me up on the 31st floor and the view was absolutely stunning!!! After getting settled in the room I had to rush downstairs to attend the Summit and again I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but I had two missions - 1. Find out more about the whole micro-enterprise grant program and 2. Meet new people in the world who shared similar ideas to me.
As I found the right room through the maze of corridors within the hotel, I was greated by Yupaporn Boontid from the Enterprise Development Center (EDC) and one of the organisers of the Summit. I’d exchanged emails with Yupa and it was great to finally meet her and she immediately put my mind at ease about attending the Summit and showed me to a spare seat up the back.
When I arrived, Dr Patrick Kilby from ANU was in the middle of his presentation on the Monitoring and Evaluation of the HP Micro Enterprise Grant. ANU had been engaged by HP to act as the third party evaluator of the program and Dr Kilby was in charge of the project. Later on that evening I had the opportunity to socialise with Patrick and he told some amazing stories about traveling around the globe as part of his research projects.
The Summit had a wide variety of participants from all around the world. There were Enterprise Development Center (EDC)Staff, people from ANU, program owners from HP, and the delegates were a mixture of those who had won grants previously and had centers up and running; those who had won the grant last year and had already completed training; and those who had won the grant this year (like ourselves) and were about to commence training next week. While looking around the room I realised that the participants were mostly from India. Also in the room were a large group of delegates from China who required the translation services of Joe, another delegate from China who spoke fluent English and Mandarin and as a result was the official translator. Poor Joe, he had to spend the entire summit in a small soundproof both up the back of the room and translate to the Chinese delegates while everyone else presented. I caught up with Joe afterwards and we had a really great chat. He’s into motivational topics and hopefully I’ll get a chance to write about him some more on the blog.
During the breaks inbetween presentations I had a chance to meet some of the HP Executives - Mr Peter Ekstedt, Director of Global Citizenship APJ and Mrs Marni Wall, Program Manager APJ. I’d been trading heaps of emails with Marni over the past few months so it was great to finally put a face to the name. I spent a lot of time speaking with Peter and Marni over the next few days and tried to understand a bit more about their role in HP and how I could assist them to promote their innitivites. After the numerous dinners and drink sessions I’m proud to say that I have a fairly good idea of their roles and I’m looking forward to assisting whereever I can.
Along with the ANU Presentations, throughout the day there were numerous presentations from other delegates who had some great stories to tell about their small business development initiatives in their own countries. It was facinating to hear them speak and I realisd that even though they were a million miles away from each other, in VERY different countries and economic standards, they all shared the common elements and challenges associated with being in business. It was facinating stuff!
The last two presentations were quite interesting as they were delivered by the HP Micro Enterpise Trainers - Claudio Cerulli and Munir Ahmed and they gave us a bit of a taste of what was comming up in the Training Course next week. From what the boys were saying, it sounded like it was going to be a very tough week and all of a sudden I wasn’t too sure that I could handle it.
That evening we had a dinner reception for all the delegates and the guest speaker was Mechai Viravaidya, Chairman of the Population & Community Development Association (PDA). He’s acomplished quite a lot in his lifetime and his biggest project has been the introduction of condoms into mainstream population in thailand as his contribution to control the population growth and curb the aids epidemic. He is affectionality known as “Mr Condom” in Thailand and condoms are locally known as “mechais”. As part of his initiative he has launched a restaurant called “Cabbages and Condoms”, where condoms instead of mints are handed out at the end of every meal. He is an amazing man who meets with World Leaders such as Bill Clinton who want to talk to the man about the work he has done in Thailand. His latest project is quite interesting as he is showcasing how micro-entrepreneurship has the capability to eradicate poverty in villages in Thailand. So basically he’ll find a couple of champions within the village that want to start a business and then he works with them to help them establish their business. So for example, if villages want to grow and export bamboo he will find an organisation who is doing it currently and then take the villagers there to learn from that organisation. Once that organisation says that the villagers are capable and ready, then they go back to the village where they get allocated grant funding to develop and establish their bamboo growing business. It’s a revolutionary way of thinking and it really works. Mechai showed photos of one village that was very poor and had just started the bamboo business and within a few years they had started exporting their bamboo and now had a better quality of life from the money comming into the village. It’s amazing to see the power and effect that small business can have on the quality of life for people! So here I was, an unknown small business person from Darwin Australia, sitting down to dinner with an amazing world leader who has been changing the world for decades...VERY EXCITING!
DAY 2
Day 2 was pretty much spent doing group breakout sessions during the morning. Groups were split up into a variety of categories and my group had to discuss the topic “How to sustain the Micro-Enterprise Development Program network”. Through this presentation I got a much greater understanding of the program and its sustainability model, but we’ll come back to this later.
After a few more presentations it was time for the panel discussions, and I was on one of the panels hosted by Peter Ecksted from HP. The panel consisted of Prawit from EDC - Thailand (our host), who had received a grant previously and was doing great things in the center; Niko from Indonesia who had received the grant last year and had just started his center; and yours truly who had just received the grant and was about to commence our initiatives. We all delivered fantastic presentations and for me personally this was the first time that I had presented in front of an international audience and I’m proud to say that I did a great job conveying my thoughts actions and humour to people from non-english speaking backgrounds. Bring on the international speaking engagements!!!
And that was pretty much all of day 2 of the summit, and after a massive photo taking session we all went our separate ways. I’m going to miss most of the people that I met but I’m glad that I had the chance to meet them and engage ideas with them.
So going back to my mission, what on earth is the Micro Enterprise Grant??? The grant is so much more than just computers, cash and a training curriculum - which is what we were led to believe it was originally. After having attended the summit I now realise that the grant is offered to organisations who have programs that assist developing micro-enterprise innitativies all throughout the world. These are the Enterprise Development Centers (EDCs) throughout the world, including the BEC. Then you have those centers who are doing such great jobs they become Centers of Exellence (CofE s) such as the one in Thailand and Beijing. Then you have the Micro-Enterprise Acceleration Institute (MEA-I) based in Europe that puts together the training curriculum and provides the trainers for the program, and last but not least you have the big technology company that backs the entire scheme - HP. So these core elements comprise of the Micro-Enterprise Development Network and members of the network can communicate with one another and share information and ideas about a common goal of promoting and educating individuals and organisations about micro entrepreneurship. What an amazing initiative and I’m so happy that both myself and the BEC are a part of it!
And as for the second part of my mission, well you’ve read the stories. I think I met some amazing people and shared some ideas on how business operates in different parts of the world. It’s amazing to realise that even though we come from different corners of the world, we were all brought together in the one room to share our common passion of small business. So I’d have to say...Mission Accomplished!!!
Stay tuned for Part 2!!!
Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead!
AJ~
Author: AJ Kulatunga
Category:
inspire, hp micro enterprise grant, hp, mechai viravaidya, thailand, bangkok
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