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Design Thinking

2010-03-08T08:01:34Z

Off a slide Tuck Soon tweeted while at a design thinking workshop. It encapsulates a lot of what I think are extremely relevant skills for the current and next generation.

Visual Thinking / Observation Skills
Sense-Making: Visualising Information
Composition
Pattern-Finding
Empathy
Figure / Ground Gestalt
Prototype
Aesthetics
Simplicity
White Space
Create Emotional Experiences
Obsession

If You Want Something Done Right

2010-03-04T17:05:48Z

This whole cycling everywhere business has gotten me excited, especially to find out what other park connectors NParks provides.

The NParks website is extremely slow, despite the fact folks have given them feedback more than a year ago.

So rather than wait for them to fix it, I’ve traced all the park connectors into a single Google Map.

Enjoy.

View NParks Park Connectors, Singapore in a larger map

Mozilla Developer Day, Bangalore

2010-03-01T16:13:12Z

February and March was supposed to be a time of rest before I head to the new job, but opportunity often knocks on the door when you least expect it.

When I met Mark Surman in Singapore last December, I had no idea I would eventually become involved in shaping the Open Web Career Track Drumbeat Project along with John Britton and Philipp Schmidt.

It was one of those requests that made me feel woefully inadequate, but I felt a deep affinity to its cause of providing accessible education to inculcate skills within the tech community — skills necessary to keep the web open and non-proprietary. John and Phlipp were extremely patient and kind to bring me up to speed.

So when Mark asked if I could present the Open Web Career Track project at Mozilla Developer Day in Bangalore, I agreed.

It is regrettable that I’ve never really traveled within Asia, and it would be my first time to India.

The crowd that showed up for MozDevDay was amazing. A full-house of about 300 people, on a Saturday, some coming from quite a distance away.

It was an eclectic experience: we talked pretty cutting edge tech in the hall — thanks to Arun — and ate sitting down on the grass patch under the noon sun. It was a departure from the sterile environment Singapore tech meetups are often held in, where the main complaint was always “why no wifi?”.

It was a blast speaking to the audience. The Indian and Chinese cultures share so many similarities it was easy to point out (and subsequently joke about) our common idiosyncrasies.

I’ve learned so much from the amazing people I met. In a land where there are places in poverty, open-source software means so much more than “why does OpenOffice mess up my Powerpoint slides?”. It is a means by which the poor can make themselves relevant in an increasingly technological world; where the oppressed can broadcast their plight to the rest of the world despite the best efforts of the oppressors to silence them.

The web has changed the way in which we communicate and connect with each other. It has the potential to be a lot more than a giant corporate marketplace. We need to consciously keep it inclusive and available to everyone.

But for a little while

2010-02-25T11:56:37Z

For Faith, Anne and Caleb.

I miss you already.

Chinese New Year Rundown

2010-02-17T20:58:10Z

To our sisters Audrey and Louelle who couldn’t join us for the Chinese New Year festivities. Thought I’d give you guys a summary of stuff we did this year.

]]> Audrey,

We had our reunion dinner at Aunty Ros’ 2 days before Chinese New Year. We had the traditional 鱼生. Kuku was the only one fluent enough to give all the Chinese idioms for every individual ingredient. We simply repeated after her.

As usual, Dad said grace for the food.

John (Michelle’s husband) looked all ready to be a father. He’s really great with the four little monkeys.

Michelle couldn’t help but look ready to be a mother. She’s due for a boy the beginning of April. John and Mich had initially wanted the name “Mateo” for the kid, but due to popular demand, have changed it to “Gabriel” instead.

While we were busy feasting, Mel supervised as Seth went about a crazy weight-lifting regime.

Caleb kept himself occupied by staking his claim on this particular chair, refusing to let anyone else sit on it.

On the first day of the Chinese New Year we visited Mum’s side of the family.

That night we had dinner at Marine Terrace.

Louelle,

We had reunion dinner on the first day. That was when you called, and we kept passing the phone around without realising how much you were spending on the phone call. Daddy wasn’t feeling too well that night, so I did the cooking bit and didn’t take any photographs.

We went over for lunch the next day.

All the cousins came. You can guess which ones came late ‘cause they aren’t in this photo.

Auntie Mei Har made everyone wish her a happy new year’s, recording everything with her new video-camera.

After lunch we went over to grand-auntie’s place, where a bunch of locusts descended and decimated the pineapple tarts and bak kwa while watching “I am Legend” on TV.

The older generation ate peanuts and chatted among themselves.

That’s pretty much Chinese New Year’s. Just going around wishing folks a great year ahead.

Flashback

2010-02-12T17:59:39Z

It’s hard to imagine I started this blog 10 years ago.

It was the weekend of Martin Luther King holiday, and all the dormitories were empty then — everyone had gone home for the long weekend. The weather was cold, and I was suffering from the worst fever of my life. I had back spasms; it hurt to stand up or to lie down and my whole body was trembling non-stop.

There, thousands of miles away from home, I seriously thought I was going to die.

I wanted to tell the folks back home of my plight, and instead of calling home, I decided to haul my very sick body on to my chair, learn HTML, and wrote my first blog entry. The first design had notepad lines and was adorned with animated Calvin and Hobbes gifs.

Blogger hadn’t existed yet, so we all coded our online journals by hand.

The seemingly stupid decision to craft HTML instead of seeing a doctor that day changed my life. More than the fact it led to my current profession, the small blog community was close-knit. Folks like Nick Pan and Jimmy Liew were my first comrades into the field of web standards. Nick’s wife Pearl drew the most stunning illustrations at Pearlpan.com. Dawn Mikulich had the most subtle and beautiful minimalist blog “A Life Uncommon”. There used to be a young teenager named Sarah who always left comments of encouragement in my guestbook (we didn’t have comments then).

It’s really been a while, and we’ve lost a lot of great bloggers along the way.

The blogosphere feels different these days. You could say that the loud blaring voices of PR agencies killed what we had going. When blogs hit the mainstream, followed by social media, it heralded the end of the living room and ushered in the marketplace.

At the risk of sounding too geeky: I miss how real and authentic online connections used to feel.

In and On Itself

2010-02-11T07:49:00Z

“Are we in Singapore or on Singapore?” Anne asked last night while in bed.

“In Singapore, I guess.”

“If we’re in Singapore, why is it we’re on earth?”

Whoa. My 4-year old just set me up for a tough question. I struggled with that one, not because I didn’t know the answer, but I didn’t know how to explain it in a way a 4-year old would understand.

You know, maybe I didn’t have to dumb it down. After all, she was the one who asked right?

So here goes.

When we say we’re in Singapore, we refer to its national boundaries which we remain physically within. We do sometimes say we are on the island of Singapore, which would refer to the actual piece of land we stand on.

Likewise, when we refer to Earth, we do not mean an invisible boundary (not until we start parceling out plots of space for condominiums anyway), but the planet itself. Therefore we are on the planet and not in it.

Unless we’re spelunking.

You think Anne’ll understand spelunking?

An End and a Beginning

2010-01-25T14:42:26Z

This is my last week at the Ministry of Education. It’s been a little over four years, and I find myself in a very different place from where I envisioned four years ago. My time in the government has been a most serendipitous and amazing journey, and I am indelibly changed because of it.

I used to participate rather actively in the great Singaporean pastime of government-bashing. I despised the way the government worked - it was easy to find points of agreement with the cab driver: Singapore is fraught with hidden taxes that makes living very expensive; the politicians earn way too much; the government is full of bureaucracy and doesn’t care for citizens.

All the points are valid of course. But the greatest lesson I took home with me is this: the government isn’t a faceless machine. She is made up of fellow citizens. True, some are self-serving. Some are in it for the money. But no more and no less than in any other large organisation, private or public. As citizens we should not waste our time here; we should be looking to nurture a culture of selflessness and empower noble intent. Rather than be mired in a never-ending spiral of self-despair and finger-pointing, we should engage in a constructive relationship with the government.

Web 2.0 ushers in Gov 2.0, and Gov 2.0 cannot exist without Citizen 2.0.

A friend from another country once asked me why Singaporeans complained so much but did so little. It really hit home. We could attribute it to fear, but to be perfectly honest, we complain because it is the easiest path to take.

I joined the government 4 years ago with the intention of changing the way Singapore government agencies create websites. To my surprise the people at the ministry welcomed my ideas and were willing to let Selwyn and I build the corporate website from the ground up. It was then I realised that the ministry was made up of real people, many of whom genuinely want to improve the lives of people living in Singapore.

The line between the government and her people is an imaginary line, and contrary to popular movie wisdom, neither has need to fear the other. Citizens who want to change Singapore for the better should not hesitate to join the government and effect change from within.

The Road Ahead

I have grappled with this decision for about a year now. It has become clear that it is time for me to move on. The entrepreneurial dream is something that burns within me and many of my friends.

But it has dawned on me that entrepreneurship is not so much a working arrangement as it is a state of mind. The entrepreneurial spirit is one that doesn’t tolerate the status quo simply because, but constantly questions and endlessly strive through continual iteration to improve processes, products and people.

I have decided to continue being an intrapreneur. Come April I will be joining the folks at Temasek Polytechnic. I was totally blown away by how much the organisation valued me as an individual rather than a unit of resource, and the hiring process was thoroughly outstanding. I am excited at the possibilities there, and thankful that God has provided for me and led me down a path filled with peace.

Blink

2010-01-18T17:21:46Z

Dearest Faith,

I opened my eyes, escaping slumber for that brief moment, comforted by the fact I lay beside you, a place better than any in my dreams.

I love you.

Boys are for punching

2010-01-13T01:06:13Z

This morning my 4 year-old daughter Anne picked up a small notebook that had a flower on the cover.

“This is for girls”, she stated.

And that’s how my notebook became hers.

“What would be on the cover if the notebook was for boys?” I asked. “A ball? A toy car? An aeroplane?” I suggested.

A cheeky smile spread over her face.

“Trash.”

The Story is the Product

2010-01-06T01:40:13Z

I’ve been following the NBA for many years now, and most would agree that the NBA is one of the most savvy organisations when it comes to using digital media.

While most content-producers are afraid of piracy, the NBA Youtube channel puts up high-definition highlights of games. It always astounds me how clear the videos are.

My blog layout can’t take the awesomeness of the full-size video. Do yourself a favour and watch the original size on youtube. Remember to click on the HD button.

While the NBA was arguably strict on its players’ use of Twitter, every NBA team has a twitter account from which they update fans with news and even in-game statistics.

The NBA understands one thing well - the stories are larger than the individual clips. By updating us on the small things such as scores and video highlights, we are kept intrigued by large story-arcs: whether the draft class of Lebron James, Dwayne Wade and Carmelo Anthony will continue to dazzle; whether CP3 will bring back the dominance of the little man; or whether the global game will change the way basketball is played in the NBA.

So when Bono advocates content tracking over the internet for policing of copyright violations, he comes across as trying so hard to protect an industry that should probably relook its entire product offering. Bear in mind that Bono made a lot of money from tours. His fans buy into his story, and the experience of a live concert. Those things aren’t going to be replaced by youtube clips anytime soon.

Perhaps it’s time for the music-makers and storytellers to go back to basics. They sure could learn from travelling musician Josh Wilson who lifted the spirits of passengers stranded at Newark during the lockdown.

Maybe the communal sharing of stories and music should take precedence over people making grotesque amounts of money.

X-Road

2009-12-24T08:59:54Z

It’s the end of the year, and as 2010 approaches, it is the time for change.

I’ve done the unwise - leaving my job at the Ministry of Education without first securing another, but somewhere in my heart I know that it is the right thing to do. It is both the fleeing from the inevitable apathy that comes with dogmatically sticking to a set routine, and the embracing of possibilities.

And all I have at hand are a set of vague plans.

As with any plan, there is a need to pray, and ultimately the surrender of our plans and submission to God’s. Guess I’ll come clean and say that I don’t know what He has in store for me either.

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around — nobody big, I mean — except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy.”

J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye

This resonates so, so much, and so deeply.

Retrospective

2009-11-29T15:54:57Z

Dearest Anne,

It is amazing how fast time has passed us by. I was there, for the most part: your entrance into the world, your first word, the time your hand got caught in the elevator door.

Look at you now.

I couldn’t be any prouder.

Woosh

2009-10-13T23:34:59Z

I’ve been doing a really poor job at chronicling the growth of the two kids. So much as changed so quickly that it’s really hard to keep up.

All I know is that every morning when we haul the 1 comatose and 1 wide-alert body down to the grandparents’ car it never fails to elicit a sigh from me. Nothing tells you that time is fleeting with the same profundity as watching babies turn into children, and children getting all grown up.

Anne is now 4.5 going on 14. She has an amazing grasp of the spoken language and has a more extensive vocabulary than I did when I was 9. She rattles on and on about girly things, like which hairclips she should put on, how she wished she had longer hair because there was this beautiful girl who had waist-length hair and how she wants to be a cartoon on tv so everyone in the world could watch her. She clearly has no lack for showmanship, that’s for sure.

Caleb is the sunniest 1.5 year old you’ll ever find. He certainly knows how to work his dimple, and the gurgling laughter often reminds Faith and I of Sir J.M. Barrie’s quote about laughter being the beginning of fairies. Caleb isn’t speaking extensively yet, though he understands most of what we tell him. I suppose with Anne talking so much he reckons his contributions there aren’t necessary.

It’s only been a few years on paper, but Faith and I feel ourselves growing older. It is the best thing in the world to come home to each other, then when we see the two children going hysterical with joy at seeing us in the evenings it truly brings meaning to the phrase “my cup overflows”.

Returns on Investment

2009-10-06T23:52:36Z

I’ve always been enamoured by professions imbued with a “higher calling”. Nurses, doctors, activists, and the last time I checked, journalists. After all, isn’t a major point in the whole “journalists vs bloggers” debate? The claim that journalists are held to a higher standard in terms of reporting, and more importantly, ethics?

To be fair, the title “journalist” has expanded a lot in recent times. In this age of self-publishing anyone with a novel idea and internet access is able to address an audience. One could argue that the folks at celebrity gossip website TMZ are journalists to some degree. Or the tabloids for that matter. After all, they do bring news to an audience that craves for the genre.

My argument here is not whether Ris Low is news. My own rudimentary understanding of the word’s definition is that “news” is the opposite of “old’s”. Anything that is current is news. Any instant thought on an old subject is a new thought, any content created is fresh content, any pointer leading to old content is a new pointer. As such, it is all news, and it is all relevant if you find the appropriate audience.

My argument is that the Straits Times has failed to live up to journalism’s higher calling. I will constrain this discourse only to Ris Low - there’s no knowing how long we could go on if we were to address the allegations of biased and incomplete reporting.

The role of the press has traditionally been the middleman between authorities and their people. She walks the line between being the government’s mouthpiece and the people’s defender. Above all, the role of the press is to elevate the level of discourse.

The whole Ris Low saga is a scathing revelation of ST’s priorities. In her latest online posting ST’s Online Editor Joanne Lee defends the stance that Ris Low is still news. She is defending ST’s extensive coverage of Ris Low even after Ris has stepped down as Miss Singapore-World. She is defending articles about Ris having to retake her exams (implicit allegation that Ris was caught cheating on her exams would be the news angle here) and Ris not allowed to shop alone.

Is it news? The two articles are the top read stories on the Straits Times Online, so yes. Does it sell papers, attract readers and eyeballs? Yes. If journalism were solely a business of dollars and cents, there probably would be no question. But we hold journalism to a higher standard than just the making of money. The question with producing this sort of news, I would pose to the journalists at the Straits Times, is this: At what cost?

Ris is a 19 year old for crying out loud. You’re really going to do this? Is it worth the short-term bump in online views, the pittance of ad revenue? Is there any empathy left in you? When you first picked up your pen, you did it with empathy. It wasn’t business, you were young then and money wasn’t the motivation. You wrote because you wanted to show the world a reflection of themselves from a myriad of perspectives. The stories of personal triumph, the informative investigative pieces you had spent so much time putting together, the call for action to help those who are suffering?

Do you not see, in your dogged pursuit of Ris Low, that you have caused suffering?

As Asians we are probably used to the Spockian justification, “logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” (or the one, yes yes). But the public does not need updates on Ris Low. We do need a press who will have the courage to accept the long-term view that the shareholders are best served when the people are well-served. The short-term gratification of getting the public’s fleeting attention at the expense of what the Straits Times could and should be is a bloody waste.