...A strange juxtaposition of thoughts. I don't know - It could be just me, but seeing this at the front of the papers... ..followed by this... and a zoom in... ....triggers a whole lot of incongruent thoughts and feelings. They probably wouldn't have known when they bought that ad space in the papers, but it is, nonetheless, a rather unfortunate flow of information. Or is it?

Long overdue post! Sept 5: I was at Day 2 of the Youth Marketing Forum at Dragonfly on Wednesday. I suppose many of you are now expecting a post on the hottest trends in youth marketing. What I got out of it though, were more presentation how-tos (or more like how not to) and lessons in life. Education was a huge theme in a lot of the thoughts too. Might be a strange theme for a youth marketing post, but if you think about it, life really IS all about constant learning, and hence, indirectly, the education of oneself. I will start of with the issues close to my heart. During the youth panel session, we were asked,"If you were given $1000 to spend immediately, what would you buy?" Typical answers ensued. Shoes, bags, travel tickets, the Iphone! I kept silent, because I honestly had nothing top of the mind that I wanted. Now I realize what I wish I could really buy. Time. I want time enough to be critical about issues around me. Can a $1000 buy me that? No, it can't. Maybe a million could. In January, I penned that how a particular sentence from a UVA campus publication caught my eye. It ...

I like this article that I came across, if only because it was different from the normal sentiment that feedback = complaints. Too often, we forget that they can be compliments as well. This point is highlighted in the article. Readworthy exerpts: "Your frustrations feed a lot of families. In America alone, there are about 2.7 million call-center employees who are standing by ready to soothe you. That's roughly the population of Kansas. But what if you've got joy in your heart? Good luck finding someone who cares. In essence, there's a state full of people who exist to handle our complaints and, at best, a canoe full of people to handle our compliments. Why do companies make it so hard for us to say thank you?" "Companies should pave the way to praise. If it works well enough, maybe someday we'll see call centers that receive as many thank-yous as complaints. And that will make the population of Kansas a lot more satisfied with their jobs." It's true. Many a time the praise that we ought to give never really reaches the one who delivered the service that warranted that gesture. Why the focus only on irate customers then? A compliment to someone who ...

Daryl's post spurring corporations to take the lead led me to think about the fundamental issue that I believe most corporations have where social media is concerned - that they don't seem to know exactly what they want. He warned that his post was critical, and it is, but in a good way. It also has refreshing candor, and that is the liberty that one has when you don't have to worry so much about your sentiments being misconstrued as coming from the organization you work for (yet). :) So this is what I said in response, which has taken on a life of it's own and morphed into an entire post. Great post Daryl!! I just feel a lack of faith from the corporations in this - that, and the fear of actually using the tools and channels that SM provides (for some bizarre reason it seems to make more sense for them to act as curious spectators rather than to try it out). Given that this IS Singapore, I guess most corporations are just not willing to take the “risks” and “fail” as of yet. Failing is relative though. I see it more as a learning process. Maybe they’re ...

Social Media Brunch 4: The lowdown It's time for another SMB post! I really wonder if the Social Media Breakfast/SMB title will go the way of Kentucky Fried Chicken/KFC (and all the conspiracy theories that no one ever uses the full name anymore, because what they're selling is not chicken.) For the record, really, I think the real reason was that KFC wanted to take away the emphasis on the word "fried". But I'm digressing. Derrick was throwing up a concept that he and Nadia had talked about. He basically joked that the next SMB could be a Social Media Beer, since it would probably coincide with his coming of age and birthday. Social Media Breakfast, Brunch, what not... I was thinking, going along those lines, the next SMB could easily be anything from a Social Media Beach (power issues?) to Social Media Bash, etc. The feminists are going to kill me for even suggesting Social Media Babes. And the list goes on... So SMB4, a brunch this time, saw a really good turnout. Held at the URA building, it was obvious that the crowd demographic had shifted slightly again. And really, as with all the SMB events so far, you ...

Too many lessons can be learnt from yesterday's first ever F1 night race in Singapore. Here are some of my random thoughts! - Nothing is impossible. Sounds cliche, but always true to a certain extent. They said that our lanes were "too narrow to allow overtaking". Someone obviously did not quite believe that, and showed us how it could be done. - "When you've got nothing; you've got nothing to lose". Alonso, world champion, showed exactly why he deserved the title when he moved up 14 places to the first spot. It's interesting that the papers quoted him as having given up (during the qualifying round, he ended up with the 15th place slot), because obviously something inside him had not. I guess this phrase works the other way around too - when you've got everything; you've got everything to lose. Try starting in first and ending up (almost) last in line. In the same way, I suppose all of us really shouldn't be so afraid to take some risks so early in our careers, in our lives or what not. - Talent can only get you so far? Just a couple of days ago, the commentators were describing Hamilton like he was some kind ...

Credit: art on the street Very interesting street installation- I wish we had more of these in SG! While pure eye candy never hurts, art that has that extra dimension of actually engaging your mind always rocks. The fact that this piece doesn't have that aura of pretentiousness that a lot of gallery pieces exhibit is also a bonus. Yum. Tags: art, ice cream truck, street installation, melting, design,

Some logistics first! I have to apologize for the dearth of posts lately. I have been getting down to a lot of back-end tweaking on this site, couple that with a cloud confusion over the transfer of my domain name and the likes... equates to a lot of mental hair pulling and bug fixing. I love technology, but it doesn't work all the time. Still, thank you for being patient and of course, for reading! I'd like to invite you to update your bookmarks to point to http://www.dorothypoon.com and your RSS feeds to http://www.dorothypoon.com/feed/ because all the old links are now defunct. Hopefully that will iron out any of the remaining kinks! ...on to the post! :) _________________________________________________________________ Everything is searchable nowadays. Maybe it's how Google perpetually surfaces in the news, maybe it is how search permanently ingrained into my browsing habits. I thought it would be cool to dig into the search world, since we basically can't quite escape this function when we're on the internet. If we're not accessing search engines on the web, we probably have some form of search built right into our web browsers. What then, does this mean for the content that 's out there? Blogs v.s Discussion Forums In the pre-social networking site days, ...

With a controversial title like "Daydreaming is important business", this post combines two seemingly paradoxical worlds. Almost every other day, I am surrounded by a lot of bland personalities in school. It's startling, to say the least. I am grateful for the friends who still have an active mind around me. I am shocked by how much can change in a few years, in just half a year. I sense a perceptible shift in the student composition, something that I can't quite put my finger on, but is most definitely there. I am a dreamer; and always have been. I am also blatantly using this as an explanation for the times that I seem to be, "staring haplessly into space", as this other article so aptly describes. Daydreaming, combined with a certain kind of control, I say it's a powerful force. "If your mind didn't wander, then you'd be largely shackled to whatever you are doing right now," says Jonathan Schooler, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "But instead you can engage in mental time travel and other kinds of simulation. During a daydream, your thoughts are really unbounded." Creativity Just the other day, I was musing over what a friend had ...

Man, it's been a long time since I've found something I've liked so much! If you're one of those with a musical personality, you'll love this site. It's Twitter on a micro-blogging+musical high. Why it rocks: Full length, awesome songs you can "tweet" or blip about. Easy song search Twitter/Friendfeed,etc synchronization (smart move!) Option to embed the track in blogs, social networking sites Easy one click to buy the mp3 from Amazon (I need to figure how to work this) Strategic adding of "djs" means Blip.fm could become your new radio Automatic playing of the Blips means song after song of music goodness as recommended by people (with hopefully similar musical tastes). If not, there is always the option of removing them from your list. Playlist creation enabled Not so hot: The flash interface keeps acting up, I haven't quite figured out what about the sequence of blipping causes it. The server occasionally lags. A very minute minority of the songs take eons to load. Unpopular (but rare) gems of songs are likely not to be uploaded by users and hence not featured. The embedding of tracks does not seem to load on some blogging platforms. Might be code related, might not. I just found out that "Amazon MP3 is currently limited to US customers." Now they tell ...