Planning for Malaysia Forum II

Program

Friday (July 9) Bay Area people only

• 7:00pm Dinner @ Penang Village
• 8:00pm Leave San Jose
• 2:00am(next day) arrive at motel, sleep

Saturday (July 10) "Brainstorm"

• 8:00am Transport from LA downtown to Claremont
• 10:00am Program officially starts. Ice breaking games
• 11:00am Introduction to Malaysia Forum, as well as our last big event Post-Mahathir Malaysia
• 12:00pm Lunch
• 1:00pm Small group brainstorm sessions on next event
• 2:00pm Consolidate all ideas
• 3:00pm Topic discussion: (probably on education)
• 4:00pm Topic discussion: (TBD)
• 5:00pm Break - adjourn to Suat Yan's place
• 6:00pm Dinner
• 7:00pm Happy hour
• 8:00pm End of the day.

Sunday (July 11) "The Plan"

• 10:00am Warm-up, share thoughts about Saturday
• 10:30am Split into 2 groups (LA vs Bay Area) to finalize details for the next event
• 11:30am Share the final proposal.
• 12:00pm Lunch
• 1:00pm Closing, some games and farewell
• 2:00pm End of the day. Bay Area people probably reach home around 8pm.

Updated Attendees

• Sim Tze Tzin
• Charis Quay Huei Li
• Murali Raman
• Lai Suat Yan
• Ahmad Khan
• Syamsul Hasran
• David Ng Kim Haw
• Seet May Ting
• Pan Swee Ting
• Ong Jiin Joo

Pictures

Coming soon

Things to bring

• Stationary for writing
• A small $5 to $10 gift, very flexible
• Some snacks / breakfast
• Misc. clothes / toiletries as needed
• Yourself

  (optional)

• Sleeping bag (if you're staying over at friend's place) + pillow
• Marker pen (if you have some bring it anyway just in case)
• Misc. camera / alarm clock / cell phone as needed

Technial Report on Post-Mahathir Malaysia

Time-based Analysis

• 09:00am - Bechtel International Center + Lyman commons opens
  1. Setup various rooms and assembly hall in Bechtel, including furniture, snacks, book table, writing materials
  2. Move food to Lyman commons for storage
• 11:30am - Registration Begins
  1. Much confusion over various registration methods
  2. Many unexpected (unregistered) people and many registered absentee
• 12:15pm - Panel Introduction
  1. Started on-time but dragged too long
  2. Very ad-hoc (good? bad?)
• 12:30pm - Panel Discussion
  1. Presenters given too short a time to present their materials
  2. Audience enthusiastic but were too silent as compared to outliers
  3. Main theme managed to be focused - civil society in this next phase of M'sia
  4. Interesting questions by Don
• 01:45pm - Group Discussion introduction by Leng
  1. Audienced reasonably mesmerized
  2. Excellent start for whole of Malaysia Forum -> Practising good conversational skills
  3. Many left after the talk, didn't commit for the day
• 02:00pm - Group Discussion
  1. Each group given a specific topic (race, religion, poli-econs or education)
  2. Spliting up the group was badly done
  3. Each group took too long to get to their designated room, significant delays when moving people (and furniture) around
  4. Some group gave up after seeing few people, and merged with other groups forming large groups. Turns out that people actually went to toilet (not accounted for)
  5. Group discussion varies in intensity and participation, highly characteristic of MF
  6. Mahjong paper model works pretty well
  7. Snacks were useless - when people talk they don't eat
  8. Unplanned disaster - the result of the discussions were thrown away!!
  9. Good moderators is key to the success of small group discussions. Moderators need to ask provocating questions without impeding any kind of answer. They need to know how to pull back a person once they cross the line and how to make everyone participate in the discussions.
• 03:30pm - Group Presentation (wasn't there myself, since I was cooking food in Lyman)
  1. Each group presents their findings, Q&A follows each topic of discussion
  2. As I understand it, some of it was very inetrested and humerous, others dull and contentless
  3. Aim of creating a floor-to-speaker conversation didn't work too well
  4. Anti-climatic rather than being the climatic event of the day
  5. Not enough wall for all the MJ paper
• 04:30pm - Conclusion
• 05:00pm - Dinner at Lyman Commons
  1. Too much lousy food
  2. Clicks who came on that day went back to familiar grounds to converse, defeating the purpose of getting to know new people
  3. Dinner lasted long, had good conversations with the speakers
  4. Moving people was again time consuming and unnecessary.

Other details

• Groups (and total participants) are too large to get to know everyone
• Time too short (half day) for such a big event, however, the longer the event, the less people can commit
• Not enough picture taken throughout the event (where's the tape!? I remember there was a recorder!)
• Not enough long lasting friends made - people treat it as a lecture rather than an activity.
• Too cheap to turn a profit, have to rely on sponsors.
  1. Bechtel has Billie Archilies fund -> $500 is the main contributer
  2. Random donations from people comes up to $80
  3. Participant fees weren't paid on paypal due to extra charge that takes money away from us by using VISA.
  4. MPBA only gave $50 token of goodwill...
  5. Many uncliamed cost e.g. domain name / printing / transportation and accomodation for speakers
  6. Free location (whole of Bechtel) gave us an edge in housing many participants
  7. Good thing cost estimation was good to have some money left

How-To Guide

Recruitment

• How to get a few interested people?
  1. Personal Contact - NGOs are rather closely knitted, get to know the right people via others.
  2. Forums - one of Malaysia Forum's primary objective is to let interested parties get to know other interested parties.
  3. Online Forums / Websites - many discussion boards online are geared towards grassroots and social movement.
• How to get a few interesting people?
  1. Reading - many interesting people wrote something somewhere, a book, a blog, forums etc.
  2. Writing - many interesting people respond to thought provocating opinions, especially in what they care about.
  3. Talking - one of Malaysia Forum's primary objective is to let interesting people show off what's so unique about themselves.
• How to get a few people interested?
  1. Personal touch - talk over a meal about some issues that concerns both parties
  2. Potluck - slowly becoming one of Malaysia Forum's hallmarks is to have people come together for a theme-based potluck.
  3. Disseminate materials - over whatever media: flyers, tv, internet etc. to let people know what you're doing and why
• Who else?
  1. Government officials - personal contact / news media (press releases) / seek help from established NGOs
  2. Foreign support - millions of grassroots around the world working on similar issues in their country
  3. Concerned neighbor - regional friends, frequent travelers to our country, etc.

Ice-breakers

• How to start a meeting?
• Useful games for getting to know one another
  1. "Yes, And" game
  2. "Stand to the Middle" game
  3. "Find similar characteristics" game
  4. "
• How to keep the knowledge about another person acquired during such events over long period of time?
• How to create synergy between people of similar interest?

Funding

• Who has money?
  1. Government - but maybe that's hard start.
  2. Schools - some universities that we know have unlimited financial resources that seems to appear from nowhere - the key is to go out there and search for them. Stanford for example has a fund reserved for anything international focus that we applied for. Another fund which we realize later is a fund for speakers. If you invite speakers from other places you can apply for funding to house the speakers etc.
  3. Community - Don't underestimate the $10 that people put in (just like you never underestimate the single vote that people put in as their sign of fate). $10 USD is RM38. Donations. Donations. Donations.
  4. You - this should be the last place to look for them. You'll be spending some unknowningly anyway.
• How to get the money?
  1. Ask - don't be shy to ask for the money especially from the people you know. They are more than happy to help you.
  2. Make more payment methods available - in US, cash, checks, paypal, and if necessary credit cards.
  3. Always strive for positive cashflow - these aren't revenue generating events which is why it always needs a positive bottomline. Restrict spending on unnessary things. It's the interaction and content that matters not the decorations and food.
  4. Network - funding can be shared across the various MF groups across the country. A vision to set up a fund is in the pipeline, but that's beyond our current scope.
• How to give the money?
  1. There's a need to help those unfortunate groups back home who needs financial support. Our rather accurate speculation is that people in the Bay Area are richer than most people back home and won't mind giving some money for social causes back home.
  2. Small amounts can be taken home by individuals. Other ways of helping include sponsoring information dessimination infrastructures for the local NGOs.
• Why do we need money?
  1. Logistics - travelling, accomodation, activity location, food, etc.
  2. Weight - as the platform grows, we also need have financial backing for making ourselves heard in the community.
  3. Emergency - to help other groups who're in need.
• How much money did we spend in PMM? - Charis

Publicity

• According to the statistics we collected for the first event:
  1. Word of mouth - this is by far the BEST way to publicize such an event. Covers more than 70% of our attendees.
  2. Mailing list (both smf-* and other groups)
  3. Website
  4. Flyers / Posters at local Malaysian restaurants
  5. Personal invitation to unknown people (this can be via e-mail, or hijacking other people's events)
• The following other ways didn't materialize for PMM, but are viable ways too
  1. Newspapers
  2. Television
  3. Radio

Malaysia Forum | Stanford Malaysia Forum