Event Speaker Series on Key Players in Conventions and Meetings Industry

While music festivals, concerts, and sports are the most common type of events attended by different groups of people, there is another type of event that does not focus on fulfilling the entertainment context: conventions and meetings. This type of event focuses more on the business event in general and certain concerts or themes selected by the organizer. To have exposure to the story behind the scenes for the conventions and meetings industry, students who registered for Conventions and Meetings Management had a chance to virtually meet Ms. Gracie Geikie, the Director of Place Borneo.

She has more than 20 years of experience in conventions and meetings, and a certified Professional Conference Management (PCM) trainer for the Malaysian Association of Convention and Exhibition Organizers and Suppliers (MACEOS). Students learned about some interesting topics such as the Role of a Professional Conference Organizer (PCO), the bidding process, reasons why conferences failed, and terminology used in the event industry. Apart from that, Ms. Gracie also shared her experiences when doing the bidding for the 11th Asia Pacific Cities Summit (APCS) 2017.

Interestingly, although there are students who are not from the event management programme, they managed to adapt the learning outcome and have good communication with Ms. Gracie throughout the session. These can be seen when there are students who are competent at answering questions posed by Gracie and are able to link the discussions to the topic being discussed. With a total of 100 students attending this speaker series, the lecturer believes that the students have been able to understand the bidding process and able to source for bid opportunities and leads.

This is one of the important learning outcomes that is also related to the student’s assessment task where the students are required to prepare a comprehensive event proposal that is related to conventions and meetings and it is compulsory for the students to do bidding for their event idea at the end of the semester. There are a few important points that have been highlighted by Ms. Gracie throughout the session, such as her encouragement to students to take the opportunity to be volunteers in any event, as she believes that the academic framework and perspective with industry is different.

Besides, she urges students to have an enthusiasm and passion for working in a team, as it will help students to be more responsible when researching conventions and extricate all pertinent information needed in the preparation of the bid document. The session was well received, and the students provided positive feedback for more sessions from the industry in the future semesters.

Understanding Asian Transformations: Young Entrepreneurs

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a complex lacuna for the entrepreneurs, simultaneously propelling options for both beneficiary and sceptic prospects. The overall impact on the global economy extends to the case of young entrepreneurs as well. Standing in between the grey areas of instinctive and learned abilities, young entrepreneurs exert the conditions of enterprise qualities, innovation, creativity, calculation, and risk-taking manoeuvres. While entrepreneurship revolves around a business-oriented structure, social-entrepreneurship comes as an integral part of the entrepreneurship regime.

Young social entrepreneurs, therefore, alleviate social development, changes in infrastructure, acceleration of the education level and bring changes to the mindset of the public. To further engage in the young entrepreneurship discourse, the School of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Taylor’s University, Malaysia and the Centre for Genocide Studies, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh co-jointly organized the third Understanding Asian Transformations webinar series, with the focus of Young Entrepreneurs on 18th December, Friday.

This monthly webinar series was first launched on 17th October 2020 as an initiative to further discuss on issues and gaps and to venture into unchartered territory that concerns Malaysia and Bangladesh in particular and to extend the conversations of South and Southeast Asia in general. Unlike the previous webinars, this third webinar has a panel of esteemed discussants who discussed on the journey, challenges, and the aspirations of young entrepreneurs after the presentation of two well-regarded speakers.

The two main speakers were Dr. Mahfuz Kabir, Research Director at Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS), Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Mr. Anas Zubedy (Malaysia), Adjunct Professor, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Taylor’s University, Managing Director and Founder, Zubedy (M) Sdn Bhd. and Senior Research Fellow, National Human Resource Centre, Malaysia. The esteemed panel of discussants were Ms. Nurul-Huda Mohamed Afandi, Vice President, Malaysia Youth Council, Malaysia; Mr. Saadat Chowdhury, Chairman, Zurhem, Bangladesh; Mr. Suthan M., Managing Director, BeliGas.my, The '100 Most Influential Young Entrepreneurs Award', Malaysia; Mr. Kishva Ambigapathy, Chairperson of the Commonwealth Youth Council, Malaysia; Mr. Syed Nasim Manzur, Managing Director, Apex Footwear Ltd., Bangladesh.

This event was hosted by Ms. Ainif Omar, Lecturer at Taylor’s University and moderated by Prof. Dr. Imtiaz Ahmed, Director, Centre for Genocide Studies at University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. This event was graced by the Honourable State Minister, Mr. Md. Zahid Ahsan Russel from the Ministry of Youth and Sports, Bangladesh and welcomed by Associate Professor Dr. Anindita Dasgupta, Head of School, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Taylor’s University.

Besides showcasing the role of young entrepreneurs in the changing face of Asian Transformations, this webinar was organized to contextualize entrepreneurship as part of the business and social discourses, to provide the avenue for exchanging ideas and creative inventions, to serve as a platform for understanding the networks and collaborative opportunities, to disseminate the methods of establishing an international presence, self and organizational branding, as well as service and product positioning.

This session was attended by international academics and practitioners via zoom and has a view of 2.7k on its Facebook live session. It was an insightful and inspirational session which was well received by its audience and international media.

Taylor's Hospitality Faculty Creative Conversations

The Director of Taylor’s Culinary Institute, Chef Frederic, along with 2 Food and Beverage Senior Lecturers, Ms. Jasmine Chen and Mr. Reuben Arthur conducted a live podcast with the Director of Zouk Genting, Mr. Joseph Ryan on their Creative Conversations’ series. Creative Conversations is a podcast series of Zouk Group talks with industry leaders from business, hospitality and entertainment weekly. Along with Taylor’s Culinary Institute’s experts, they have a conversation about hospitality, wine and culinary education on the future opportunities for young prospects.