You can never be too overexposed!

- Kid Chan

The National Youth Entrepreneurship Convention was surprisingly well done. There was a large crowd and a good group of interesting and fun speakers. Mostly everyone was relaxed and jovial and were open to questions and light banter. Kid Chan had TONS of energy, Kenny Sia was very “boy next door” and gentle, and Mia Palencia and Khai Lee were very obviously passionate. It’s funny how a couple of them credit their mother’s negative reaction as the catalyst to their success! It was also nice to hear from YouthMalaysia’s founder Joel Neoh (who became “Noel” tons of times thanks to Chris the MC) - he was a bit more humble than I imagined him to be, which is quite good. Overall it was a pretty interesting session, and far better organized than many other YouthMalaysia activities. Let this be an inspiration!

The only main complaint would be the “Millionaire Sisters”, who were utterly misplaced in the Social Entrepreneurship/Leadership category - they didn’t belong to either! They came off as very fake and materialistic and cared more about their wealth then with actually helping people. They seemed to have come from the same presentation school as people like Sarina Russo, Kathy Ireland, and basically anyone working in the “make more money now!” industry - overacting, silly interaction, lots of “LOOK HOW WEALTHY I AM”. I don’t think anyone was pretty impressed with their presence (nor was I impressed with one of their staff members who cornered me after the convention and tried to get me to come and “listen to more of what they had to say”! Urgh, creepy). Also wasn’t totally impressed with Dato’ Ong Ka Tiek’s luncheon speech - his cries of “we encourage young students to be DIFFERENT and to VOICE THEIR OPINIONS” ring really hollow when you consider that it’s his department (Higher Education) that enacts laws and rules severely restricting students’ freedom of speech and assembly.

Ern Sheong has a great writeup on all the speakers and their presentations, so check his blog out for some quick notes. I was also happy to meet some EducateDeviate readers and friends - Chong Chuan, Daniel CerVentus, Karin Cheng, Delwyn Lee, John & Michael (sorry didn’t catch your last names), Nabila, Su Ann. Turns out that the discount could apply to more than 3 people, so apologies to those whom I turned down for the group!

If you were at the convention, please feel free to share your stories here.