Sales, Social and Tech

Bringing Anson around to two relatives’ place was tiring, but seeing their happy faces made the journey all worth it. We started the day taking to Anson with a grandaunts, which makes her a great-grandaunty with Anson. Visits to this grandaunty place during Chinese New Year without her popular ham sandwiches doesn’t complete the trip.   Left: Grandaunty with daughter preparing ham sandwiches.  Right: Famous ham sandwiches. Photo: Even Anson has started “eating” the famous ham sandwich. Our next trip was to a another relative’s place from my father’s side. A popiah (spring rolls) lunch was at hand.             Left: Ingredients for the popiah session. Right: Mother and aunty making their own popiah. It was latter back to Anson’s great-grandparents place to greet them and entertain guests there. Sorry for the lack of text for this blog post as I am extremely tired and we have another busy schedule for t...

Chinese New Year this time round is very different for me as I am with son now. The celebrations start usually at the eve of Chinese New Year itself, the reunion dinner. As it falls on a Sunday this time round and holidays for the next two days, the dinner this time round don’t seem like a rush. For my non-Chinese visitors, reunion dinners on the eve usually means having the whole family together for one night and have a grand dinner. The last time Anson’s great-grandparents saw him was in October last year. Neither did his grand-uncle or grand-auntie saw Anson before so I wouldn’t know what Anson’s reaction will be to first time meetings. Left: Anson’s grandmother introducing him to the kitchen Right: Great-grandmother giving Anson a welcome peck on the cheek. Anson did well with the relatives, though he was only cranky as it was about sleep time when we reach the place. Anson slept during dinner time but came out later to meet his relations. ...

My in-laws live about about 325km north of me. 325km is the distance between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. They have help taken care of my son in KL, Malaysia, while i worked in Singapore. Now that my wife and son are living in Singapore, I am not surprised they are missing the bubbly laughter or the sharp cries of my son. During their time, communications with distance relatives were by phone. If you wanted to send photos, snail mail would have been their only option and took days. Luckily for the Internet and its evolution, I am able to show their videos of their grandson in action almost real time. Many of you may have heard about Qik . For those who are not aware what it is, its a website that allows you to upload videos straight from your mobile phone. If your mobile phone supports wifi, you could even do a “live” broadcast. However, Qik only supports a few selected mobile phones. You would need to sign-up for a QIK account and install a program into your mobil...

I was at Geek Terminal this afternoon waiting for a meeting to start and I decided to do a quick video with Danny Pang, barista and co-founder of Geek Terminal. I asked Danny why he used social media to promote Geek Terminal and how he used it. His answers are in the video. Geek Terminal has appointed Andrew Peters as their social media manager. Geek Terminal’s facebook group can be found here and their website is at www.geekterminal.com .

I started this blog to highlight the use of Social Media in Singapore in the areas of communications and public relations. One of the big users of social media is Andrew Peters of The Pacific West Communications. Andrew was tasked with communicating Singapore’s first Tattoo Show and made heavy use of social media to reach out to his audience. I visited the Tattoo Show as a guest of Andrew and did a quick short recording of how he used social media to garner awareness for this show. Andrew’s blog is at aplink.wordpress.com and the Tattoo Show’s facebook group can be found here . If you are a PR agency or individual in Singapore who liked to talk about your social media campaign, please feel free to drop me an email at aaronkoh(at)gmail.com.

By the time you read this post, I should be going through orientation at my new office. Interestingly, I got this position via my Facebook networks. During the week I was posting on my Facebook status that I was looking for a move from my previous stint at EASTWEST Public Relations as their Digital Media specialist, I was contacted by one of the founders of this new company in Facebook. He was surprised that we had 35 mutual connections, hence, he might be wondering, do we know each other? The first connection was made and I was invited down to the office for a demo of the service the company had for the social media space. After reading several of my status updates, the meeting turned into an interview for the position of Social Media Consultant at this company. From the discussions I had after two interviews, I judged that this new one would allow me to make full use of my experience in my previous jobs to my advantage here. Its going to be a new beginning for 2009 and ...