With competitions getting fiecer nowadays, many businesses are starting to realise that not having half of the world population as talents leading their company is preposterous. That’s right, I’m talking about women in the workforce. Although the number of women working in the finance industry is increasing, it is still not on par with that of the male workers.

However, ten titans of the finance industry including Credit Suisse, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley and many others are coming together to make a change.

The Interbank Women in Finance Event provides an excellent opportunity for students to discuss their future career path with a panel of successful females from all levels of Finance, and to broaden their network with representatives from the ten market leading firms.

If you are interested in attending the event all you need to do is submit your CV and cover letter to your university career services below by Tuesday, 23 September, 2014.

HKU – please visit http://apps.cedars.hku.hk/applyjob
HKUST – please email saibankwomen@ust.hk
CUHK – please visit http://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/osa/cpdc/online-application.php

For all female students at HKU, HKUST or CUHK having a keen interest in a career in finance, please don’t miss this great opportunity to learn more about the industry from the top leaders!

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Mary Lee

A first year journalism student at HKU. Not a tech junkie but owns an iPhone 6 by chance.
leelokchingmary@gmail.com

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• About
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Sundararaja N. Valiyapan

Second Year, Energy Engineering
Malaysian Mochaccino, Tesla Fanatic, Film Buff, Android Acolyte, Hakuna Mattata
sunthar9@connect.hku.hk

Latest posts by Sundararaja N. Valiyapan (see all)

• Register Now – Interbank Women in Finance Event - September 21, 2014
• Koding Kingdom: Pioneering Programming Education in HK - March 23, 2014
• CoCoon Fall 2013 Pitch Night: Coffee, Fashion and Fresh Ideas - February 23, 2014

Some of the advantages they cited include writing software and in effect saving costs; being able to communicate with developers with ease and allowing them to make informed decisions on technical hires. It should be noted that those MBAs reaped all the pre-mentioned benefits from a single rigorous introductory computer science course, CS50 at Harvard.

Not just MBAs

The successful people you see in the video, Jobs, Gates and Obama are convinced that computer science should be learned by everyone, at least the basics of it.

That’s because computer science develops your computational and critical thinking skills. It teaches logic, creativity and technology. This fundamental knowledge is needed to prepare yourself for the 21st century, regardless of your field of study or occupation.

The Man before Koding Kingdom

Meeting with Mr. John Huen in Ricci Hall.

Returning to Hong Kong, he became as a manager for CITIC Pacific where he was assisting the company’s merger and acquisition activities in the technology-media-telecommunications (TMT) segment for 10 years. He then moved to lead CDC Games China as the COO, where helped the company traverse troubled waters with his expertise. His leadership in CDC Games resulted in John being awarded the Top 10 Game CEO in 2009 granted by the authoritative industry media www.17173.com. His next undertaking was as the CEO of Gigamedia China, a position he took for about 3 years.

Koding Kingdom and Let’s Code

Koding Kingdom is one of the biggest kids coding educational institutions in Hong Kong. They have professionally trained over 50 kids coding teachers –- all of them full time university students here. They offer a range of courses for students from 4 to 15.

Mr. John has pioneered groundbreaking methods of teaching coding as well as built a roadmap of educational tools. With tools such as Scratch, Stencyl, Alice, AutoGami, Minecraft, Kodable and innovative unplugged coding methods, Koding Kingdom provides a comprehensive learning experience. He believes that teaching computer programming to the young will not only be potentially useful in finding a career but encourages other aptitudes such as creativity, logic, problem solving and communication.

When asked how his company is unique from other competitors, he said “Having a strong background in online games and doing my own studios, is a very useful background to get to know the user requirements of young people.”

He also stressed the importance of sacrificing short-term gains for long-term rewards by building up his company first.

The successful March Let’s Code Day event in Cyberport.

Let’s Code collaborates with NGOs such as Association for Specific Learning Disabilities, Hong Kong Association for the Deaf, Hong Kong Student Aid Society Primary School and HKSKH MacLehose Centre (Kwai Chung). Also working with HKU and the Association for Computer Education Hong Kong, Let’s Code wishes to reach out to as many as possible and inform them the merits of programming.

Just March 1st this year, Let’s Code joined forces with Cyberport to organise Let’s Code Day. This event hosted the 1st Minecraft Programming Competition for schoolchildren; Code Education Seminars by various academics sharing their insights on the importance of computer programming and Coding Workshops to introduce coding to the general public. The event received tremendous support from the children and general public alike.

Looking Forward

Mr. John Huen has a long journey ahead in his endeavour to bring coding education to the masses. Many in Hong Kong do not see the need to learn programming. Countries around the world however are increasingly active, such as the UK with their compulsory coding curriculum in the works.

Efforts by people like Mr. Huen are important first steps for Hong Kong. By raising awareness about the importance of computer programming and offering an outlet for the children to learn, Koding Kingdom fills an important gap in the market. Equipping the children with the skills and interest in computer science will help create a more tech-savvy and capable progress drivers of the future.

About the Author

Sundararaja N. Valiyapan

Energy Engineering, Second Year

sunthar9@connect.hku.hk

Coffee and fashion were the winners of the night.

You might be wondering in what curious case might these two things coalesce, much less be crowned victors. Throw some creative marketing and business intelligence in with the coffee, fashion and quirky toys and you have a zesty affair of local startups fighting it out in the CoCoon Pitch Night.

CoCoon?

The 14,000 sq feet CoCoon workspace in Causeway Bay.

The CoCoon Pitch Night in particular is a very successful event that garners interest not only in Hong Kong but also enough abroad to get featured on Forbes. Pitch Night enables entrepreneurs to present their products or services to a variety of audiences and seek potential funders, team members, customers, partners or publicity. As of 2013, CoCoon entrepreneurs have received over HKD12,500,000 in funding from investors they met at the Pitch Night.

Diverse and Buzzing

Now back to coffee and fashion. I attended one of the Fall Semi-Finals in October last year. The room was brimming with people from all kinds of backgrounds, from university students to managing partners, fresh entrepreneurs to seasoned investors; the word diverse could not quite cut it.

Each member of the audience was given a plastic coin to drop in boxes at the end of the event to choose a favourite pitch. I could not wait to hear the pitches and cast my own vote.

Audience members were not the only ones who got to decide the fates of our budding entrepreneurs as there were distinguished judges as well. Mr. Roy Kuan, Managing Partner of CVC Asia Pacific Limited; Mr. Wai Lun Hung, Founder of Snaptee & Gobuya and Mr. Joshua Lau, Co-Founder of YesAsia & YesStyle made up the panel.

The people from the Semi finals Pitch Night I attended.

Fresh fun pitches

Hin Kwan and Sindy To of Vodcart took it upon themselves to entertain the spectators: they initially planned to launch a rubber-band powered toy plane called the Red Baron into the crowd. Fearing the safety of the audience, the Vodcart duo settled for displaying their wacky gadgets to us.

Two startups stood out among the pitches that night. White Owl Coffee Co. by Sean Okihiro and ZaoZao by Vicky Wu, who were also the winners for the night (I’m proud that I accurately guessed them to be winners before the results were announced).

Why were these startups a favourite of both the judges and the audience?

The pitch by Sean Okihiro was simple, to the point and his presentation had a great design language and style, which is unsurprising given that he also founded a design company. He gave a laid back presentation on why coffee tastes best three days after roasting and how he will deliver high quality unground coffee to your doorstep first week of every month.

On the other hand, we have ZAOZAO in its all uppercase glory. ZAOZAO is like a Kickstarter for Asian fashion. ZAOZAO’s designers post their designs on an online platform. When customers discover products that catch their fancy, they can invest financially to support production. If pre-orders are achieved within a period of time, their designs can come true. Vicky Wu, a Harvard alumnus, pitched ZAOZAO with clarity and confidence.

Winning isn’t everything…

The votes were finally tallied in the end and White Owl Coffee Co. and ZAOZAO emerged winners that night and proceeded to the finals.

CoCoon is an excellent platform for startups to connect with investors and vice versa. Furthermore, the startups are always looking for fresh talents. HKU students! Consider startups as your potential employers. The startup community in Hong Kong is thriving and joining a company on the ground level can offer amazing opportunities in the long run.

About the Author

Sundararaja N. Valiyapan Follow @SundaraRaja_1

Regular Contributor

Second Year, Energy Engineering

Robotics is now attracting more and more attention from research centers, the consumer, industrial and manufacturing sectors worldwide. Identified by the Faculty of Engineering as one of the key emerging technology areas, HKU is seeking to play a larger role in this field.
We interviewed our Dean of Engineering, Professor Norman C. Tien to learn more about the university’s push to make robotics the next big thing in Hong Kong.

Furthermore, check out the extraordinary tale of Prof. Tien’s Startups, his mentor, and the vision he shares for HKU students in Up Close and Personal with Prof. Tien.

The First Step

In Conversation with Prof. Tien in his office

Research and development in pursuit of this competition will help HKU produce cutting-edge software technologies in machine control, computational intelligence and human/machine interfaces. Application areas include industrial automation, medical applications, disaster response technology and hazardous operations.

“Atlas is only the starting point.” said Prof. Tien. The success of the ARI will put the university front and centre in the world robotics. Through this project, HKU has also built collaborative relationships with other world-leading institutions and pioneers such as Case, Tokyo and Edinburgh, contributing to the innovation of robotics in the world. Ultimately, the ARI will change the technological landscape of Hong Kong.

More Corporate Interest

“The local government supported technology quite well and there has been a lot of money put in to it.” said Prof. Tien, “If anything, I think the problem in Hong Kong is more that, in terms of innovation, technology, research and development, too much of it is from the government, the percentage is too high.”

“The business side and the corporations need to do more, they need to participate more.” He feels that while the great government support has been most helpful in kickstarting the research and development (R&D) scene, direct participation from private companies and the industry is even more important.

Most of the R&D being done in Hong Kong and by the universities in Hong Kong is too dependent on government funding. Meanwhile in countries like the US, universities receive funding from corporations.

Therefore, the fact that the HKU Atlas ARI program is largely funded by private donors is rather groundbreaking.

A New Industry

“To have your economic prosperity linked to one or two industry, is a risk. Logistics and trade is still large in Hong Kong but it’s slipping… Finance is still preeminent in this region. If you look at the economic base in HK, you need to diversify.”

Universities in Hong Kong are not giving R&D in areas of engineering or science enough priority. Advancements in these areas have been comparatively underwhelming. Companies tend to depend on universities in the US or Europe which has more established R&D programs.

Prof. Tien explained that there is always a time in the development of any society where there is a boom in the number of people and resources going into other academic areas, but he is positive that the trend is reversing as we speak.

“I think the global economic crisis has ‘helped’. It made people think, I won’t be able to do well in the finance industry.”

“It’s natural from the engineering point of view to push for the technology sector… The economic wealth created around the world has so much been because of different technologies that come by.”

Through the development of robotics technology, either through software engineering or hardware and design innovations, Hong Kong will be able to attract more manufacturing and technology companies to invest and become a mini Silicon Valley of Asia.

This reduces the dependence on the finance and banking industry while generating greater economic output for Hong Kong.

About the Author

Sundararaja N. Valiyapan

Regular Contributor

Second Year, Energy Engineering

sunthar9@connect.hku.hk

The idea behind Phonebloks is pretty simple. It’s a modular smartphone where you can upgrade individual components of the phone, such as camera, processors, RAM, battery, etc. The components or bloks are connected to a base which locks everything together into a solid phone.

Say you want to upgrade your 1GB RAM to a 2GB one, all you need to do is plug out the old blok and plug in the new and voila, your phone now has a 2GB RAM with all the other components intact. You can continue to customize and upgrade your phone to your liking as the bloks break or gets outdated.

More than meets the eye

Dave’s vision may sound amazing on paper. However, it is a long way from being a reality. Many engineers and technology experts have voiced concerns over the feasibility of the idea.

For starters, most current smartphones are integrated.

For example, the recent iPhone 5S has its CPU, graphics and RAM clustered into a single processor chip. Breaking this apart into upgradable bloks will make your iPhone consume more power and triple its physical footprint.

This means bulkier phones which drain more power. Not to ignore the fact that Phonebloks would require expensive sockets so that the CPU, graphics, RAM, storage and modem could communicate with one another at a high speed. These are only some of the issues standing in the way of Phonebloks becoming a reality.

Hitting the road: Make believe to reality

To test the public interest in Phonebloks, Dave Hakkens used Thunderclap, a crowdspeaking platform. 979,262 people supported Phonebloks via Thunderclap. The idea had a social reach of a mind boggling 381,772,780 people.

The interest it generated made the mobile phone industry sit up and listen. After a conference with many industry leaders and innovators, Dave Hakkens zoned in on Motorola, a mobile phone maker with a long history in the field and currently owned by Google.

Collaborating with Motorola to develop this idea further gives Phonebloks the best chance to become a reality. While Motorola develops this modular phone idea under the name Project Ara, Phonebloks want to remain an independent organization and help develop the phone platform. This means greater interaction between developers and consumers than ever before in making a product that people want.

Whether the project succeeds or fails doesn’t really matter, it signifies how consumer demands are already shaping the industry. Making sure that these demands are heard and catered to will herald greater innovations and breakthrough in how phones are made.

Visit www.phonebloks.com for more information from the Phonebloks community.

Visit the Official Motorola Blog for more information from Motorola’s Project Ara.

About the Author

Sundararaja N. Valiyapan

Regular Contributor

Second Year, Energy Engineering

sunthar9@connect.hku.hk

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