Blog Archives

Networking Thursdays - Volume 14

4/27/2017

Aulia Djunaedi earned her masters and doctoral degrees in TESOL in South Korea where she has been living and teaching for 17 years. She has published a book titled "Business Indonesia" and runs a company which specializes in edu consulting.

When I first decided to try to be on Korean TV I found out that I needed some photographs but putting a portfolio together was very expensive. I asked a friend who was an amateur photographer from Indonesia if he could take some photos for me. One I had a portfolio I submitted it and some voice recordings in both Korean and English. I got accepted for an audition to be on a talent show. I made it through the audition and was invited to the first shooting but they didn't use me. Personally, I think it was because I was the only South-East Asian person who tried out.

Two weeks later they called me to participate as an audience member on the show. The payment was small, almost nothing. Then they called me to do it again. After that I realized they need more audience members. I offered to help them find audience members for free using Facebook to contact my friends. Every shooting I found around 20 people and deep down in my heart I knew one day they would not say be able to say no to me if I asked for a bigger role because I had worked so hard and had been so helpful to them. I knew that one day they would ask me to participate as one of the main cast members and after 6 months I was invited onto a survival show, won 3rd place, and was the only participant that got more chances to be on the program. My hard work paid off but none of it would have been possible if I hadn’t had a friend who could help me make an audition portfolio.

If you have a networking story to share, please send it to [email protected].

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Putting the Wow Before the How

4/21/2017

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As much as I enjoy working as a communications consultant, I miss working with students. Most of my clients these days are researchers and civil servants. I feel fortunate to work with chemistry students in one of the labs at KAIST twice a month and I enjoyed meeting the students who attended the materials science symposium that I emceed in Osaka earlier this week. In both cases I noticed the same thing; students are not proficient at "selling" their research outcomes.

Now let me be clear, I am not blaming their professors for this. There are only so many hours in a day and professors have full plates. Between conducting and writing up their own research, planning and giving lectures, and mentoring their students' research projects they are insanely busy. Add in departmental meetings, reams of bureaucratic paperwork that need to be filled out, and applying for grants I'm surprised they have time to tuck their kids into bed at night.

So if professors are too busy, whose job is it to teach students (and junior researchers for that matter) how to explain their poster presentations efficiently and maximize the time they are given to speak during general sessions at conferences? Too often they are unable to organize their content in a way that clearly explains the problem they were attempting to solve, the solution they tried, the outcome that justified creating the poster or applying for the speaking slot, and only then explaining how they accomplished it.

Two recent examples come to mind and I will use these stories often when coaching young scientists. The first case is from the chemistry lab students. One of the graduate students was practicing his 10-minute presentation on a fairly significant breakthrough. He found a way to conduct a test that previous took ten seconds and now could be accomplished in one tenth of second. Wow, right? The problem was that he waited until the end of the talk to tell the audience what we had achieved. We all waited patiently while he explained the background of the test and the procedures he went through. Slides and slides of charts and tables were shown without telling the audience why we should care. It was a textbook example of "burying the lead". He shared all of the methodology before he got to the results (like he would in a journal article).

Similarly, one of the poster presenters in Osaka was unable to give an elevator pitch for her experiment's results. I asked her to give me the 15-second version of her research and she looked at me like I was speaking Greek (her English was pretty good, so that was not the problem). I then asked her to briefly tell me the problem, what she did, and what the outcome was so I could decide if I wanted to hear how she did it or not. There was a professor emeritus standing behind me as I said this. I pointed to him and explained that he was a busy guy who didn't have time to hear the details of everyone's poster. He needed to know what the achievement was to help him decide if he wanted to hear more. He nodded and said that was correct. "Time is money," he agreed. I think she got what I was trying to emphasize because she came over to my table at the closing banquet to say thank you for the advice. No one had explained that to he before.

It's not fair to generalize and say that Korean students, or Japanese students, or science and engineering students don't know how to sell their research because I'm not sure any students are being mentored on how best to share their research outcomes at conferences and symposiums. Perhaps it's like putting together one's first Western-style CV; you see someone else's CV that you like and change their info to yours. Students should watch other presentations and take note of organization styles that help them get the most out of what is being said and shown. In a perfect world students would be taught ways to share their work with international audiences more clearly and efficiently but for now I'll summarize it into one key tip: "Put the WOW before the HOW."

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Networking Thursdays - Volume 13

4/20/2017

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Hello readers. Tim here again from Osaka, Japan. This week's story is one of mine for the second week in a row but I feel like it is necessary to do it now because I'm here on an international business trip that came about through networking.

One of the reasons I "retired" from university teaching was the restrictions is put on opportunities like speaking at international conferences, like I wrote about in Volume 12, and getting to do fun things like serve as the MC for international symposiums, like I did this week. Speaking at international conferences is fun (I had a blast last week) but this was paid work and it came about from a contact that might surprise some readers, a former student.

When I started teaching at KAIST in 2008 I had a student in one of my freshman conversation classes that ended up staying at KAIST to do her MA and PhD degrees. We kept in touch over the years through Facebook and would see each other on campus from time to time. In 2015, she came to my English Clinic sessions (a half hour that students could sign up for and get 1-1 sessions with the English professors) and I told her I was planning to leave KAIST and start my own company. She said I should meet her mother who had a high-level position at one of the government research centers in town and could use my services. I (jokingly) told her that she should being her mother to our next Clinic session. She did.

We had a nice chat and I told her about what my new company could offer. She was interested in editing work and private speaking lessons (which she never had time for) and asked if I would be available to serve as the conference host for a symposium she was organizing in Bangkok the following spring. Of course I was. Since then, I hosted another conference for them in Songdo, Korea and this one in Osaka. It's always a lot of fun and I get to meet great people who are leaders in their field. Some of the presenters are even starting to ask for feedback on their presentations once they find out that I am a presentation skills trainer.

I'm very fortunate that I get to combine my love for travel with paid work that is enjoyable and fulfilling. I'm also lucky that a former student had the foresight to see that introducing me to her mother would help me along that path. It's a fun story to tell when people ask how an English teacher ended up serving as the MC for materials science conferences and I hope it demonstrates to the readers of this blog that you never know who will be in a position to help you accomplish your goals.

If you have a networking story to share, please send it to [email protected].

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Networking Thursdays - Volume 12

4/13/2017

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This week's submission is my own.

Greetings from snowy Surgut, Russia. Why am I writing this week's post from a city in Western Siberia that I didn't know existed six months ago? To answer that question, we'll have to travel back in time to 2012 when I attended the FEELTA conference in Vladivostok, Russia as the KOTESOL representative. That was where I met Carolyn Westbrook from Southampton Solent University. She and I got along well and kept in touch, meeting again at TESOL Arabia in Dubai several years later. As Program Chair of the 2014 KOTESOL International Conference, I invited her to join us as an invited speaker for the special Friday workshops and the main conference over the weekend.
Then, a couple of months ago, we were chatting on Facebook Messenger at the same time she was working out the details to give a plenary talk here in Surgut. I was telling her how I was looking for another international speaking opportunity and her friend in Surgut was mentioning that they were looking for another speaker from overseas. The next thing you know, Carolyn sent my name and bio info to Ibragim in Surgut and I was part of the program as the second plenary speaker.

It has been a great week here in Surgut and I have done my best to live up to Carolyn's endorsement of me. It's looking like good things are going to develop from my visit here since several new projects and collaborations are being discussed. There's no way I would have imagined this happening a year ago and it wouldn't have happened without utilizing my friend's network and asking her to vouch for me. One thing leads to another and this trip may lead to many more exciting opportunities in Russia and beyond.

If you have a networking story to share, please send it to [email protected].

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Networking Thursdays - Volume 11

4/6/2017

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This week's contribution was sent in by a friend who wishes to remain anonymous.

Don't burn bridges!

In a previous job, I worked at a unigwon (the private language institute connected to a university) and, well, the director was a real piece of work. She was extremely tough to deal with. She seemingly had personality clashes with everyone on the staff. Somehow I thought I could help her (she did have some good qualities) and worked with her to be a better communicator and more supportive of the staff. I ended up being her assistant director and and one of the main parts of the job was to make her message more palatable for the foreign staff. Anyway, she yelled at me once. She was literally screaming in my face. It was about a very minor problem but she took the chance to yell at me. It was a small miscommunication. I am not always the calmest fellow around but somehow I managed to keep my cool. I told her, "That one is free. If you ever yell at me again, I'm done. I will quit that minute." Then, a few months later she yelled at me again and I had my resignation in her hands in 27 minutes. The important thing here is that upon leaving I made it seem like I was leaving for other opportunities including studying and mentioned that it was a positive experience. I gave her a chance to save face with the higher ups and said working there was a positive experience overall for which I was appreciative. We kept in touch after I left Korea to do my MA and then later I returned for a job in another city.

Around 1.5 years later out of the blue I got a call from her and she wanted to know if I’d be interested in a job at a university in Seoul and if I had my MA in hand. Since she was asking for a friend of hers and it wouldn’t involve working for her again I said yes and yes. The rest, as they say, is history and I’m still happily employed there.

If you have a networking story to share, please send it to [email protected].

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Networking Thursdays - Volume 14

Putting the Wow Before the How

Networking Thursdays - Volume 13

Networking Thursdays - Volume 12

Networking Thursdays - Volume 11

Tim's Thoughts

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