But first, let’s provide you with a little fanservice… by the beautiful Asean ladies (who are also @AirAsia’s Flight Attendants!) who are wearing unique Asean outfits!

Can you guys guess which girl is from which country? Haha. By the way, more photos can be found on my Facebook Page.

In any case, it started out really as a conversation between me and @kathyjah, who works at AirAsia asean. I strictly believe that there are more people to learn from outside of Malaysia, the exposure is something we need to broaden our minds. At Young Corporate Malaysians (@YCMS) and @UKEC’s #MSLS, we are finding that some of the speakers were on repeat and soon, we’d run out of people to learn from.

Then a thought came to me: why not go Asean? Learning about patterns you never knew existed in different markets, potential for your biz to go cross country where the market potential still exists, trading unique founding skills that could be useful for your own endeavors – all this could be done with further collaboration between the 10 countries. Besides, we’re so near each other. Really.

That’s when I thought, hey, @Socialgrooves could work out a CSR initiative to grow a community of Aseans who are Asean-aware and with strength of numbers, we could very well be a pressure group of sorts to demand the best for the people. Governments and their politics can sometimes interfere with their populist approach, so it is really up to us, the people of Asean, to be in this together.

That’s how @Aseanita was born! The idea was agreed by both ourselves & AirAsia asean, and with volunteering efforts from people like @lorrainesiew and @akiraceo, we ran a month long campaign that got surprising response from the Asean community (hereby referred to as Aseans) themselves. We even work together with an existing ASEAN Community who has a whopping 56k community on their Facebook page, and that’s saying something! Though our numbers may be a stark difference, we believe that by creating a personality like Aseanita as your average Asean girl who explores the notion of ASEAN, it may relate well to people who aren’t familiar with the term – and that’s a start to begin with

Anyway so I was invited to be at the launch of @AirAsia’s asean office in Jakarta, and that’s a really huge thing cause @TonyFernandes basically flew media people from all over the Asean region to come over and pay homage to the quirky office. At the same time, he also had this huge meeting with all (almost!) of AirAsia’s CEOs on the same morning, which is what you see above!

That, my friends, is like a Roundtable of sorts of all the important people in the lowcost aviation industry, where most of them are already public listed, and must have quite a high networth okay! (yea, like the one I did on Obama and the Knight of the WWW)

So since I was there, like any other thick-faced blogger, might as well camwhore with ALL of them, kan?
Starting with Tony Fernandes himself, Group CEO of AirAsia, of course! This man here is a giant, only second to the great Sir Richard Branson. He’s an inspiration to many, and believe me, working with him makes you believe that you can do ANYTHING!

Oh and for the record, this is what he said about Aseanita… ^_____^

QUOTE – Tan Sri @TonyFernandes

Then of course you have the most recent CEO of AirAsia Malaysia, @AireenOmar. For Tony to trust her in managing Malaysia’s operations, she must be no normal person!

Next up is V. Logan, who was at that point the Country Manager for AirAsia Singapore until Tony told him two minutes before his speech that he’s been promoted to the CEO of AirAsia Singapore. Congratulations, LOL!

Ah, the host of the day, Pak Dharmadi, CEO (President Director, they call it) of AirAsia Indonesia. Humble and down to earth, this is the one guy I’d like to invite over to Malaysia to give a talk at YCM and SEC. Boleh sih?

What would we be without  Tassapon Bijleveld, CEO of AirAsia Thailand. Certainly no cheap Krabi & Bangkok trips

Familiar man? Yeap, the popular @AzranOsmanRani, CEO of AirAsia X. Why X ah you ask? I also don’t know how to answer… *cues X-files music*

Oh and finally, my gateway to Japan himself, Kazuyuki Iwakata, CEO of AirAsia Japan that was recently launched. Congratulations to him, hope you can fly me to Japan where I’ve always dreamt to be, because of my love with the Japan culture and food ^___________________^

Okay so that was all of the bigwigs combined! While I was doing that, poor Katherine has to work so hard. Sometimes I’m amazed how she got this far… and yet, act like a complete klutz sometimes ._.

Anyway, this was my experience at the launch- 10 gorgeous flags representing the countries of Asean, which are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam in alphabetical order. Do you know how I remembered? I had to watch the Olympics walk and wait for each of the country to pass and take a screenshot of it for Aseanita’s Olympics album. Anything for #teamAsean!

There was also lots of goodie bags. All for the media & some bloggers from all over the region. What else to expect from an Airline company that focuses on Asean, huh? *gilap kasut*

The customary ribbon cutting. Cheesy, but gets the work done for the media.

I like this picture of Kat doing last minute editing. She looks so cool and pwettyyyy

And this picture where she’s side by side with Tony. With all the press taking pictures… of him, or her?

Some 100 key media people from the 10 countries. Talk about OTT huh?

Ah back to the original picture above, except this was taken at a very nice angle. Not easy to do this okay, had to act like one of those professional media guys! Anyway, just some excerpt below of what Tony said about Aseanita…

 “This campaign is an affirmation of AirAsia’s commitment to Asean.  It is the first major initiative undertaken by our new regional base in Jakarta. One of our major goals it to help promote and project  the Asean  image and brand.  Asean is our home, we have invested our resources here and we intend to grow here.  We will always give the support needed to strengthen the region,” said Tan Sri Tony Fernandes, Group CEO of AirAsia.

Further to that, he said this about Asean as a whole too

“AirAsia asean would prepare the group for the implementation of the Asean Open Skies policy and the Asean Economic Community.”

“AirAsia asean will help ensure that our voice, our concerns and our appeals are heard much more clearly in the corridors of power with ASEAN. One of the reasons for locating the office in Jakarta is to help us engage more closely with the Asean Secretariat, which is headquartered here,”

By focusing on regional growth, AirAsia expands its market base to 600 million people and brings Asean closer – within four-hour flight radii – to mega populations in neighboring giants China and India as well as in Japan and Korea. The Asean region, Northeast Asia and South Asia have a combined population of 3 billion people, or 43% of the world’s population.

AirAsia’s commitment to Asean goes beyond its network of destinations. It has provided employment to 10,000 individuals from across Asean and flown more than 140 million guests since its launch as a low-cost airline in 2001. It has championed the region in various projects, including in sports and youth development, on the global stage. Last month, AirAsia asean debuted Aseanita, a female Asean caricature, online to promote the region via popular social media channels and serve as a guide to the region. Aseanita has so far garnered more than 2,700 likes on Facebook (facebook.com/Aseanita), where she engages an average of 500 fans daily. Aseanita also encourages discussions regarding Asean on Twitter (@Aseanita), where she has close to 250 followers.

If anything, my vision for Asean is pretty much aligned to his, therefore it makes total sense to continue our CSR campaign together in hope to gather more volunteers who will act on behalf of Aseanita to attend ASEAN-related events and share them with the community, along with any opportunities to participate or collaborate. That is the aim in totality! 

 Ah but it’s time to go home, since it’s a working day and all. Another super cool experience is that I get to fly back with Tony and Azran, and you can imagine the stir they created in the aircraft haha. One day, though, I really hope to fly young leaders together with him, to experience what I did, and to learn from him as well. Don’t know if it will happen, but I can dream, can’t I? 

And that was the end of it! All in all the great people at AirAsia asean including Katherine, Raman and team took great care of me and I had such a great time in Jakarta and being in the office, seeing how these people work and learning from them. I owe it to my team at @Socialgrooves as well as volunteers for without them, Aseanita wouldn’t have happened. In fact, all the fantastic coverage wouldn’t have happened, even on the Wall Street Journal (Indonesian version) too, oh boy…

• On Tribun Kaltim, Indonesia – AirAsia Perkenalkan Aseanita
• On MyFew.net – Airasia Asean Officially Launched In Jakarta
• On Kishori Lal – AirAsia asean is throwing its support to Aseanita
• On TravelBuck.net, Indonesia – Aseanita, Menjadikan ASEAN Menjadi Satu Keluarga
• On TribunJogja.com – AirAsia Kenalkan Figur Aseanita
• On EGlobalTravelMedia.com.au, Australia – Reaffirming AirAsia asean’s commitment to Asean
• On Newswit.com, Thailand – http://www.newswit.com/.life/2012-07-17/fa80efc9b6df04b96ddb753b01d11d9a/
• On blogs:
  PlacesandFoods.com – Aseanita for Asean 45th Anniversary
  AzizLaikar – http://azizlaikar.blogspot.com/2012/08/aseanita.html
  HasrulHassan.com – Giveaway Share, Dream and Fly | Percuma 2 Tiket Air Asian Untuk Destinasi Asian Setiap Hari!
  CheeChingy.com – Happy 45th ASEAN Day!!
• More Indonesian press release news links:
  http://www.tribunnews.com/2012/07/16/komitmen-airasia-asean-terhadap-asean
  http://www.investor.co.id/infrastructure/airasia-luncurkan-aseanita-kampanyekan-asean-community/40597
  http://beritasurabaya.net/i
  ndex_sub.php?category=7&id=6957&tags=Komitmen-AirAsia-Asean-Lewat-Aseanita
  http://www.medanbisnisdaily.com/news/read/2012/07/16/106330/komitmen_airasia_asean_terhadap_asean/#.UAPxr_WJS4I

WHY ASEAN?

Imagine that your voice can impact the lives of not just your fellow citizens, but 600 million people.

This is the strength of Asean. A 600m strong, wealthy community with a GDP of USD2.1trn that is becoming increasingly well-connected through mobile internet and the low cost carrier revolution in air travel. With Asean, you can share your passion, creativity, and ideas with a much bigger and diverse community. Those who influence are those who can inspire others.

Asean has come this far in 45 years, from 5 countries to 10. Asean Day is an occasion to celebrate the success of our visionary Founders who sought to forge a new future with Asean. They inspired a legacy of peace and socio-economic co-operation in Asean. This legacy lives on and continues to grow, 45 years on.

The time has come to realize the futures of our communities are inextricably linked to one another, interwoven in a tapestry of shared dreams and destinies. The time has come to realize that we are not just people of 1 country, but 1 region. We are Asean.

The post Launching of AirAsia asean in Jakarta + My Vision for ASEAN appeared first on Spinzer - Blogger, Entrepreneur, Celebrity Manager.

Now this was exactly what I had in mind as I created my own startup called SocialGrooves.com, which is aimed to be a social business utilizing social media to promote other cause-centric businesses that are more often

not seen or known. Although the site is new, I’ve always been working with startups such as UKEC (or at least revitalizing it to its full glory), Young Corporate Malaysians (YCM), RandomAlphabets and its sister company Wago and even TeachForMalaysia, a new initiative whose objective is such that one day, all children in Malaysia will have the opportunity to attain excellent education. But most of these do not add to my rice bowl, hence, @SocialGrooves was formed on the 15th of December 2010, under the support of one Ong Kian Ming aka @imokman who said that I had to make a living for myself at the end of the day.

@SocialGrooves would not have formed if not for two people who joined me at the heart of it all, @YapThomas and @PD_Ren. Part of my own little ambition, the creation of the Engagement of Youth in the Economy (EYE) Project would not have started as well if not for @Re7a. The point here is that, if not for these people, none of this would have happened, and mind you none of them has gotten any pay because they want the companies to receive fundings first. Money will surely come, but passion and desire to make a winning product is really the most important factor as a startup! (this was how the initiatives mentioned above became successful anyway, because of the dedicated teams in each of the respective startups).

Now in every initiative, there are always leaders associated with them. For @WooThemes, there was @adii, Magnus and Mark and crew.

For UKEC, @WMFirdaus, myself and the rest of the crew compromising of Lopes, @aliaishk, @iedilputra, @rashdanh, Wan Zu, Ain and more.

For RandomAlphabets we have @ZainHD, @NikiCheong and I along with playas @vinivedivici @devuschka @shaqyl @radiojules and more.

For Teach For Malaysia, there was @Dzameer, @keeransivarajah and I before super crew @nawranajebe and others came in.

So you see, it always starts with a small group of people before the community grows. And now, all of the initiatives have grown so much it’s amazing. It’s part of people’s lives. It’s become a reason to live. The people who start all of these, they are inspirations by themselves. I needed @Adii to know this, and his reply was as above!

The next thing I know, he says

Tweets like this, makes everything so much more worthwhile.

Clicking the link brought me to his blog, on this post right here:

Can you imagine the thrill of having someone like @adii blogging about you, appreciating a reply from some random nobody who’s a big fan of his work? This is a person who leads some 45,000 community of users using @Woothemes and is currently heading Aboard Entrepreneurship, a project about entrepreneurship and empowering upcoming entrepreneurs do be better entrepreneurs in the future by teaching them skills and inspiring them via the shared knowledge and experience of all of AE’s contributors, some of which consist of the people in the list below:

• Alexa Andrzejewski, Foodspotting
• Jacob DeHart, Threadless (Ex)
• Todd Garland, BuySellAds
• Justin Kan, justin.tv
• Jenn Lim, Zappos
• Matt Mullenweg, Automattic (!!!)
• Alexis Ohanian, Reddit
• Naveen Selvadurai, Foursquare (oh yes)
• Collis Ta’eed, Envato
• Garry Tan, Posterous

You can’t tell me you don’t know at least 2 of the people in this list! Anyway the point is that if someone like me can be a reason for @adii to

do more, what if I, in turn, became an inspiration to others, too? It’s a whole ecosystem here, and a positive one, too

Seriously @Adii, not only did you inspire me with your work, but with this single post, I feel that I can achieve this year’s seemingly impossible target I’ve set for myself and my amazing team. The impact of your post even beats the highlight of being made into a referral point at Forbes’s blog for this post I made about Obama and the Digital Knights of the rectangular table

The above is a screenshot that I will forever remember as my first step into one of Forbes’s many powerful list

Yes, I am indeed inspired again and again this year for so many reasons. I cannot afford to fail myself, my team and my country and so will never give up and live up to the namesake of my father, the great Dr Tock Min Kin, who taught me the meaning of perseverance.

The post It is inspirations like these that makes it all the awesomer! appeared first on Spinzer - Blogger, Entrepreneur, Celebrity Manager.