On September 29th, 2017, I attended the TechStars Startup Weekend that led by volunteer community leaders, located at Emerald Hub, PPIU Building. It lasted for three days and the theme of the events is “Education”. So, basically, the people that joined the event have to form a team and come up with ideas that would help to improve education in Cambodia. We have 54 hours to develop our idea and then pitch it to the judges. My team consisted of five members and had come up with an idea of helping the students to get real-life experience through field trips. We primarily organize field trips for students and let them gain real knowledge outside of the classroom through our website “TripRean“. Within those 54 hours of developing our idea, we received lots of advice from the mentor there in making our idea become reality. This was such a challenging experience for me to get involved in the business startup idea that we have to plan everything and follow the Canvas Business Model.
SAIMUN 2017
On March 17th and 18th 2017, I attended SAIMUN in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, that hosted by Renaissance International School Saigon at the Sheraton Hotel & Tower. In that Model United Nation conference, I was the delegation of Sweden in the General Assembly 4 committee. “Reaching Global Consensus” was the theme of the whole conference. It was my first time to join the General Assembly committee and to be in the committee alone without any other Liger’s students. It was very challenging for me to work with other students to come up with a thoughtful resolution for the topic that my team and I focused on, which is the question of redefining the role of neighboring countries in refugee crisis. I was the youngest delegate in my committee and English is my second language, so it very difficult for me to collaborate and communicate my idea to the other students in the team. Thus, this experience had really built up the courage for me to face my fear of being shy and quiet, to actually be strong and brave in communicating my ideas.
Hackathon #SVtoPP
Maya Gilliss-Chapman, a founder of Cambodia in Tech, wants to build a bridge between Silicon Valley and Phnom Penh. So, she comes up with an idea of Hackathon event. Hackathon happened on the 26th and 27th November, it is not really an event but a competition. Basically, there are many groups that trying to develop their idea addressing a problem in the society. They have to have their solution mockup and a business plan. There are two groups that come from my school, one is a group that doing about the health problem and my group, which is about finding a market for farmers (ImEx). We used all of those two days to prepare and develop our idea. At the end, we have to pitch our idea/solution to the judges. The team that caught my attention the most is the Flexible Keyboard. Their idea is really cool, in term of helping Cambodian to type Khmer faster and in a correct word. Finally, after the pitch, there were three teams that won the award and that does not include my team. We didn’t surprise because the teams that we compete with are the students from University. We were proud of all of the effort and determination that we all had put into this competition. We had lots of good advice from judges that we can somehow develop on our application more. We had met lots of people that interest in our idea and want to help us develop it.
Thanks so much, Maya, for this Hackathon! Hope to join it again….
Impact Stroll Event
On the 20th November 2016, I joined an Impact Stroll Event, which is organized by Impact Hub. Basically, a group of people including myself and the other students are walking from place to place, to listen to different social enterprises. There are many social enterprises that I heard from, including Lucky Iron Fish, Amboh Espadrille, Chhlat (smart in Khmer), KamasK and so on. All of those social enterprises are not just generating money but also helping people: providing jobs and the need of people. It makes me think that business is not just generating money but also helping those who need help. It such a great time and experience to listen to all other those social enterprises. I hope to join it again next year.
Barcamp ASEAN 2016
On the 5th and 6th November 2016, I joined Barcamp event at the Norton University. There are many different conferences, present by both foreigners and Cambodians. I had joined lots of discussions, some of them are fascinating, and some are very boring. The conferences that I joined are Introduction to JavaScript, Human Center Design, Customizing with Materialize, Image Processing, Creative in Technology and much more. It such an excellent time to participate in that event and get new experience and knowledge.