Walter | Cooler Insights

SHINE Festival Shimmers and Sparkles

July 1, 2012 • Blog • no comments

An unlikely crew of super heroes

With the tagline “Fire Up Your Passion”, this year’s SHINE Youth Festival comprises a month-long extravaganza of activities geared towards getting youths to do their part for society. To contribute, they can pledge to SHINE at the festival itself, do it online, or find ways to “take action and lead ground-up initiatives that would benefit the community” (quoting from Lynette Lee, SHINE Youth Festival Steering Committee member).

Held at Ngee Ann City’s Civic Plaza yesterday, the SHINE festival boasted a series of youth-led social movements such as the ever popular Cosmo Youth Parade, Community Service Marathon’s “Walk for a Cause” featuring an 800 m long cloth dragon, Urban Sports Challenge and the Dell-Intel Youth Concert.

Gardens by the Bay Blossoms

June 28, 2012 • Blog • no comments

A pristinely curated garden sprawled over 101 hectares in area, Gardens by the Bay is 36% larger than the Singapore Botanic Gardens and populated by more than 750,000 plants in total. Opened last night by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, the project costed more than $1 billion and boasts of 7 key attractions including the Dragonfly and Kingfisher Lakes, World of Plants, Heritage Gardens and the Bay East Garden.

The Science of Great Teams

June 26, 2012 • Blog • no comments

Courtesy of Blaze Institute

Why do some teams produce outstanding results while others lag behind given similar resources?

The secret, according to “The New Science of Building Great Teams” in Harvard Business Review, is that successful teams have higher energy, are more engaged, and spend more time exploring outside the group. These patterns of communication and interaction are strongly correlated with performance metrics such as the average handling time in a bank’s call centre.

Hacking Work: A Smart Solution to Stupid Processes

June 24, 2012 • Business and Management • 1 comment

Courtesy of Technotraps

Beleaguered employees can now leverage on a “cheat code” to streamline work and increase their productivity – without getting into trouble.

With the subtitle “Breaking Stupid Rules For Smart Results”, Hacking Work by Bill Jensen and Josh Klein encourages workers of all stripes to utilise “benevolent” hacking to get their jobs done more effectively and efficiently.

Project Intan – Helping Ill Kids through Culture

June 23, 2012 • Blog • no comments

Project Intan is an initiative by The Intan (a boutique Peranakan home museum) which won the Museum Roundtable awards in 2011) with the goal of helping raise funds for charitable causes. Brainchild of Alvin Mark Yapp, owner of The Intan, Project Intan seeks to help worthwhile charities through direct donations and pledges.

This year, The Intan is working with the ARC Children’s Centre to help create a flu-free environment and increase its educational and development programmes for the kids. Started in 2011, Arc is a daycare charity for young patients with serious illnesses such as cancer. These kids receive intensive medical treatment and are unable to return to school or socialize in a normal setting as they are still
prone to infection.

Grooming Tomorrow’s Leaders

June 21, 2012 • Blog • no comments

Participants and facilitators of the inaugural YLT in Singapore

As Facebook’s IPO continue to garner interest (both good and bad), the question on many people’s lips is this: Can Singapore produce business leaders who started young such as Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates?

Well, perhaps the Young Leaders of Tomorrow (YLT) programme can help to usher the way.

Shrink, Shorten and Simplify

June 19, 2012 • Business and Management • 1 comment

Courtesy of Putting People First

Shrink that proposal. Shorten that memo. Simplify that presentation.

Do it in four pages (or less). Better yet if you can tell me what decision you need in 30 seconds flat. Starting from now…

Our Holiday in Colourful Korea

June 17, 2012 • Blog • 2 comments

Fantasy Parade at Everland Theme Park

“안녕하세요 (Annyeong Haseyo)!” greeted our tour guide Colin every morning, rowsing the weary coach-load of travellers during our recent holiday in Korea. With an action-packed itinerary packed into 7 days, one could hardly consider Korea as the “Land of the Morning Calm”.

Squeezing a population of 50 million packed into 100,000 square kilometres of mostly mountainous space, South Korea is both an economic and cultural miracle. With a GDP of US$1.164 trillion (2011), the “Miracle on the Han River” is fast overtaking Japan in global prominence. Korea’s tremendous influence on popular culture in terms of K-Pop and soap dramas is also unprecedented.

June 14, 2012 • Social Influence • no comments

Are you addicted to social networks? (courtesy of Salsafrica Blog)

I’ve just watched a TED video featuring a highly impactful talk by psychologist Sherry Turkle on how we’re all becoming increasingly connected while becoming increasingly alone.

It really set me thinking. Hard.

Author: coolerinsights