PDW / Professional Development Week : Reflection
The first webinar I joined was by ZaSve regarding accessibility and universal design project implementation. The company does consultancy for architecture in relation to accessibility, thus the seminar mainly covered issues related to wheelchair-accessible design. The speaker highlighted how sometimes the difference in inaccessible and accessible spaces boils down to things that sound minor such as a few extra centimetres around a kitchen sink so a wheelchair user has space to move around. However, as an abled person, you might not realise how impactful these small changes can be; it is not enough to have sympathy for those who are differently able. You need to have empathy, and to actively test that your designs are feasible for use by all ranges of people .
Next, the webinar by Maybank gave advice for freshgrads on saving and investing. The speaker emphasised a few key areas of “firsts” where we may need to spend large sums of money such as purchasing your first car and house, marriage, and how to tackle those areas wisely. In summary, it is important to know your risk tolerance and to have an emergency fund, try to have both you and your partner’s finances as clean of a slate as possible before getting married and combining finances, and a car you can afford would be one that costs as much as one year of your salary.
The following session was held by Passion Republic and covered the experience of working in the game and entertainment industry. I was quite appreciative of how frank the speaker was, especially in how he described that a lot of Malaysian work within this industry may just be outsourced work by large game companies that need help with smaller details, and that sometimes our local media can twist these into more glamorous, hero stories as if the companies here are carrying these global projects on their back. He also gave plenty of insight that is helpful in working in any sort of design related or creative field such as the important of research, ways to prevent burning yourself out, and that it is key for you to have fun in the work you are doing especially if you are working in entertainment.
The next webinar by Linkedin covered a variety of features that LinkedIn has that we can use to help improve our professional network. I had already created and explored these things on LinkedIn prior, so I mainly paid attention to the advice on how to optimise the use of said features. Some main takeaways were that branding is important to communicate your goals, and one tip to come up with your personal brand is to think of a few words that your friends would use to describe you. This personal brand should guide what and how you write your profile. Besides that, it was heavily emphasised that networking can exponentially expand the pool of opportunities available to you, so we should connect with more people on LinkedIn and do so wisely.
The presentation by Enfinity Academy spoke about business acumen with an emphasis on how creativity is the most important human trait, and one thing that technology can never replace. While the talk was centered around performing arts, there were still helpful pointers that can apply in anything such as how imagination can take you further than knowledge sometimes, that you need to think of your audience or end user when approaching something creatively, and to have empathy in your pursuits.
The final session I joined by People Systems Consultancy was meant to cover technological approaches for social impact, but mainly spoke about the strategies they have within their company to promote a good culture and did not speak much of that technological approach at all. However he did speak of the work they do in assisting social enterprises to have more stable and sustainable incomes and I do admire the mission behind the work he mentioned. He spoke of how adamant he is on working without bribes and running the company with integrity which I do feel is extremely important in any company and especially when your company is rooted in assisting marginalised communities.
