I was a tad early on 13 May at Goodman Arts Centre. Then I bumped into Mr Sujimy at the carpark. We had a good interaction, exchanging conversations before another friend, Hazrin of Haz Works join us and then we proceeded to the Black Box venue.
The session started at about 945 am with our first Speaker, Mr Nassir, the founder of Simply Islam shared a comprehensive list of the jobs in the creative industry. Among the topics he shared that interest me of how could we give back to the society. Instead of just "gulung tikar" at the masjid where the youths could do it, we could tap on our expertise (eg photography, for some of us who are into that) and contributed back. He suggested to choose one mosque (or a charity organisation) that we could volunteer in, and work with that organisation on pro bono arrangements. Mr Nassir outlined the following ways on giving back to the society through creative means: 1) Set intentions - always re-check and review at any point of time 2) Unlearn & learn new skills 3) Have a mentor and advisor; even if we cant meet up often, keep a catch up with him/ her 4) No room for mediocrity - We should not stop at mediocre work, rather we should strive for the best that we can input 5) Solve real problems' 6) Help charities and muslim orgnisations on a pro bono basis 7) Do creative da'wah - films, photography, songs, poetry, boardgames Our second speaker, Bro Saiful Anuar, shared an interesting perspective about creativity and ideation: on how to use Design Thinking elements to solve problems. This topic was really fun because it was exactly in line with what I do; i teach creativity at Ngee Ann Polytechnic and I run theatre-based creative problem solving workshops under my company's banner, The Speaking Factory. Bro Saiful shared the importance of empathise on the user needs before we design a new product/ service for a customer; and it was really important for participants in any brainstorming workshop to read on the particular subjects to have prior knowledge before embarking on the session. The third speaker, Ustaz Shahib Amin, the founder of Syukran International himself, highlighted three crucial things in creativity 1) Show your work and share behind the scene stuff. - this is important because audience are very interested on wanting to know what's behind the scene, there is a value in it eg on how a movie is made. At the same time, it serves as a marketing tool for a product or service 2) The perfect time - There is no perfect time, everything is perfect time This is another perspective that I really got interested as he used the analogy of time as a rubber band and as a barakah. The more we use time properly to His ways, we will realise that time is moving 'slow' and we could achieve more things in life. I thought I experienced this several times. If I wasted my time, time will move very fast; but if we invested it for something useful I realised that time is always on my side. He also shared on how Imam Nawawi has written more than 2000 works in his 28 years + of da'wah. How did he achieve so much? It is the barakah on time. 3) Big versus Different - "When you focus on everything, you are not focused on anything" It was another good perspective shared; we should capitalise on our strengths and work on our own doman expertise. Our final speaker, Mr Sujimy Mohamad, started with a good inspiring words: Believe in our craft = Value = Market We should believe in our craft because our craft brings a value to the ones who need it and thus, create a market for it. Mr Sujimy shared his insights on the talk can be found here (article written in Malay): http://www.sujimy.com/blog/syukran-circle-kreativiti-perniagaan-tawakkal Mr Sujimy highlighted 4 things that we should pay attention to with regards to monetising our craft: 1) Strongly believe that Allah will assist us when we do anything for Allah's cause (barakah) 2) Believe in serving a community 3) Believe in serving a global community 4) Believe that each product has a purpose to serve others In order to think and serve a global community, there is a need to have a paradigm shift. He shared a very good analogy to explain paradigm shift. The story went something like this: "Once a man brought his two little sons onto a train. They were so mischievous; playing and running in the train cabin; much to the frustration of the other passengers. An angry passenger then approached the father, asking why did the kids behave so 'naughtily', and the father said that the Mother had just passed away recently. He let them behave that way to de-stress that moments of sadness of her passing. Upon hearing this, the passenger's mindset shifted from angry to sorry for the family." Mr Sujimy also shared that to look into our craft if they could be designed for several levels: 1) exclusivity 2) distribution agents 3) Footprint (mobile tp Video on demand, cable tv, iptv, dvd, Free to air) 4) Rights (intelectual property) 5) 360 degrees (eg print to screen, screen to theatre, threatre to radio etc) One of my major takeaways on his topic was that he recommended us to attend trade shows; because in tradeshows are where we could keep up the changing trends of the industry we are in. He parted the session with the Key Driver in business : Tawakkal All in all, it was an enriching experience to attend. Kudos to Syukran International for holding such talks and am looking forward for the Syukran Circle events. cheers Hazriq Idrus PS: Oh, Abdillah mentioned that I looked like Sujimy in his younger days (based on the photos shown during Sujimy's presentation. And Sujimy said he didn't deny it...eheheh..funmy la you people!. :) Comments are closed.
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