Professional Development Week

Week 8

See Zi Yi

0340094

Major Project

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During Professional Development Week, I joined a total of 5 webinars. The first webinar I joined on 17th October 2022 is about Financial Literacy by Maybank. The six main points mentioned are (1) saving RM1000, (2) paying off high-interest debt, (3) emergency fund, (4) insurance, (5) growing wealth, and (6) life's first big purchase. (1) Saving RM1000 taught us to start off small with our savings by applying zero-based budgeting. This budgeting shows how can we zero raise our budget. Our income is allocated to expenses, savings, and debt payments. The steps of zero-based budgeting start with writing down your monthly income, and expenses, creating your category, assigning each ringgit to a category, track your spending. (2) Paying off high-interest debt encourages us to clear off debt as soon as possible so we won't bear any debt. We are also encouraged to save up an emergency fund that's 3 to 6 months' worth of our salary. The few criteria for having this emergency fund are having a designated saving account just for emergency purposes, keeping it in a high-interest savings account (M2U Savers), must be easily accessible, and being reliable. (4) Insurance would keep us insured throughout our life during unforeseen circumstances, and I understood the importance of it during this talk. Lastly, we were given some tips on (6) life's first big purchase such as buying a house, car, etc. Some tips were given for house purchasing such as, buying within our means, don't spend more than 30% of our salary, preparing a 10% downpayment + 5% of the surroundings, researching its surroundings, and exploring affordable housing schemes. Lastly, the speaker taught us how to differentiate between real and fake investing firms. Do not trust firms that offer monthly interest, such as 10% every month. Check the investor alert list and see if the firm falls in that or contact PDRM for checking. If they ask you to transfer money to another person's account, there's a possibility it is gonna be a mule account. All in all, I was very glad for this topic as it's crucial for final-year students to equip themselves with financial knowledge to be able to venture into life. 

The second day's PDW talk speaks about personal branding on LinkedIn by Kent from PwC. One of the interesting points he brought up was that we should keep our LinkedIn profile simple and straightforward so employers would get a glimpse of our experience and achievements within a short period of time. E.g. use point form to mention your points. Most importantly, we must be professional while crafting our LinkedIn profile and communicating with companies we're interested in. In essence, it was a rather interesting talk listening to a professional share his insights about this topic.

The third talk I attended speaks about “The Power of I.P. (Intellectual Property) Monetization" by STIVE ASIA. STIVE is Southeast Asia's 1st Subscription-based Digital IP Platform where users can sell and purchase illustrations, music, WhatsApp stickers, animations, GIFs, and online courses all in one place. Besides, bazaars, freelancing, and online sales platform are the 3 types of sources of income for creatives. I also learned that intellectual property is one of the easiest ways to venture into a passive income. The world's most money-making IP is Pokemon, followed by Hello Kitty and Mickey Mouse. This talk makes me realize that we as creators need to fully utilize whatever knowledge we already have to create the outcomes we want. STIVE allows a lot of features for creators to manage their work, e.g. strategize the marketing strategy of your work, check on your followers, etc. This platform will also provide a certain amount of royalty to creators based on the number of downloads of their work. This talk makes me realize that we as creators should work smart to monetize our work during our design journey. I am keen to explore this platform soon too!

"Storyteller: Lessons from the Father of Malaysian Animation Industry" by FILMIC ENTERPRISE was the fourth talk I attended. I was enlightened to learn the 4 ways of learning which are from the teacher, referencing, thinking, and trial & error. Levelers focus on ideas and concepts, while sharpeners would be people who like to focus on execution. Personal qualities would outright the study qualification training. Mr Hassan shared with us ways to think out of the box for us to stand out from the rest. We should always think differently by traveling, reading books, watching movies, and mixing with smarter people. Self, career, and relationship should be balanced and managed wisely to achieve a balance in life. Referencing is very important as if it's completely original, it would take a long time to convince others to accept it. It was an insightful talk as I get to learn more about the animation industry.

The fifth talk I attended is named "How to Future Proof Your Career" by THE APPRENTICE ASIA. I have to say I am amazed by the speaker, Mr Jonathan Yabut's confidence while giving his speech. He got to his points really quickly and precisely, hence I got to learn a lot from his speech. The few important points I learned are to (1) invest in your technology quotient (TQ), (2) be strategic when job-hunting, (3) a future-proof career is also a people-proof career, and (4) careers are never-ending journeys. In the long run, you'll need to manage your motivation and not just your time. For (1) technology quotient, we are advised to utilize apps such as Discover.ly & Sidekick to learn about what the companies would check out about us when we applied for positions in their companies. (2) be strategic when job-hunting teaches us to find for industry, company, skill, and not just the position. Do not limit the number of searches, as you can do more than what you studied. Diversify your opportunities. The (3) point encourages us to nudge, connect, and volunteer outside of our immediate networks. The (4) point teaches us to spread ourselves across multiple sources, and never anchor ourselves to only one person or one thing. Most importantly, we should expose ourselves to the outside world, and don't stay inside the cocoon.

The final talk I signed up for is "Life of a Producer in the Video Production Industry" by LOKALAB. I learned that there are 6 different types of production in the film industry: (1) film/music video, (2) corporate video, (3) life broadcast, (4) weddings/events (5) advertisements, and (6) TV series & documentary. I learned that different types of films will require different techniques. Pre-production (50%), production (30%), and post-production (20%) would be the weightage of each aspect of film and video production. We need to have decent PR skills to convey our concepts to others.

In essence, the talks I have attended have provided in-depth insights to me which would be beneficial to my career pathway or life.