1) Mini Report

This activity, the senior farewell ceremony, is a once-in-a-year activity where we the junior bid farewell to our seniors in the organization. This event is an event that focuses on leadership and teamworking: no leader can succeed without being grateful to others. The event greets the participating senior and junior by serving the meal, and some mini-games for warm up. Despite our soon graduating seniors being stressed out by their final year projects, they still manage to enjoy themselves and let their hair down for a moment. Since the main objective is to show our appreciation and gratitude towards our leading seniors, the event continues with a series of performance prepared by the juniors. We had performed group dancing, singing. The last part of the event includes a confession session, that gives seniors and junior the chance to open up and express feelings and talk about the experience they cherish the most during the servicing period in the organization.

2) Self-Reflection

Just like the saying: let every man praise the bridge he goes over. We as the junior should always remember and be grateful for our senior in the organization that had taken on the responsibility to lead and nurture us in every aspect. Their contribution is voluntary, which is an act of kindness that is not asking for return. This event had solidified and highlighted our senior efforts, and knowingly we could never repay equal our senior’s effort, we hope we can at least do something to express our appreciation towards them. For me, through this event, I understand better that a leader should not ask for return in every contribution he makes, instead, take action for the sake of helping others to grow. Besides, this event also reminds us that without our senior’s dedication, we can never achieve our height today. Everyone understands the value of being thankful, but without this event, we might never get the chance to express our gratitude in a whole. Moreover, it also reminds me to practice thankfulness in every day towards everyone. The challenges in this event are venue arrangements, meal arrangements, and practice of our performance. Although everyone is busy with our respective schedule, everyone eventually is able to cope and make time for discussion and practice. This requires an enormous amount of cooperation and understanding between each other. Personally, I am very happy that the event turned out to be successful, where everyone left with a heart filled with blessings.

It doesn't feel realistic, to be immersed in a surreal environment of university. To be finally reaching the stage of life that many had spoken about: University life. The spoken dreamy leisure life, living amidst adventures, vibrant social life, focused and dedicated academic studies. This image of university life that portray by my fellow seniors, had made me  excitingly look forward to this phase of life. With great expectation, I left my humble city by the sea, Kuantan, my birthplace, and went abroad to unfold a new journey of life.

The calm welcoming breeze of Johor had caress my cheeks as soon I set foot on her land. Although we shall not judge a book by its cover, but witnessing the great architecture, vast area of the university had given me great confidence where the coming four years of my university years will be one of the best chapter in my life that I would never forget: what a place, and I could not help but to wonder what kind of people I would meet and what kind of story would be written. I have to admit, I am blessed. For having the chance to stand on the stage to unleash my talent: I've participate UTM got talent as the lead vocalist. Despite the short session of training with the other freshman, we managed to put up a, I would say an awesome show for the night.

Full Link for The Video

https://www.facebook.com/univteknologimalaysia/videos/254456448734124/

This magical journey had just embark; there's still more empty pages to be filled with memories that will be cherished, lifelong.

[INDUSTRIAL VISIT 3 ] Reflection for CIMB industrial visit.

Growing up as a Malaysia citizen, CIMB has long been a familiar name for us. And for the first time, to be able to set foot inside the headquarter of CIMB: Menara CIMB, let us feel so close to the company.

After our kind speaker introduced us about the internship programmes and competition CIMB organized, we definitely feel motivated. These programmes which demand the cream of the generation, motivates us to be the best of the best, through lifelong learning and expanding our skillset. This encourage us to step out our comfort zone, to learn, to explore and evolve. Nevertheless, this reclaims that the importance in excel in our academic studies, and yet developing extra potential in ourselves.

Despite CIMB bank originates as a bank company, CIMB gave significant attention and effort in developing and discovering talents. Those competitions, those internship programmes, provided a platform for potential developing: by preparing the required conditions for cultivation of future leaders. Hence, we would like to put forward our gratitude and express our appreciation towards CIMB for organizing these programme.

In a nutshell, every journey begins with a single step. In order to increase our potential in the industry, some of the practical approach include actively participate in national state activities such as hackathons and internship programmes. As these will widen our horizon and give us different perspectives in inspecting topic, and add experience of operation. Furthermore, participation in these events also expand our network of connection: get to know more peers in the industry, and concurrently gain more exposure to industrial companies.

At last, we would like to express our appreciation once again to every party who made this visit a reality, which brought us positive impact which would last a lifetime.

[INDUSTRIAL VISIT 2] Reflection for ADAX industrial visit.

               It’s truly an honour to be able to participate in this eye-opening industrial visit. With kind guidance brought by the technology frontiers, we are blessed to take a glance at the current trends in the field of technology: what to expect and what not to. Indeed, the current market has high and wrong expectation on data scientist: data scientist is just an individual which has capabilities to deploy big data tools in solving big data problems to aid better decision making.

With that being said, we as a Data Engineering students get a better picture of our own career development: the realistic picture of what a data scientist does, a realistic call from the dream. Hence, the exposure on practical application of data science stressed the importance of fundamental knowledge: what we are learning now, is the fundamental basic building blocks of data science, and success is only guaranteed with a strong foundation. Hence, regardless how basic what we are leaning now, we finally understand how important it is since every sophisticated project will still always back to basic at some point.

               Furthermore, speaking in plans of self-improvement for increment of self-potential, we understand that the current market demands multi-talented employees. Datacamp is one of the best way to expand our practical skillset: online courses which teaches R and Python programming, Data Science courses which can add extra value to ourselves. However, it wasn’t the hard skills are important, instead, soft skills are also being taken into accounts. We shall develop our soft skills like presentation skills, team management skills, time management and much more.

               Although the qualities that make a good data engineer nowadays are seemingly high, MDEC help us to cut out the panic: MDEC rolled out multiple programmes to assist us in development of these qualities. Hence, after the industrial visit, we are very interested to participate in programmes like Data Star initiative, soft skill development by MDEC and other potential developing programmes.

               Last but not least, we would like to express our gratitude again to every party which made this visit a reality, which left a great, impactful experience for us.

[INDUSTRIAL TALK 1] Reflection for MDEC industrial talk.

            The most amazing part of eRezeki, the generation of extra income does not require adaptation of new skills: sharing-economy make use of professional skills that one had already acquire, then complete task which they had already familiar with. Without needing to leave one’s comfort zone to earn extra income, eRezeki can be stated as one of the most successful practical application of crowdsourcing and sharing-economy solution.

            As an undergraduate student, by just witnessing great success achieved by the past participants had already give strong faith to join eRezeki’s program. Furthermore, similar to many other participants, which keep graphical design as a hobby, eRezeki provide a platform to unleash my passion and also a space to realize my creative art career.

After attending the industrial talk, it has strengthened faith in myself to start a business online: starting a business with aid of eRezeki is no more that a snap of the finger. Our kind speaker, Mr. Mohd Ihsanuddin Jamhari also shares his personal experience which adds as a testimonial of success. He himself is a UTEM Melaka Engineering graduate, and also an alumnus of UTM since he completed his Master studies in education in UTM.  He further explains that, although he comes from such an engineering background, his passion in arts resulted him to keep photography and graphical design as hobby. This made him into doing freelancing: self-employed to deliver photography and graphic design services. He said during his time, there’s no existence of eRezeki initiative yet to aid him kickstart his freelancing career, which made the journey tougher: nowadays eRezeki initiative provided a more encouraging environment for freelancers to survive and thrive.

The nature of digital economy which comprise of low setup cost, globalized, time-constrain-free, easily maintained granted a lower requirement to spark a new business: and eRezeki program’s objective is to guide you to establish a successful one.

            Hence, with the great and deep interest in eRezeki program, I will certainly join the online workforce and start to build my dream into reality.

[INDUSTRIAL TALK 2] Reflection for NALI conference

There are several observable and significant trends throughout the NALI 2018 symposium.

First and foremost, the most significant trend in NALI 2018, is the application of digital technology. The usage of digital devices such as VR headset, mobile applications ease the process of learning, promote a more immersive learning experience in the classroom. The concept of virtual classroom, allows a higher degree of participation from the students via interactive activities. Digital technology doesn’t even promote innovative learning experience, but also give support on administrative work. The project make use of digital technology to gain insights on implementation and integration of digital learning in the classroom. The application give automatic data storage, data analyzation, which give simple, fast, yet accurate results in order to give reflection on the actual situation, hence yielding a effective grading system.

On the other hand, the trend of play-and-learn is also significant throughout NALI 2018. One of the participant make use of Lego to let the students simulate the actual process of industrial process. The industrial process which involves inventory management, assembly point, logistics support is being scaled down and carried out using Lego bricks. Students which participates in the process gain first-hand experience, and also retain a better understanding for the whole process. Meanwhile, the play-and-learn trends can also be seen in some other booth which utilize simple tools or toys, to create an immersive and practical experience for the students. By using this effective method, learning experience is being brought to a higher level, one which is innovative, effective, yet fun and interesting.

Furthermore, the trend of tools development is also one of the major trends in NALI 2018. Instead of development in learning experience, a several group of educators focus on development of tools. In this context, tools such as grading systems, personality test are useful to in which to identify student performance, analyse classroom’s performance. These tools might help to provide a better picture, and assist in identifying patterns and problems, and in return helps in decision making.

[INDUSTRIAL VISIT 1] Reflection for CICT industrial visit.

The beneficial visit of CICT has given several reflection and inspiration which brought significant and great impact.

For a Computer Science student major of Data Engineering, the CICT visit has given insights upon our future goals. By witnessing the chronological development of technology, for example: from the mainframe technology, magnetic tape recorder, server racks to the modern computer technology of ours today, has been a strong evidence of perseverance of the modern pioneers in technology fields. Despite of hardships such as tedious workflow, high maintenance of hardware, these obstacles did not stop innovation and invention to happen.

Improvement in hardware has been so successful which can be seen in the significant decrease in the size of computers: from the mainframe to laptops, tablets and smartphone nowadays. Hence, our dream, is to match software’s development with hardware’s rapid pace. As a data engineering student, it’s safe to say that we hold the ability to contribute and participates in the next big thing of technology: the era of Big Data, and the Internet of Things (IoT). And we believe, with ability, there comes responsibility. Therefore, the goal is rather clear: to participate in the development and bring the change of IoT and Big Data to reality.

The visit has left meaningful impact to us: to understand and witness the whole process of function in a data centre ourselves is an amazing experience for us. To able to observe the hardware at such close distance is such a hard-to-get opportunity: the hardware that supported our software which we used every day. By acknowledging how CICT function in the olden days has given us motivation and inspiration: by taking accounts of local conditions, CICT had been functioning smoothly matching the demand despite of having a handful, limited technology resources. For then, we learned that, limited resources and constraints aren’t obstacles or excuses of success. Hence, we need to equip ourselves with creativity like the CICT pioneers, and grit that allows them to persevere in the difficult time.

Furthermore, there aren’t only motivation reflections emerged via the visit to CICT, but also reflections in improving in the aspects of practical implementation and daily practices. First of all, the complete, organized environment in CICT data centre had suggested a systematic way of organization is a crucial factor for success. In CICT, equipment is properly and systematically labelled, and display items which was being exhibited in the gallery was being taken care of in a tender manner: the display item was kept in the glass case for better preservation. Hence, we should also adapt, adopt, and practice this work ethic to ensure the project we are dealing didn’t ended up being too messy to deal with when the scale of the project increases.

Secondly, the collaboration and coordination skills displayed by CICT also inspired us in a meaningful way. CICT had been working closely with UTMKL data centre for all the years in many field of work. Nevertheless, it is the collaboration between UTMJB data centre and UTMKL centre had resulted the information technology systems to function as a whole. The speaker then mentioned that whenever we login to http://myutm.com.my, the data is being transmitted thru and fro between data centres of UTMKL and UTMJB. This remind us the idea of decentralisation computing, and in fact, CICT is already currently apply this key concept. Hence, we should also equip ourselves with innovative ideas like CICT in order to strive to success.

Thirdly, CICT scheduled regular maintenance and backup session. For a student, we often complaint about server breakdowns, and Wi-Fi downtimes. However, we should understand and be grateful that CICT is undergoing maintenance and regular update or backup session which ensure stability, security and efficiency of performance. According to our speaker, our personal data are being backup into several copies, to avoid accident such as loss of data. This safety countermeasure has granted all of us as a student peace of mind: for not having carry the risk of being a victim. Besides that, CICT had implemented numerous upgrades not only in hardware aspect but also the software aspect. The speaker explained about the history of UTM Wi-Fi, which started as a LAN room, Hotspot Area, to currently UTM Wi-Fi which is available with a wide coverage of area. The upgrade of such infrastructure had provide ease to students for internet access in order to complete each individual’s works. Not only that, CICT had provided software support such as http://myutm.com.my maintenance, software installation support. Development such as UTM VPN is also an innovative effort which enable users to access intranet services without physically in UTM campus area. The continuous effort of CICT portrayed by its regular maintenance and backups taught us to be better safe than sorry: an ideal approach and smart solution.

In a nutshell, the CICT visit has been one of the most meaningful experience: it has broadened our horizon, which created such an massive impact that would give us new ideas to improve our daily life.