Technology Information System (ePortfolio)

Assalamualaikum and selamat sejahtera, this is my reflective video for industrial training in Finexus Sdn Bhd.

Assalamualaikum and selamat sejahtera, this is my reflective video on Final Year Project 1 KTDI College Merit System.

            MERAK 19’ is an annual dinner of Kolej Tun Dr. Ismail, it was held on 18 April 2019 and organized by Jawatan Kuasa Mahasiswa (JKM KTDI). This program was to inculcate good values such as affection, empathy and unity among residents of Kolej Tun Dr. Ismail. It also arganised to give appreciation to every residents who has been contributing to the college. The dinner was attended by Deputy Senior Regisrar of Students’ Affairs, Tn Hj Dahari Bin Hj Derani, Principal of Kolej Tun Dr. Ismail(KTDI), Lt Kol Dr. Mohd Noor Azli bin Ali Khan, Department Chair of School of Computing, Prof. Dr. Abd. Samad bin Haji Ismail, Principal of Kolej Tun Cancelor(KTC), Prof. Ir. Dr. Sharul Kamal Bin Abdul Rahim, Principal or college K9&K10, Dr. Mohamad Amir Bin Shamsudin and President of Kolej Tun Dr. Ismail (KTDI), Umar Alfaruq bin Abdul Muthalib. During the dinner, the participants were presented with a performance from JKM KTDI 18/19 and Aksara KTDI. The dinner continued with the presentation of special awards for student and fellows. Among the awards were award for “King and Queen of The Night” and Best Post in Instagram with the caption of “Masih Ingatkah Dikau”.

Why did I join this program? What I want to learn from this program? This program was my first program as a crew. While working behind the scene, I was able to learn the process on how to organized an annual dinner and what need to be prepared for the event to be held smoothly. In addition, I learn on how to handle the events and situation in hectic environment. Just like any other annual dinner I found there’s no different on the event activities and agenda, the differences is only on how the team manage to handle the event successfully to satiesfy other party who pay some amount of money to join the dinner. Besides, this program help me a lot to enhance my self confident and my communication skill as I need to work with new people.

            As it was my first program as a crew, I was first hesitate about a lot of things such as am I doing the work correctly? Can I really involve or help other unit do their things? Should I tell them the ideas that I have during the meeting? I even hesitate to ask question that was lingering on my mind during the meeting with all members who organized this program.

As I was in the activity unit, there’s nothing much to do during preparation cause we need to handle during the event take place. Although I can speak with stranger I found it difficult for me to communicate and speak up my mind with my fellow crew. As it was my first experience, something are taken lightly by me, and I tend to communicate less with the group. Besides, I was being too dependent on my partner who is a leader of our activity unit at that time.

However, the involvement made me realized that it is important to communicate with my group, same as working environment where we are requires to adapt with the environment fast and communicate with people we never encounter before.

Now, I think it is important for me to initiate and adapt to the culture of new communities and work. In addition, it is important for me to be able to act professionally and responsibly in carrying out my duties. I also need to not only listen actively but also need to respond accordingly and shouldn’t hesitate to ask although for simple questions.

After this event take place, I was able to improve my communication skill on the other program. As I used to watch and control the situation of the event, I somehow manage to learn and try to be less panic and calmly overtake the situation. I realized that panic won’t help to sooth the situations, thus although failure is not something that we want to happen, but if it does, it could teach me a great lesson so that I could try not to make the same mistake in the future.

            During the annual dinner, the management could be seen a bit hectic since the beginning of the event. During the registration of attendees, the crew could be seen a bit panic to handle the situation as the attendees rush and not really queuing and scattered around the hotel area. It could be seen that the event was handle a bit rush and we were not able to grab the attendees attention to more priority agendas as they were busy wondering around the hotel and taking photos. I think it is due to the no preparation for movement beforehand. Thus, a better preparation is needed and should be consider as priority for the management of the event. I also think a management unit is needed to lead the other unit and crew to control the situation during the event.

Due to the budget constraint, crew need to control the portion of food taken by students although it is a catering buffet, I also in charge to ensure the participants are queuing during the serve time. However I think instead of controlling the portion, some event should try to reduce the budget on sourvenir or payment for the entertainment such as photo booth. It is also unnecessary to held an annual dinner in place far from the university as it will consume some amount of time to travel and some amount of money for the transportation of the bus for students from UTM.

For this event, my leader was not really communicating with me, we are thinking and do our own task without minding to discuss for improvement of ideas, this help me realizes the important of communicating, although we are respecting each other ideas but we are lack of team work. I think on the next event I need to not only think for the alternative ideas but also need to expand on and discuss the ideas with members.

This annual dinner was lead by our President of Kolej Tun Dr. Ismail (KTDI), Umar Alfaruq bin Abdul Muthalib. Although he was busy with his schedule during the process of planning the event, he did his best on ensuring we are comfortable and able to handle the task given. From there I observed, a leader need to be flexible and need to have the ability to lead and influence team members to complete given tasks. How does this relate to me? I taught me on how to be a good leader and what I need to have to become a leader that would understand other people’s attitude and behaviour, respect their ideas and have mutual trust.

            Although the event was successfully organized, I think some management part need to be improve. Some of the crew also mention during the post mortem that our Principal of KTDI, Lt Kol Dr. Mohd Noor Azli bin Ali Khan is seen to be not as satiesfied as he does during the last MERAK 18’.

Firstly, to organized program or an annual dinner, we need to consider the time constraint especially when the event is held on night. A better schedule planning and confirmation of unit to handle certain task need to be confirm before event take place. Communication is also the key to ensure all unit is ready in the position during the event to control the situation because from what I’ve observed some of the crew walking aimlessly and wandering around the event although the situation was not under control and hectic at the moment. I also learnt that we need to act effectively and imaginatively in difficult situation.

Secondly, I think for a big event, budget constraint is something that is priority and need an alternative method as we should not depends on sponsorship because company rarely would like to sponsor for this kind of events. From the experience I gained for helping the sponsorship unit, I was told by the leader that company rarely would sponsor annual dinner event unless it would benefit them, unlike any other program like running, school’s festival and more. Moreover, with the long preparation period, unit such as special task unit or activity unit that had less task should consider to market or sell stuff as a backup money. We need to use entrepreneurial mindset in dealing with problems.

In addition, as the attendees are required to pay some amount of money to participate in this event, we have the responsibility to make them satisfy and content about the money they spent. Although it is hard to comply with every demand but we should at least make the event memorable so that the attendees won’t regret spending their money in such event. I realized that when dealing with program that requires payment I need to ensure that the program would really benefit them.

This event taught me on how to organized an annual dinner and made me realized the important element and the improvement of management for the future event. I hope that next time from this experienced, I’m able to manage this kind of situation more smoothly and calmly.

              Comp Fair ’19 is a two days program organized by PERSAKA on 12 December and 13 December 2019, it is the largest annual IT event held with specialty of academic and IT knowledge by students of School of Computing. It is held to give exposure and enhance student’s skill related to the computer by holding activities such as academy talk, comptizen talk, forum and town hall. The main theme of this program was “4^th Industrial Revolution as business and IT mining balancing”.

The opening ceremony was held at Dewan Kejora, the organizer had invited the Dean of Faculti of Engineering, Prof. Dato’ Ir. Dr. Mohammed Rafiq bin Dato’ Addul Kadir and Chairman of School of Computing, Assoc. Prof. Ts. Dr. Wan Mohd Nasir bin Wan Kadir to join the students for the town hall session. Comptizen talk was mainly the interaction between speaker with audiences for a certain topic. The topics for Comptizen talk include “Manage Stress and Obtain Peace of Mind”, Making your CV Irresistible”, “Building Mobile Application Efficiently using Software Architecture” and “Design The Right Things & Design Things Right”. For academy talk, it was conducted by highly experienced people for student to expand their knowledge of computing, the topics was “Machine Learning Using Phyton”, “Design Modern and Elegant UI/UX with Figma” and “Basic of Capturing the Flag”.

From what I’ve experienced it is just like any other sharing program however it is a good experience for those students who involved as the topic also interesting and student can grab this chance to interact with the highly experienced people. By becoming the crew, this program taught me on how to handle documentation for sponsorship and how to lead the unit in short amount of time on top of hectic months as we are nearing our final examination.

How does this experience would help me later on during my internship or working field? Well first of all I think it would definitely help me on my soft skills, handling documents is not as easy as it seems, I need to communicate with several people just to obtain signature for the documents. Obviously, it would definitely enhance my communication skills as I am under sponsorship unit where I’m requires to negotiate and talk more with outsider to promote this event. Besides, I also get to enhance my ability to adapt to the culture of new communities and work as I requires to work with several people I do not recognize before.

              Before this program, I had joined many other programs that might help to improve my soft skill, besides, my work experience I think also does play important role helping me to confidently talk with strangers. In the same year, on April 2019, I’ve joined MERAK 19’ as the crew of the annual dinner. During those time, I rarely talk with my teammates unless necessary and we only start to interact and talk a lot more during the event. Thus, from there I’ve realized that to communicate with my members, I also should play the role to initiate the talk as they might be as shy as me and also wait for someone to initiate the discussion. I think it is important to always initiate it and do not wait for others as the advantage and improvement is for me.

In addition, other program also helps to enhance leadership skill, however, this program is different from any other program I’ve join before as I never personally handle sponsorship documents and lead the unit for a while. Before this program I had another program where I was required to help the other unit to search for sponsorship, but I think the experience is much more worth in this program where I had the responsibility in carrying out the duties. Although I’ve learnt the basic things on how to communicate and promote the program to the company assigned to me, but through this program I had learn more technique on how to speak and negotiate with the company we target more politely and do not seems like we are begging and urging them for the sponsorships. I do have knowledge on how to promote before from my working experience as I used to work as sales assistants in Guardian Sdn. Bhd. however, those promote skills that I’ve learnt is so much different from what I’ve learnt through this program.

Furthermore, although among my friends I am usually the leader of the team project, I found that working as a leader to my friends and some people I don’t talk before is bit different. With friends we know their attitude and their behaviour, thus, I think I need to observed and communicate with team members frequently to be more familiar with their working style.

              During the preparation of this program, we were divided into units to fasten the pace of each unit’s progress as we are targeting to held the program in 1-month time. Most of the time, we were working individually and report our progress to the unit members in Whatsapp group. At the beginning of our progress, we were doing well, however we did not manage to get any sponsorship from targeted company. It might perhaps due to the time constraint and some error in the sponsorship documentation that we did not realize in the early progress, it was later that we realize the documents have some error and it was too late to correct it as we only have couple of days before the program was held.

As I mention before, the program was held for two days. However, during the event, some session was held synchronously thus, the problem that I’ve observed was students are forced to choose which they want to attend, it is unfortunate for those who want to know and hear both topics. The event was also not so welcome and the attendees is not that crowd which I think was due to unsuitable timing. There are also food trucks at the parking during the events, unfortunately, as the event was held during the last week of semester before study week, most of the class was cancelled and the faculty is not as crowd as usual. One of the reason lies behind is I think due to time constraint, as the program president want us to experience on how to handle program in just one month, we challenge ourselves to make preparation for everything in one months although at the end, the program was postponed for about 2 weeks, the time constraint does make us feel the hardship during the preparation period. Fortunately, the event was successfully held but I think a leader should first able to lead and influence team members to complete given tasks and influence team to work effectively with others to accomplish common objectives.

              Therefore, by joining this program it made me realized that firstly, I think for more effective event it is important to not rush the preparation although it is okay to challenge ourselves but the pros and cons need to be considered before we decide to rush the things. We could also challenge our selves to finish all the preparation earlier rather that straight away set the time limit and rush the work because as we know a good event is due to the good preparation beforehand.

Next, due to the event was held during unsuitable timing where we were busy with assessment and preparation for presentation of our project and final examination, but it is important for me to balance my schedule in order to adapt the ability to work effectively under pressure. I realized that I’m tend to easily get stress if I am under pressure, thus I think I need to carefully manage and handle the stress and improve my schedule planning. Although my pace to make myself able to work under pressure might be slow, but I think by practicing and improve myself might help me adapt to the working environment later.

Besides that, I realized that being shy won’t help me to expand my knowledge and finish the given task perfectly. Thus, I need to initiate the discussion among members and communicate with the seniors more often so that I able to learn more than waiting for the instruction to finish the task. I also need to grab the chance to learn as many things as I can while participate as the crew and the organizer of the program so that I can improve for the next program that I might participate in.

Furthermore, this program help me to gain experience to handle documentation and lead the unit, as I am going to pursue career of being a Software Engineer, I need to be able to handle documentation and I need to be able to communicate and tolerate with different people with different attitudes, thus, I think this program help to improve some of my soft skill for a better future and obviously it make me able to help my future stakeholder who going to constantly need to communicate with me.

1.  Date:  03/03/2020

      Venue: Dewan Sultan Iskandar, UTM

      Organizer: Huawei

2. Graduate Attributes: Communication Skills, Global Citizen, Thinking Skills

3.  Position: Participants

4.  Report

      On 3rd March 2020, Huawei organize a career talk for UTM students. The events was held at 10 am until 4.30 pm in Dewan Sultan Iskandar,UTM. To attend the program, students are require to register with the link and qr code provided in the promotion poster. The career talk was attended by many students from school of computing and other schools. 

      During the career talk, the speakers exposed us with the career path that Huawei provide in their company. They further explain the requirements to join their team, and some of the speaker even share their experience working with one of Huawei branch. This program exposed us with the trend of technology that not everyone might aware of, it also shows how some technology able to help with the coexistence of the world. The session end with speakers answer question from students regarding the current trend technology and Huawei company .

5. Self Reflection

     By attending this program, I think it is important for me to attend some more program like this because there are some information that are more meaningful if I hear it from person who has more experience  than us rather than read it online. Furthermore, I am the type of person that prefer to hear other experience rather than do some reading, thus, I think that the information the speaker said during the session might be helpful in the future. One mistake I made was does not decide my career path earlier and I think I need to decide my career path starting from now so that I able to prepare myself earlier and take advantage of this kind of program rather than come and listen to gained knowledge. However, I do think by attending this program, it helped me to decide and think more of what I want to choose as my career. Last but not least, I think this program helped to build our own understanding of world events and think about our values and what's important to us.

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