Miss Hana's Blog

Wanted to write a post after back to Taiwan from London, but there were only 6 days before Red Herring Asia Forum, which I have a presentation to do on it and hadn’t even started to prepare. Too stressed to write.

This was my first official presentation as well as my first speech in English. I’m just an infant but already have to take the responsibility to stand out for my business while my partner is a good funny speaker always (he makes people laugh, just he doesn’t speak English well). Me, I usually only sing on the stage with a cool atmosphere (means I don’t talk a lot) :P and my English skill is just a little better than nothing, no matter who tells me I don’t have to be nervous, I still was.

“Red Herring” used to be a famous magazine with great credibility in technology business area, but ceased in 2007 (more info here). Its related event “Red Herring Award” is still alive. Every year it picks 100 new businesses to be Top 100, and hold big conferences with all the teams from shortlist’s presentation in Asia, Europe and America. This time my startup “Bounty Hunter” was on the final list, so we decided to go to the conference in Hong Kong.

Because we’re a small-size company, the registration fee is quite expensive for us. Besides, I didn’t have experience about presentation in English, so I hesitated. But deep inside of me, there’s a brave Hana, she said I should go and make myself grow in a tough situation, couldn’t be that bad, so we went! Yes we went.

The first impression was, “Oh my god the food is soooo good!!!” (Sorry my blog is always full of food, even if it’s a tech post)

I took many food pictures, let me move them to another post, now I focus on the forum itself.
(UPDATE: The food post is here)

The first day started with a welcome party, I met many people from many aspiring companies, talked about business, experience and many things.

There’s another team from the same incubator “appWorks” as us in Taiwan, her name is Lulu. Her English is much better than me and she’s more outgoing, helped a lot.

The second day was the presentation day, here’s some teams that I friend with.

Takenori Yoshizawa, founder & CEO of Sonix from Tokyo, Japan. They focus on “SEMANTIC WEB generation”. He had many experience about building businesses, has good visions and insights.

Nicola Morelli, founder of Apostrophe from Italy, based in Singapore. A professional mobile apps development company.

Even Chung, CEO of Patisco. He’s from the same incubator “appWorks” as us too. It’s a Commercial Transaction Platform. Even is an experienced business man with an already successful company, helped us a lot in many ways this time.

Yoshi Taniguchi, he make a really good app “OverTheAir“. I think everybody needs it. So just download it. It’s a great viewer and presentation tool. Only two people in the team and already have 1 million users.

There are still a lot of good services that I didn’t have time to deeply understand all of them, I’ll write new posts about them.

My presentation was on the second day. It went well, at least 100 times better then I used to be. But honestly I spent a lot of time thinking about this, wrote the lines and memorized every sentences, then forgot them and relaxed and practiced over 40 times, if I still failed, that will be….. (sorry I lost the word)

This was my last rehearsal in the room. One hour before the real one. (Okay please ignore the mess behind me. I am a decent girl, I AM!)

This is the dress for the presentation.

I thought about many styles, but I just arrived in Taiwan, my other cloths are all in the warehouse I rent before I went to London. So I decided to wear this. Although it’s not really official, but at least it’s comfortable for me and I have good memories in it. The high heels weren’t comfortable but I improved them (I’ll explain how in other post, it’s a girly thing).

My presentation.

I used Prezi as the presentation tool, and Logitech mouse with a sticker on it (to prevent the cursor from moving) as my presenter precision mouse pen (not sure about the name). Because I arranged some synchronization of my speech and the slides, which means when I say “Japan”, the Japan map should show up right way, so I have to control the slide by myself.

And after I finished, it was Q and A time, the most stressful moment I was expecting. And yes one of the question was from in Indian guy, exactly what I was afraid of since I couldn’t always understand their accent. And I was really confused when he threw the question in the beginning, but somehow, maybe it was my adrenalin, I suddenly understood him, and replied a proper but not perfect answer. phew…

After my presentation, many people came to me and said “Nice presentation”, some of them gave me really good opinions about Bounty Hunter (one of them is an Indian guy again, but I guess the adrenalin was out of work, I only understand him 60%. Sorry if you are that Indian guy and you see this, please email me, you have my card).

The third day was good, I was totally relaxed. I went to listen to Alex Vieux’s speech. He said many thing to encourage us, I noted it and I will post it in another day.

After the speech, the presentation time began. My friend Lulu did her presentation. Her English is much better than me as their service is “Quick Language Learning”. If you have iPhone, iPad or Android, search “QLL” and you will be able to learn the language you want.

After that, we saw the chairman of Red Herring Award, we took pictures.

It was a really good experience. I saw many big company came and I learn. Also noticed that I still have a lot to learn, it’s a good feeling. I will keep going!

The pictures are all here:
People:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.233226863397453.61645.161855883867885&type=1
Food, the view and me:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hanamitsuki/sets/72157627915153834/detail/

Oh I mentioned about that I will write other posts, let me take a note here.
1. Foods at Red Herring Asia Forum – Finished
2. Good services, companies
3. High heels improvement…
4. Alex Vieux’s speech
5. Prezi, cool presentation tool

Tell me which subject you’d like to know the most.