MSC-IHL Business Plan Competition 08/09

The MSC-IHL Business Plan Competition just ends today with a prize giving ceremony at Nikko hotel at KL. Well, the result is a little unexpected, UTP get the champion in the Business Plan Competition, which we miss the presentation and later found out their idea was really interesting and good. USM won first runner-up in Business Plan Competition and Merit prize in Business Idea Category. I know the school has a little disappointed as they expect us to win at least a champion come back, but we did our best for everything already. APEX this title on USM sure has given a lot of pressure on lectures and students.

Yesterday was the most tired day, as that is the day of competition. We have practice until late mid night and wake up early morning to attend the competition as we will be the first team to present in Business Plan Competition. We are well prepare and waiting for our time to present. Because of the time keeper misunderstand the timing rule, he only give us 10 minute to present instead of the actual 20 minute. Lucky we still can manage to complete it although we have already skipped a few slides and skip a lot of explanation. The feedback from judge is quite positive as first, so we though this is a good start. Later on they told us they have did the mistake for the timing, so they will give us an extra 10 minute to present what we miss after lunch. At first we was very happy, but thing did not turn up as we think. The judge request us to skip the presentation and turn the 10 minute into just Q and A. The judges were well prepared after the lunch and bring a lot of tough questions and a lot of comments/feedbacks. What we can do at there is just listening. After that, our team has lost the confident and packs our thing and goes for Business Idea Category to prepare the next presentation.

The Business Idea Category room was so small, what we can do is just stand there with my heavy bag on my back. After a small break, we are there to prepare for our idea presentation. As what we expected, we will hit by a lot of tough questions about our idea weakness from judges and the presentation was not really smooth as well. After that, we have a small talk with one if the judge and knowing our result are not too good. Kind of depress that time.

One of our friend in Microsoft call up for a tea drink as he is passing by that area and knowing that we are there. After have some small chit chat we went back for dinner and go back to sleep. Really need to thanks to Ian that helps us reduce the pressure and forget about those bad things we have gone though in the competition. We are just too tired that night, and we fall asleep very quickly.

I really want to thanks to my teammates, jasy, matthew and wan koe as they done a lot of hard work prepare the slides, document and research while I can’t really provide much help at there. I think without them, I wouldn't have come so far to KL and even won 2 prizes. I also want to thanks Roslan, Dr. Vincent, Pn. Rosnah, PPKT stuffs for their advisor and support. We learn a lot in this competition, not just about business thing but I also learn about my future with just programming is not enough.