Malaysia

I’ve been helping to organise a conference (and I’m presenting) with the British Council ‘Employability in the Digital Age”. It’s in Kuala Lumpur on Weds 26th March. It’s a really short trip, arriving Tuesday and then leaving Thursday. A whirlwind trip but it was very interesting. It was very humid and the temperature was about 30c. We stayed at a lovely hotel, all arranged by the British Council. The Thistle Hotel in Johor Bahru was great, and this was also the location for the conference.

The first thing we did about and hour after we got to the hotel, was to visit our University of Southampton Malaysia Campus. We met Neil Stephens and John McBride (CEO) who showed us around the whole of Educity. We also met some students who were sat in one of the lecture rooms in which they are based. The staff in the office were there as well, Jo Fretwell said hello (International Office) & Azlina who was very helpful in getting some badges printed for me for conference. I was very tired though so probably didn’t make as much of it as I should have, I would have liked to have had more time to chat with the students and I could have run a mini digital skills session with them.

The conference was great, more people that I thought and the hotel did a good job, with lots of helpers. I did miss my Digichamps though, and the wireless was a bit annoying in that if you left it a few minutes it would sign you out, so checking in and out with the Entry app probably wasn’t as accurate.

I did meet some University of Malaysia Technology students who chatted with me and some very nice PhD students from University of Pakistan who also taught at the University of Malaysia. They wanted me to run a digital skills session over there, and if we had had more time I would have, just that we were only there for the conference.

Having now been there, I have got all enthused over what we could do. It would have been perfect if I had had a few more days to hang out for a bit with the office staff and find out a bit more, but this was a British Council trip rather than a University of Southampton trip! I think I’ll wait to see if I hear from them and then we can have a chat over the possibilities – it’s so cool though, such a nice place and the campus will be amazing when everything’s established.

Just on the flight home now, and thought I’d take advantage of the 13 hour flight to get some of the things I have to do out of the way. Have to say Singapore Airlines are excellent, really pleasant flight, friendly staff and nice food (they gave me a Twirl, what’s not to like;-)). >