Indonesia Coffee Exhibition 2017: Blending Coffee & Culture

Coffee lovers, you may want to stop by at Berjaya Times Square Kuala Lumpur this weekend for the Indonesia Coffee Exhibition 2017 that promotes blending coffee and culture.

Education Fair 2013 in Malaysia

Every time when I go to the education fair, I find something is different. I guess I am witnessing the evolution of education industry in Malaysia. 

Most private institutions dominates the main halls in the education fair, with unique constructions of a large area which consist of many booths (12-16 open booths size). Also, there are actually many private higher education providers in Malaysia and growing larger. So far, I don't see any public university there (even if they are there, they will only take very few booths with minimum spending on the booth design). It shows that the private institutions are still more desperate for students than the public. Well, this has always been the norm, just that the private institutions are becoming more competitive and aggressive in sales and marketing.

Secondly, more students involvement in the marketing efforts by various institutions. They call them the 'student helper'. Their task is to give out flyers, goodies and to collect database by stopping everyone to fill up the enquiry form. Some institutions are like those Telcos (in blue, red, yellow t-shirts), assigning there student helper to try to grab anyone who passes by their booths to fill up the form (just like Telcos promoters-signing up a data plan or buying prepaid SIM). I just wonder if this is how education fair suppose to be - "selling" or it should be a place for counselling and to find out about courses available.

In this education fair, there are also some European universities participating under the European Union education booths. Their counsellors are all standing near to their booths welcoming the potential students to approach them to ask about their courses. It is not so much on collecting database as they are mainly here to create the awareness, provide informations and encourage the candidate to apply for their programmes if they are interested; not on "selling".

To some extent, I find that the approach used by many institutions now is more like trying to sell the visitors a product, just like in PC Fair (for ICT) or Matta Fair (for Travel and Tours). It is scary because the institutions are supposed to promote their courses by creating awareness, help the candidates to choose the right course, provide information on financial aid and to cultivate learning and development in younger generations.

What say you?

The Most Embarrassing Fair in 2013

When we heard about public exhibition or fair, we can imagine that there will be massive crowd, lots of booths, promoters, products, games, showcases and many exciting events. However, I find this fair is so special. Here is why:

The Malaysia Sports and Health Fair 2013 at Mid Valley Exhibition Hall 1 & 2, Kuala Lumpur. This fair started on 8th until 10th November 2013 and one of the special highlight of the fair is on the 9th, an autograph session with Dato' Lee Chong Wei, Malaysian top badminton player. I just wonder how our Dato' feel when he attend the autograph session. To all the few exhibitors, thumb up for showing the commitment and motivation to run the show, even with such situation (felt sorry for them).

Looks like there are very few companies or organisation in Malaysia that specialises in Sports and Health...even there are Malaysian who are interested with it, we don't have much options except for these few companies who participated.

(Photos sponsored by CK)