My Year in Review: 2015

This post is basically a regular review of my life, lessons learned from what went wrong and what went right in the past year.

Backpacking mode - in front of Duomo di Milano (2015)

Intermezzo: For much better year-in-review contents, just watch the following videos and skip the remaining stories of this post ;)










Young ICT Leaders' Forum 2015

On 9-11 December 2015, Busan Metropolitan City jointly with the Korea National Information Society Agency and International Telecommunication Union (ITU) organized the Young ICT Leaders' Forum 2015. The goal of this forum was to present a community to youth from around the world whereby they could share ideas and innovative concepts for the advancement of future IoT industry. It was also aimed to offer a strong networking opportunity between participants and the industry, so that it created potential positive social contribution to the local community.

International Participants of Young ICT Leaders' Forum 2015

The forum was for invitation-only, where the participants were between 18-30 years old, from government sector, private sector, academia or R&D organizations, and have work responsibilities related with modern ICT convergences. The committee selected the participants based on submitted CV and application forms. Thank God, I was selected as one of 50 international participants invited by ITU ;)

Young ICT Leader's Forum 2015 at Busan

On the first day of the conference, we learned about how serious Korean government improving their nation-wide economic performance through ICT. The government has an initiative called "Creative Economy Vitamin Project" which seek to promote the integration of information technology with conventional industries such as agriculture, livestock, fisheries, food, culture, tourism, healthcare, etc.



We also learned the development progress of ICT convergences in various sectors, such as fisheries, maritime, automotive, electricity, home appliances, healthcare, and manufacturing.

Komunitas Inspirasi Jelajah Pulau (KIJP)

"It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness." – I still remember that quote mentioned by Pak Anies Baswedan on the briefing day of the first Kelas Inspirasi three years ago. Everybody in Indonesia knows that the quality of our national education is not that good. However, many people are doing nothing about it or even just complaining, while some others are trying to contribute a bit for a better situation. This time I and my fellows from KIJP chose to be the latter one.

Sharing about "Software Engineer" at KIJP – photo credit: Josef Wattimena

KIJP - stands for Komunitas Inspirasi Jelajah Pulau (Inspiration Community of Island Hoppers) - is a movement of groups of professionals who care about education in Kepulauan Seribu, Jakarta. This movement is derived from Kelas Inspirasi, where professionals joined to share about their professions to elementary students from low-income families. In addition, KIJP also try to contribute in the environment and society where the students live through educational campaign activities.

Sunday morning, October 11th, 2015, 194 volunteers of KIJP batch 4 gathered in Dermaga Ancol to go to the island they were assigned to. We spread to 13 elementary schools in 9 different islands in Kepulauan Seribu: Tidung, Payung, Untung Jawa, Pari, Lancang, Panggang, Pramuka, Kelapa, and Harapan. We brought our own tools and materials to motivate and teach the students about our professions. Some groups also brought several boxes of books for the school libraries.

Just before noon, my group arrived at Panggang island where we spent two days to volunteer. Panggang is the densest island in Kepulauan Seribu, around 400 people/hectare. The infrastructure  was not as good as in the other island, such as Pramuka or Tidung, because Panggang is not a tourism destination so the local goverment care less about it. There are only two elementary schools there: SDN Panggang 01 & 03, with total 434 students in both schools. My group is the second batch of KIJP who volunteer there. The kids are always cute, although some of them are very naughty – they might have more energy to express due to the limited open space for them to play at. The characters of most kids are quite tough because of the way their parents educate them at home. That makes one of the biggest challenges for the volunteers to teach at school.