Surat habaq Balik Pulau dah mai dah...

Gempaq saja... bukan suratkhabar, tapi makalah informasi "myBalikPulau" setebal 12 mukasurat membawa kisar tentang Balik Pulau yang baru segar dalam distribusi sekitar Pulau Pinang mahupun ke luar.

myBalikPulau ini adalah terbitan sulung badan NGO Persatuan Pendidikan Seni Pulau Pinang (ARTS-ED) yang berpusat di George Town, Pulau Pinang, mengumpulkan hasil-hasil karya puluhan sukarelawan muda berusia antara 10 hingga 20 tahun.

Makalah ini bertujuan untuk menyingkap rahsia-rahsia pekan-pekan kecil dan perkampungan sekitar Balik Pulau melalui sejarah-sejarah dari penulisan dan orang-orang lama berkaitan budaya, seni bina dan ekonomi penduduknya dari sewal abad ke-17. Isu sulung kali ini bagaimanapun menumpukan hanya Pekan Kongsi termasuk fokus senibina rumah kedai, sekolah-sekolah dan rumah-rumah ibadat berdekatan 'roundabout'.

Makalah yang diterbitkan dalam dua edisi berlainan bahasa yakni Melayu dan Inggeris ini boleh didapati daripada beberapa pusat sumber sekitar Balik Pulau dan luar termasuk di Perpustakaan Cawangan Balik Pulau dan Pusat Internet Desa Balik Pulau.

Gambar: Pengurus PID Balik Pulau, Siti Huraizah, dengan sekeping naskah myBalikPulau.

Media Penang roots out...

Besides the one page coverage mostly dedicated to mostly Balik Pulau parliamentary areas (inclusive of Pulau Betong, Teluk Bahang & Bayan Lepas) in Sinar Harian daily publication dubbed "Tanjung 2", truly local or dedicated publications still lack in this particular region or even the entire state of Pulau Pinang and perhaps most areas outside Klang Valley, except small scale ones within sporadic schools and other organisations.

With the year of 2010 being gazetted as the "Year of Creativity and Innovation" by the government of Malaysia, it's wise to recognize how Malaysians are generally not so creative and innovative as we'd otherwise be led to believe. This was among others highlighted in a small CEOs meetup called "CEO Breakfast" inaugurally organized in Penang by Technopreneurs Association of Malaysia (TeAM) & MAD, Inc and supported by Multimedia Development of Malaysia (MDeC/MSC Malaysia), which author also had the privilege to join.

Among contributors to this creativity illness, and later contributed to lack of innovations within our society and local organisations are lack of creative outlets, hence the local media which members of the society can participate in. Instead of joining the fast-moving bandwagon of co-creation trend brought along with the advent of new (social) media during this very decade, many Malaysians are still generally mostly consumers, not producers.

Balik Pulau-based Social Entepreneur Club or "Kelab Usahawan Sosial Balik Pulau (KUS-BP)" as it's locally known as has recognized this contributing issue, and besides sponsoring in-person dialogue activities, has spearheaded micro-effort of self-publishing. Not limiting its members to online-only interaction via the likes of email, facebook pages, online groups, blogs, chat forums etc, KUSBP has initiated larger reachout especially within the local community presently at only about 5% active Internet usage - a 2,000 copies of 28-page publication dubbed "myUsahawan Global" (MUG09) was released last November 2009 during the Global Entrepreneurship Week 2009.

MUG09 was first distributed to over 300 attendees to the GEW-Koridor Utara 2009 launch event at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), officiated by YB Dato' Mukhriz Mahathir, Deputy Minister of International Trade & Industry (MITI). Although MUG09 mainly covers the core efforts and activities by KUS Balik Pulau especially centred at the very region, additional coverage on the GEW 2009 activities in the Northern Corridor Economic Region (NCER) areas were also included, and the micro example set in Balik Pulau and respective areas is hoped to be duplicated in other areas throughout northern Malaysia and beyond.

As a continuance, and to start the new year, KUS-BP recently launched its bi-monthly newletter publication, dedicated to its growing members (over 120 as of December 2009) and members of the local communities. The print-version is distributed both in physical and high-quality digital version via social web as detailed at http://usahawan.balikpulau.org/2010/01/berita-kus-1-jan-feb-2010.html

In addition to internal circulation over over 100 and several hundreds more to members of Pusat Internet Desa Balik Pulau (PID-BP), it is hoped that the overall circulation will surpass 1,000 within the few short weeks of its release. Chief editor Nasir who also serves as one of the volunteer committee member explains that the club welcome members to submit creative materials and stories to be included in subsequent releases.

"We hope that KUS can offer a 'free' creative outlet we've been desperately needing all these years, and each contributor and participants can maximize the growing network that KUS has established and will enhance via its huge national network of over 50,000 members and bigger via friendly organisations networks", says Nasir.

It's worth to note also that the not-for-profit distribution of KUSnews (Balik Pulau edition) is not alone in the effort to connect Balik Pulau community. For commercial organisations and more targetted marketing, Koperasi Usahawan Muda Pulau Pinang Bhd (KUMUDA), the fresh local cooperative organisation that was set up via one of KUSBP-sponsored event has been publishing its own periodic advertisement compilation as an alternative to billboard, banners, posters or flyers marketing. In fact, the money-saving booklet named 'InfoBiz' is hoped to help to keep Balik Pulau roads less polluted with eyes-poking ads on roadside trees and structures. For as little as RM60, members of the cooperative or just about anyone can reach thousands in Balik Pulau and beyond (via various social media outlets), hence at the cost of just 'sekupang' (10-sen) per reader!


To obtain copies of above publications visit Pusat Internet Desa Balik Pulau at Bangunan Pejabat Pos Malaysia Bhd (across Maybank and Shell Jalan Balik Pulau, next to Dataran Tuah) during office hours (9 am - 5 pm Monday to Friday except public holidays) or KUMUDA offices including at AMAN-KUMUDA Business Centre at No 4, Ruang Niaga Sri Genting (PERDA - across Kolej Kemahiran Tinggi MARA), Simpang Empat, Balik Pulau during store hours (10 am - 6 pm, everyday except public holidays).

Feel free to also send self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE with 50-sen or more Pos Malaysia stamp) for copies to above address (with "11000" as its postcode).

KuMuDa-InfoBiz002

For enquiries, refer respective websites or facebook pages at http://usahawan.balikpulau.org , http://kusbp.pp.my and http://kumuda.org or call KUSBP & KUMUDA respectively at +60 4-866-2706 and +60 4-866-0098 during normal business hours.

Tap the untapped market and create new market!

Residents of Balik Pulau and everyone now have an opportunity to enhance their business and reach more customers in the less tapped consumer region of Penang's southwest district (approximately half in size of the Penang island, and a population well exceeding 50,000) with the upcoming launch of the first marketing platform on an integrated printed and online media, dubbed the InfoBiz, produced by Pusat Komputer Balik Pulau, in collaboration with the Rural Internet Centre (Pusat Internet Desa - PID) of Balik Pulau.

While PID, situated at the annex of the local post office building, has been serving thousands of its neighborhood residents for over six years now since 2003, its current supervisor, Siti Huraizah Abdul Rahman, continues to realize how the local community still left very far behind in ICT adoption, particularly in Internet usage, estimated at well under 10% for the large parliamentary area covering Teluk Bahang, Pulau Betong (inclusive of the historic Kongsi Town) and Bayan Lepas (not including Bayan Lepas Industrial Area or Sungai Ara/Relau urban areas).

"In order to connect the community better, and faster, and immerse the residents with up-to-date business and social information, InfoBiz was incepted as an integrated media project combining the power of mass printed distribution, and online social media distribution", said Nasir Sobri who currently serves as Vice Chairman of Balik Pulau Social Entrepreneurs Club.

By advertising in the monthly issued InfoBiz, business owners can reach the largest optimum households in the rarely tapped market of Balik Pulau, and extend their marketing reach beyond Balik Pulau. This is due to collaboration with PID that has a large network of e-community throughout Penang, and its 42 centres around the country including Sabah and Sarawak with a total community of over 100,000.

Backtracking to PID - it is a Malaysian government initiative under the former Ministry of Energy, Water & Communications (KTAK) to close the digital divide in rural areas. Today, as PID being merged into the new Ministry of Information, Communications and Culture, the role of media in socio-economic development of rural areas is seen as an important and highly desired element to be explored extensively.

Siti Huraizah explains that plans are being worked out to enable the local community to tap the wealth of media world with future collaboration with many strong media agencies in the new ministry. "And the other PIDs across the nation can soon emulate similar projects in respective areas, and empower the respective communities with information and its technologies", she added.

Interested individuals who wish to order ad placement in the inaugural issue of InfoBiz, set to be published and first distributed on 1st of June 2009, may do so online, by of before 15 MAY 2009:

Pasarkan produk & perkhidmatan anda di Balik Pulau secara tertumpu, meluas dan berkesan, serta menjimatkan!

Offline form is also available upon request or by visiting Pusat Internet Desa at the Balik Pulau post office. PID is open every day, from 9am until 5pm except on Sunday and public holidays.

Pelajar wajar diberi pendedahan Teknologi Maklumat (TM/IT)

Apa pendapat anda?

Bagaimana untuk memantapkan usaha pembangunan ilmu dan sahsiah diri dan masyarakat?

Biggest TALK on Blogs & Web 3.0 in Balik Pulau, Penang!

For more information and registration, register by or before Friday, 20 MAR 2009 at the official website for Social Entrepreneurs' Club of Balik Pulau (KUSBP).

YB Sr. Hj Muhamad Farid bin Hj Saad is scheduled officiate the event, starting at 8:30 am on Sunday, 22 MAR 2009, at Dewan Balora (next to K-Kommunity/JKKK Kongsi Building), Balik Pulau, Penang.

Panels for Forum on "Role of (New) Mass Media for Local Socio-economic Development" include experts from all four sectors of the community - policy makers, academic, industry and social NGO.

Learn how the new media is not just for "goBlogs", but for Trillion Ringgits worth of economy within the next few years - How not be left asleep, passed by the wave of Globalization!

This event is brought to you in collaboration with the Council for Entrepreneur Development - Southwest District of Penang (MPUD-DBD), Technopreneur Development Division of the Malaysian Multimedia Development Corporation (TeDD-MDeC) and Penang Association of ICT Entrepreneurs (ICT Penang).

This event is a Prelude to MSC Malaysia/NEF Netbash & Innotech 2009, scheduled for 25 MAR 2009 @ PDC.

Use your Barcode Reader (also available on selected mobile phones) to transfer the event details to your mobile devices. Learn more about above QR code at WikiPedia.

WORKSHOP IS LIMITED TO ONLY 50 FIRST REGISTRANTS! Just RM10/participant. REGISTER TODAY!

600+/5,000 bloggers in this small town? (in a Million Bloggers Nation?)

Think Balik Pulau is small?

After all, there are not even a single local TV/radio station, a local newspaper, a major mass publication (that reaches 10,000 or more readers, besides the national or sub-national ones) and not even taxis in Balik Pulau - the only public transportation modes in Balik Pulau are the new government-owned Rapid Penang and the slowly dying private Yellow Bus busses.

Still, the small district-town of around 30,000 (based on the eligible voters number at ~23,000 for the state legislative areas for Pulau Betong and Teluk Bahang in the Balik Pulau parliamentary area, NOT including the one other slighly larger state legislative area of Bayan Lepas) residing in mostly village houses (as there are currently zero hi-rises in this area, to-date) boasts well over 600 profiles in the blogging platform (Google) Blogger.com alone. - A search on "Bayan Lepas" alone would return a result of ~4,000 profiles.

i.e. What connects this remote Balik Pulau directly, and fast, to the larger world 24/7, instead of planes or express buses/trains are the Mobile and DSL broadbands, and Internet dialups connectivity enabling its residents to mass-reach the entire world via self-publishing, in the convenient forms of blogs, microblogs and plethora other social media sites.

That's at least 600 online publications by residents of Balik Pulau (as each blogger maintains at least one blog site), or as many as 5,000 online publications in total, if to include the Bayan Lepas state legislative area (NOT the larger metro-like Bayan Lepas town/city area which would otherwise include most of Bayan Baru, Bukit Gedong, Pantai Jerejak, Batu Uban and Bukit Jambul too).

At this count, 1 in about 50 BP-ites blog, or as high as 1-in-10 in the Bayan Lepas area.

By the way, this ratio does not take into account, bloggers who publish on other platforms such as Wordpress.com, Friendster.com, LiveJournal, Blog.com, Blogstarz etc. or at self-hosted domains using independent Content Management Systems (CMS) such as Wordpress, TypePad, Movable Type, Joomla etc.

The Blogging Nation

However, these numbers are considerably lower than at other more developed and dense areas in Penang, such as George Town alone that boasts nearly 30,000 Blogger profiles alone out of about 50,000 in the state of Pulau Pinang, and Kuala Lumpur with well over 200,000 profiles, of which there could be as many as ONE MILLION BLOGGERS in Malaysia - As many as 1 in every 30 Malaysians blog!

The graph and ranking list below from Google Insight based on web searches for the term "blog" since 2004, shows a steady increase, and currently place Malaysia at #3 in the world, just behind Viet Nam and France, ahead of her closest neighboring countries, Singapore and Indonesia at #4 and #9 respectively:

The larger 1,000,000 number also coincides with total Malaysia-based profiles on the fast-growing Facebook social media/networking platform as of today (1,054,260 as of March 2, 2009). However, a search on Facebook pulls only about 30 profiles with "Balik Pulau" as user's hometown, although the maximum result of 500 was resulted due to a high number of Facebook users having studied in Balik Pulau-based educational institutions -- Perhaps, most Facebookers a.k.a. the elite Malaysian Internet users prefers to put their workplace city as their hometown in their online social profile. A search on the fast-growing microblogging or microsharing platform, Twitter pulls even much smaller result.

Now imagine the 4-million or so Friendster users (who are mostly teenagers and pre-graduation higher education students) finally starting to migrate by the masses to Facebook (which is currently being participated by less than 8% under-18 years olds) and adopt the microblogging culture (which is fast-growingly popular in the United States, Japan and Europe), Malaysians will be having as many as four million blogs and microblogs in perhaps, a four-year time, i.e. by the next political General Election in Malaysia (by or before 2013)!

Will we be ready by then?

Will our next Prime Minister have at least 100,000 supporters on his/her Facebook Fan page, or at least 100,000 followers to his/her Twitter account?

How about our local (Balik Pulau/Penang - is there any? at all??) brands, heck even Malaysia brands such as Air Asia, Malaysia Airlines, Proton, Petronas, Berjaya, Genting, 1901, Jobstreet etc.?

Consider that Mr. Barack Obama, the newly elected President of the United States has more than five-million supporters (psst. ahead of the Coca-Cola and Nutella brands at near 3-million each, or celebrities like Cristiano Ronaldo, Rihana and Michael Phelps at over 2-million each) on his Facebook Fan page, and 340,278 followers on his Twitter account as of March 1, 2009. Meanwhile, our Prime-Minister-in-Waiting YAB Dato' Seri Najib bin Razak only has 113 Twitter followers and 703 Facebook supporters as of today while the political Opposition Leader, YB Dato' Seri Anwar bin Ibrahim isn't too far ahead at just 187 Twitter followers and 17,500 Facebook fans. (The most popular Malaysian on Facebook today is the very vocal former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad, who also maintains the most popular individual blog in Malaysia at chedet.com - established since May 2008, with well over 60,000 supporters on Facebook)

Will say 200,000+ bloggers and microbloggers in Penang, including at least 10,000 in Balik Pulau alone, by 2013, enable creations and elevations of our first of local (Penang-originated) brands?

Glocal Media/Brand

And why not start with the Media itself! (for the local brand, I meant). Who's out there to take on this challenge, and initiatives? Who will work on our first, truly local daily/weekly newspaper for Penang, even in an online form if the printed form seems to be enormously impossible? Who will start our own truly local radio and TV stations, in competition to the federal-government owned RTM's Mutiara.fm?

Are the few journalists for Sinar Harian covering the five regions of Penang, putting the entire Balik Pulau and Southwest District of Penang Island into "Tanjung 2" enough for us? Is The Star's "North" Metro edition covering the northern region of Peninsula Malaysia all the way down south to Ipoh, Perak (some 100+ kilometres away!) good enough for us?

Our universities - is Apex-elevated USM with about half-a billion Ringgit in additional funding for the next few years, up to the challenge? How about UiTM, WOU or other major Penang-based higher learning institutions? Perhaps the Tourism University that's supposed to open in Balik Pulau within the next few years?

Who will start producing podcasts, and live streaming of media coverage in Balik Pulau? Heck, the entire Penang? Will the public state/island-wide Wi-Fi project that is to be rolled out by the Penang State government this year enable these local media initiatives?

(For certain, the present 3GB & 5GB hi-speed download cap for Maxis & Celcom 3G broadband services that throttles "Unlimited Data Plan" customers' speed to under well under 100Kbps CANNOT accomodate these high bandwidth media distribution!)

Yesterday, a major conference on branding called "Branding Malaysia" was held in Kuala Lumpur.Was it just another self-congratulatory celebration for the 1% large companies - Celcom, Media Prima etc., which are mostly government-linked, and the few SMEs out of the 19% businesses in Malaysia being cared the most by the government's MIDF, SMIDEC, MATRADE and many other acronyms you've heard so far, while average Malaysians can't even get RM10,000 loans to start or improve micro businesses (being rejected by the banks by the 100,000s!)?

Wake up Malaysia! Wake up Penangites! Wake up BP-ites!

Let us be the media producing nation, not just a behemoth media consuming one.

(Malaysia for instance is ranked among the largest web traffic contributor to US-based Friendster at over 10% and to several entertainment/sociopolitical blogs, and all ten most visited websites for Malaysians are foreign-based).

Think Local Brand... Think Micro! I like the tagline by Pistachio Consulting, whose Laura Fitton is completing a Twitter for Dummies book for August 2009 publication: "Micro Sharing. Macro Results".

Perhaps only then, our most popular social media entities that we can be proud of would be of local entertainers, brands, products, athletes, companies etc. instead of just politicians from the two ugly sides.

Power of the (Mass, Social) Media in the hands of the People....


The amateur writer, @WoNoJo has constantly been one of the first few thousand Malaysian Internet/email marketer, webmasters, bloggers, micro bloggers, group moderators etc. and has been writing casually on the new media since 1992. ie. an early new media adopter, but continuously struggles as a self-financed entrepreneur for many years due to his hesitance to emigrate off his birthplace island that is over 300 km away from the nation's capital city. He likes Numbers but has been horrible at Finance. He is campaigning for and working on several micro initiatives to promote and establish local media to empower the people (who are mostly being disregarded from the four decades of over-federalization in Malaysia), with microworking capabilities and economic freedom. He 'hentam keromo' blogs and tweets at http://wonojo.com (since mid 2007). He has over 666 followers (and counting fast) in his 'cult' (sorry, not applicable for registration with the Registrar of Societies or the Ministry of Information) as of 3/3/09.

I wonder if the crews will make it to Balik Pulau too. Come here, we have tons of treasures you won't find elsewhere!

Selling scenic charms of Penang over the CNN

PENANG: A Kuala Lumpur-based production house appointed by CNN International is here to capture Penang's scenic charms on film over two days.

State Development, Tourism and Environment Committee chairman Teng Chang Yeow said a 10-member crew from Barnstorm Pictures Ltd which arrived yesterday would cover the George Town heritage trail, the Penang Botanic Gardens, Kek Lok Si Temple and beaches here.

“I understand that this coverage will be aired in the next two years starting next month over the CNN channel in Europe, Britain, Africa and the Middle East.

“It will appear as a two-minute promotion of Penang before and after the channel's prime news session,” he told newsmen after unveiling the logo of the Penang Beach Carnival at the City Stadium yesterday.

Sun,sand and sea:Teng unveiling the logo of the Penang Beach Carnival at the City Stadium yesterday.With him are(from left)Zainal,Suleiman and Ismail.

Teng said the effort was financed by the Tourism Ministry and Tourism Malaysia.

“We are very grateful to them for featuring Penang as the state does not have this kind of money to promote itself worldwide,” he added.

He also said a television crew from Perth, Australia, was here for the last two weeks to shoot places in Penang while another team from China would visit the state within the next two weeks.

On the two-day carnival which will kick off on May 26, he said about 4,000 participants were expected to take part in the event.

Also present were Penang Municipal Council president Datuk Zainal Rahim Seman, council community services director Mohd Ismail Ibrahim and Malaysian Association of Hotels (MAH) representative Suleiman Tunku Abdul Rahman.

SOURCE: The Star Online > North