1st-Asia Pacific Communication Exchange Association

Yesterday, 26/02/2011, was a quite awesome day for me. Jennifer, White and I, my classmates from the Honours College and group-mates of the JWJ, won the Grand Prize of the 1st Asia Pacific Communication Exchange Association. It was very exciting to hear our names being called to received to Award.

Well, this story begins in December, when I received a SMS from Jennifer saying that she wanted to talk with me. I went to meet her and she started talking about a business competition, that focuses on the novel busisness ideais to promote Macau and Macau tourism to various regions in the world, and she asked me wether I was interested in joining her and White, to participate in the competition. I thought for a while and decided to accept it (it's not everyday that I have the chance to learn more about public speaking and business presentations). After the examination period, we gathered to decide which topic to choose for the contest. After talking for a while we could not come out with a plan, so we decided to think about it while we were on vacations.

After returning from our Christmas vacation, we started discussing about the proposal to submit on 19th of January. We start working on it every night from the 11th to 19th of January and we came out with a vast plan that consisted in promoting the Macau Heritage and Macau MICE industry (Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibitions),  while transforming transforming Macau into an environmental friendly city. We submitted this propose and we were approved to present it in the semi-finals of competition. However, the judge mentioned that our propose was too vast and that we should focus on the part of the Macau as an Eco-city. Then, we start seeking for some advices from friends and professors for the proposal and presentation tips. Therefore, we decided to narrow down our proposal to promote and transform Macau into a Eco-city.

On the 19 of February, we presented our proposal at the S.T.D.M. of the University of Macau. I have to confess that I was a little bit nervous because it was my first time presenting in such kind of environment and contest. I have to tell you, as well, that I was the second of our group to speak out; however, Jennifer  was the first one to talk and she was so confident and she had a quite strong opening that she transmitted some of the confidence to me that I didn't perform that bad... At the end the judges selected us as one of the finalists, so we were all very happy with that. The judges suggested us again to narrow again our propose because it was still too vast, that we covered too much theory and that it wasn't that practical.

Upon suggestion of Professor Udani, one of our professor at the HC, we did the same presentation in the HC class and we asked for some suggestions of our classmates and professor. They gave us plenty of suggestions and some ideas of us to improve our presentation. We try to follow some of the suggestions and try to change a "lot" our presentation.  It was a though week, because me and White were very busy with the course load, assignments, projects, reports and Jennifer with a lot of extra-curricular activities. Therefore, it was very difficult for all of us to sit down and discuss for a while. We end up doing the best we could; however we didn't have that much time to rehearse and prepare the presentation...

Yesterday, I had then to wake up very early to prepare a pre-lab for an experiment that I even forgot to have breakfast. I came to school around 8 so that I could meet Jennifer and White and confirm if every thing was okay for the presentation. After that I went to the Lab to do the experiment and at 11.45 a.m. we took the bus to go to the Venetian, where the finals where going to take place. There we tried to rehearse for a couple of times but the presentation was not smooth enough. The contest started at 2.30 p.m. and I was sitting there trying to relax because I was a little bit nervous. Three groups presented before us, then they call our name... I prefer not to talk about what happened in details. We went on stage and we did our presentation, we tried to do our best but it was not that good. When we returned to our sits we were all disappointed with the performance because we knew that we could have done something better. However, it seems that the judges like it (I not quite sure) because they gave us the first prize :) :) :)

It was an awesome experience; however, now I have a lot of things to catch up for school that I don't even know where to start...