There is no permanent failure and there's no guarantee of
success, either. What you define success.
What you define as failure is really tested definition.
They are no permanent failures because it's just one data point
for you to know that there is something that you could do
better, could improve and could just try a different way of
doing things. Hey, everyone.
My name is Henry Surya Vera Wang.
And you're listening to the tekhelet journal.
The show will be bringing you the greatest technical leaders
practitioners and thought leaders in the industry to
discuss about their Journey ideas and practices that we all
can learn and apply to build a highly performing technical team
and to make an impact in your personal work.
So let's dive into our Journal. Welcome to another episode of
the tekhelet journal podcast with me, Ojos, Henry Surya wera
one. If you have been enjoying the
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contribution and it would help me towards achieving a goal that
I'm currently running on the page for today's episode.
I had the pleasure to chat with Chancellor Shan Shan Shan is the
CEO of SBI digital, a leading energy, utilities group in
Singapore, and Asia, Pacific Sasha.
Is well-known in the southeast Asia Texan and is also widely
known as Singapore, code father, before he becomes the CEO of HP
digital. He's already highly regarded as
a prominent engineer book author and an active contributor in the
community. He wrote a number of programming
books covering go and Ruby and has a series of popular articles
about go. He ran go for corn Singapore.
The largest gold conference in Southeast.
Asia scenes, 2017 and his illustrious.
Serious. Career also includes leading
engineering teams at PayPal. Yahoo and HP labs, and last year
in 2019. He won the executive of the year
for utilities award at Singapore Business Review management.
Excellence awards, recognizing all his great achievements
leading digital transformation Journey at SP digital in this
conversation. He shared with me about the
digital transformation Journey that he embarked in Sp digital
including some of the success and failure stories.
He also shared why he decided to take on the CEO role at a speed
digital and unconventional career decision for someone who
is highly Technical and has always been leading multiple
engineering teams, previously. It is really, really inspiring
to hear what he has done and I do hope you enjoyed this
conversation. But before we start the episode,
I just like to mention that you will hear some background noises
at some parts of the recording, be the construction noise, and
mobile notification sounds. And I do apologize if it causes
inconvenience for some of you sometimes, life does get in a
way, but I do believe that you will still learn a lot from this
conversation. So without further Ado, let's
get started. Are you start up in software
development Which is less than five years old.
If yes our sponsor at jetbrains have a 50% startup discount
offer, which allows startups to purchase multiple products and
subscriptions for up to 10 unique licenses over a period of
months. To find out more search for
jetbrains startup discount offer or you can check out the link
mention in the show notes. Eyes are showing welcome to the
technology, you know, episode. It's very good to see you here.
Thanks, Henry. Thanks for inviting me.
Yeah, so sorry. Shawn before we start the
conversation. I would like to introduce you to
our audience here. So it's all shown is one of the
tech leaders in Singapore, very well known in the industry and
the community just to mention some of the roles that you have
been before. For a you've been with Yahoo
engineering team as a director of engineering.
You've been with HP Labs, Singapore as a director.
You've also spent your time at PayPal as a director of global
consumer engineering. And you currently work at SP
digital as the CEO. So social maybe to start with.
Can you share with us your career Journey?
What are your major turning point in your career that you
can share with us here for all to learn?
Sure. I would say really learned.
I'm just sharing and maybe I'll just talk about my career.
I would say I have Interesting career path and not quite sure
whether it is something that most technical people go true.
But I think I'm a personal my times.
I really been through this history of the tech industry in
Singapore for the past 25 years. So I came out from the
University and tu9 going Technological University in 95
and within this 25 years. I spent maybe roughly about 10
years in different set up, slightly less than 10 years in
American embassies. And for the rest of the time.
I spent most of it in my current role.
Singapore, power. She's a security company.
I actually did my own setup which consistently was right?
Smack into the God calm days. It was a software startup.
Basically. What I did was I invented some
software at a point in time and I was kind of new revolutionary
even and so decided to came out, got some funding and did that
start up? Sold it off after going through
the.com days and then promptly joined another startup.
So went from one set up to another one and the help to
bring it up to a certain stage. Where again, we sold it off.
Another organization and so on. So that is pretty exciting peer
my time. But after a while doing startups
sort of lost its luster and wanted to get a little bit more
into the corporate Tech world. And so trying to couple of
American embassies including Yahoo, which I think was very
exciting times and HP where I started off the HP labs in
Singapore, one of the seven Global labs and we were doing
cloud computing, research. Very, very interesting
experience. Managing Engineers, software
engineers and research. Itís at the same time.
And finally, I also joined PayPal spend some time there and
building up initially, a regional team, to develop
solutions for the region, but eventually, after a
reorganization within, PayPal was part of a global team to
develop consumer products, and finally, of course, for the past
four plus years. I have been in Singapore power
or doing digital transformation. I was asked to help lead the
efforts, in transforming the organization.
Utility business is pretty conservative.
I would say it's What about reliability?
So it's about safety. It's about operations.
I think it is antithetical to software development where it's
about being a jowl, being able to create and be able to launch
products quickly. So it is direct opposite of
start-up. You talking about feel fast.
So that's a very, very different kind of mindset in utilities and
having that change to moving away from just being an
operator, but also being a solution provider being a
running products creating products and selling products.
I think that was the Massive change that I had the honor of
being cut off and after a couple of years of leading the
transformation within I was given the opportunity to run the
company to take on a role where I run the pnl for actual
company. To take our products that we
developed, and go run in the market, sell it to actual
customers who are paying real dollars to US, helping to create
more efficient processes and driving efficiency, and
Effectiveness internally, whether it's something very
different that SP has That was done in the past.
I think we have done pretty successfully for the past year
and a half. Two years.
We have sold to customers like Changi Airport, samko Marine and
to you, my alma mater. Basically.
We went back and we sold them a software to manage the smart
meters, within the campus, and many more.
I think we have pretty decent products that we are going
attacking the market and in the past, couple days has been a
couple of announcements as well from SP group talking about our
investment and our joint projects overseas and SP digital
is rights. Back in the middle of it.
So I think we are. There.
We are still going the stupid of a journey, but I think we are on
a good path right now. So that's really a 5-7 minute
can help description of my career so far.
Hopefully that was useful for some people but definitely it's
not something that's very conventional.
I think in terms of being a software developer from
beginning to end. I've taken a lot of different
paths and lot of different birds from being an engineer to being
a CTO to being now a CEO of a company.
That's actually you're very, very The change.
Thanks for sharing that. So before we go into your
interesting Journey with SP digital, I notice here,
especially from your career, right?
You have been in multiple different types of company from
like, startups Enterprise, American MNC Tech and now even
going back to government-linked company.
So what are some of the things that stood out in terms of
difference between all these types of company?
If you can share? Yeah, actually, the truth is
most of these companies whether it's my own setup or the
American tech companies. Or even as we digital, I think
the Mainstay is, there are Tech hookers in most part.
My role has been quite constant and sometimes I joke with
people. I know I've been many companies
but really only had one job basically which is to run
engineering teams for companies. Other than my current role being
the CEO. The main tasks that I've been
doing for. Most of my career for 20 years
has been in Engineering Management how you run a
software development team to develop and release software
products. So, let's go to the SP digital I
mean, from Singapore point of view.
I think it's pretty remarkable transformation.
I would say, especially hearing what you said earlier about.
It's a utility Energy company where it's like antithetical to
what a gel software development should be.
And you have successfully run the digital transformation in
the last two, three, four years. So, can you share with the
audience here? How do you actually bring about
digital transformation to the company?
So, how do you start initially? Well, I've never done this prior
to this job. So I would Not say that there is
a particular rule book or process that I used to do this.
Even when I first started about slightly more than four years
ago, digital transformation is relatively a new term and
phenomena in most companies and a lot of companies were trying
their hand at it. You were trying to see how can I
use this new digital Technologies to try to develop
something. How do I change from?
What? Work to something else because
of the pressures of the industry because the pressures of
Technologies and so on. So a lot of companies were
trying and it and I think Even at that point, I think of a
power really had no idea what it means and what it takes to do
that and jumping into, it was a leap of faith or what could
possibly be. And also a leap of faith in and
trusting this to somebody like me who has also never done it
before. So I think that Journey has been
kind of interesting. I explained earlier on that
utilities have always been operator.
So the main job over utility has always been to take large
Machinery, Transformers switchgear, cables, run the
network operator. That work is always been
operational job. And there's always been
something that people do with large pieces of machine and each
piece of equipment is tens of millions of dollars.
So it's not as if I built something or buy something today
and then tomorrow, I threw it away.
It doesn't work. You're not going to throw away
that piece of equipment for the next 30, 40 years.
If anything goes, you got to repair it.
That's a typical operations kind of organization, but obviously
within the energy and utility industry things have changed
very, very drastically over the past 10 years due to Renewables,
but Renewables is not the only thing.
Look at the technology set of emerge like energy storage.
For example, if you look at electricity from a physical
point of view, once electricity is regenerated.
It has to be consumed. We transmitted transported
somewhere else because you the major ways of storing
electricity. It's things like come Hydro,
where you would use electricity itself to pump water up to a
height. And then when you need the
electricity again, you release the walls, and you will turn the
hydroelectric turbine and that in turn generates electricity.
So that's pumped hydro. And That's to traditional means
of storing energy, but things have changed technologies have
changed. And now the prevalence form of
energy storage for many people are actually lead to my own
where you can actually turn it on at the flick of a switch and
can charge and discharge power and that changed a lot of
things. You would look at solar today,
where you only works in the daytime his son.
He has changed to a stage where you can store in Texas cities as
we generated by solar into a battery could just literally
literally physically switch and then use it again evening.
Nighttime where you can actually.
Now he's charged up. Our that's been stored in the
battery. So this is how you really have
changed the industry. And of course all the new
advances in technology things like the dries for Energy,
Efficiency, and of course, the climate change and all the
things that happening around the world.
This is accelerated a lot of things.
So the changes within the industry itself is a big driver
to the need for the change. The utilities is a means to
Konami of scale because you would have lost generation at
one location and then your transmit it to smaller and
smaller. Kill with the existence of
renewable and energy storage your now Distributing power.
To many locations that again, changes the Paradigm of what the
utility is supposed to do. And it has become existential
threat to utilities and today whole industry.
So do you need for digital? Transition is real and the need
for doing something beyond the normal transmission and
distribution of electricity is very very real and that's where
I came in and I came in first of all to learn what these new
technologies are and how do we actually make use of it?
And how do we actually turn it around from?
Being a threat to being something that is not an
advantage for the organization and for industry.
Having said that we are not working completely unique ground
here, other utilities have looked into it and they have
tackled it which I've always dated think is best.
But in Singapore, obviously, there has not been done in some
willpower or wasn't done four plus years ago.
For example, electric vehicles, uavs were brand new, and they
are still brand-new today, but I think over the years, we've
embarked on a number of things like now today.
We have one of the largest EV charging networks in Before we
definitely have the largest TV fast charging, even Network in
Singapore, and that mindset change were operating.
Large equipment is still there. But at the same time, we are
tackling in the very different way.
So I think that change is not a 360 degree or 180 degree change
because no organization is going to be able to do that.
So what we need to do is really to nudge it to a level where we
are going to adjacent fuels from managing large Transformers.
Now, you are managing be charging station.
So that is the adjacent move if you are a power and You running
a Transformer? You're not going to be a
software engineer tomorrow running.
It's a software, that's not going to happen.
So being able to understand this and being able to lead the
company, step two step from that operational approach, not the
entire company, obviously, because we still need
electricity. We still need to have the
transmission and distribution network, but really thinking
part of the organization and moving people away from that to
doing things like EV charging doing, things like Renewables,
doing things like energy, storage, and face-to-face with
Things like online condition monitoring, for example.
So a Jason Technologies adjacent businesses and adjacent
capabilities. That's how I did it.
Anyway, so the past four years, there's been ups and downs.
We have been successful in some things.
We have failed miserably in other, things is never been a
straightforward Journey, but I think overall the journey we
have been relatively successful for one.
Very quick example, is when I joined SB, utility app, what
that point time was a called the SD Services app, so it basically
just tells you And you will present a bill to you and that's
your bill and your login, require you to go to a website.
It was built using hybrid software, hybrid mobile the
thief, as well as a web software.
It was clunky. It was not really meant to do
stuff. It was just meant to tell you
stuff. So it's basically the mobile
version of your website. We saw potential in it.
And the first thing I wanted to do with it was I wanted to make
it transactional. Because what do people want to
do with that utility. What do I want to do with it?
I want to be able to pay my bills with it.
So that was the first thing. We did we turn it from a
content-based app to a transactional app by enabling
payment. But obviously that was not so
straightforward being able to do payment to and mobile app, was
truly revolutionary within the organization.
People were not used to it. People were not very sure
whether this will be acceptable to customers here.
I could just go back a little bit in my career.
I was part of an organization called the Singapore Sports
Council and we develop solution for swimming pools and stadiums
and so on, when we first deployed the you Solutions Those
locations. And then after that, we went
back to that users, and try to get feedback.
And we discovered that they wouldn't use at all.
They were afraid to touch the computer because they were
afraid, they will break something.
So you can see that there is actually a vast difference and
coming back to the story of SB utility app at a point.
I'm enabling payment on a mobile app was scary.
What if the users don't like it? What is about regulates this?
Don't like it. What if this thing becomes a
risk to us? And there's a lot of fraud on
it. So there were a lot of issues
and bringing that was a slow and painful process, but I think we
have I've come a long way since then.
Today we enable not only just a payment off your bill, but we
have a lot of other things in it as well.
We have this program called Green up where we encourage
users on a sustainability Journey.
We have a carbon footprint, tracker to help people to
understand their carbon footprint, a lot better.
We have different capabilities in it.
We have ability for you to control to locate control and
pay for your charging of your electric vehicles.
So we have definitely come a long way from where we were.
So, I think the journey You mentioned especially giving us
the background about the Energy electrical companies.
It's a very unique use case in the industry.
Not many companies probably can relate to that but still, I
think the Journey of digital transformation itself is
probably something that every company is looking for.
So I appreciate that. You have explained the external
side of SP digital and how the energy industry is changing.
So when you go in into SP digital initially, how do you
actually start with the company that is being traditional?
Well, maybe the people are not used to a lot of digital things.
How do you actually bridge between the old and the new?
And where do you actually start your transformation Journey?
So the multiple ways of doing it and to the way that I've done is
really to attack it from a point where things don't exist, think
that's the easiest way. Because if things are in
existence and we tackle it, you change things for people, people
would be very uncomfortable. You are used to doing things one
way and suddenly you tell people that work is no good.
It's outdated as a better way of doing things.
Right natural to be offended or few very resistant to change,
and that is very human. And that is always a hill to
climb. So especially when somebody
completely new to the industry, like myself, turns out the door
and say, hey, you know what, your we're doing.
It is outdated or fashion. I'll show you how to do things
better. Nobody will look decent to me.
But even tackle on something that is not being done today and
think people are not familiar with or maybe even people think
that they are not that important.
Then you have a much higher chance of success.
People will leave you alone to do the things and you will be
able to prove of the capabilities.
And so that's the reason why I started with DSP utility and
because the app was a vanity showcase when we first started
and nobody really cared too much about because it's all content
only. But I realized the potential in
it because the reach to Consumers is something that's
rather unique within St. And the ability to touch every
single household in Singapore is something rather unique with in
Singapore or within SP. If any something rather unique
both utilities around the world and most utilities around the
world are actually relatively weak.
He's reaching out to their consumers because most utilities
care only about the bigger things consumers.
You're just consuming. You are at the other end of the
line. You just take power from me and
every month just pay me. So that's generally how the
utility will take about consumers.
But I see that the verbal different way coming in.
Because consumers and the users are really what determines the
future and consumers have passed who are just happy to have.
Like a city will be very different from consumers of our
current age or the future because they would demand a lot
more from the you to the T. If you look at the past couple
years, with climate change and the younger generation speaking
out like a greater Turnbull, coming out to speak at United
Nations. People are Keen to know how this
energy is being generated, how to power the electricity that
using house. Degenerated.
They want to know is the energy. I'm using green, how we actually
doing the right thing. Obviously, you're burning fossil
fuels and I would say, yeah, I was probably are still burning
fossil fuels to a certain degree, but things are changing
and how can you help? How can I engage with you as a
consumer to help make it better? A sustainable world in the
future. And that's why the vision for SP
digital. Overall is all about
sustainability, is all about using technology, to power
sustainability for the future. And obviously, in our domain,
good things to focus on our Renewables and on Energy
Efficiency, but consumers need to change too.
And I thought that this is one great way of making this change
by engaging consumers directly. So, anyway, long story short, is
that going into this? Then realizing that we've, you
start off in a place where within the company, the
existing? People are not too concerned
about it. That's one way of tackling the
chain or where it is not too confrontational and it doesn't
invite too much resistance. The second one is obviously
going to things that are not people, whereas the organization
don't have it in the first place.
Like SP is a t and D utility transmission and distribution
utility. It is not the generation
utility. We were not familiar with things
like solar and Renewables. We were not familiar with things
like energy storage. So these are the things that arm
you for our organization and for us to get involved into it and
Look into those things and build Technologies around those
things. Those become something that a
lot easier to tackle. Once we establish our
capabilities and our credentials and people are more comfortable
in what we can achieve. Then Things become a lot easier.
That's how I actually built and he's an organization to do
digital transformation. So it's very interesting story
that you started with this SP digital app.
I personally use the app very frequently these days especially
since the switching of the electric vendor where we can
have a choice and now, I'm using the real-time statistics of how
the electricity is being used thing is really, really
transformational, at least for me coming from my personal
experience. So obviously the other part of
digital transformation, like what you mentioned early in the
beginning, people may be resistant to it, but I think you
still got a change in terms of culture, in terms of
capabilities, to the people inside.
And a lot of times these days people associate digital
transformation with a gel, Cloud continuous, delivery, and things
like that. So how do you actually start in
complicating? This kind of a culture?
Kind of practices and workflow changes inside the company.
So it's interesting that you talk about this as an operator.
SP did not really have a development team did not do
software development as operator.
It does not build things operators, operate things.
So that's the premise of operator, Transformers, and
switchgear and substation. None of it is something that we
built. We always buy equipment from
others who will manage it. We will run it, effectively and
efficiently, but you will never build your own Transformers as
you do not build. Software.
Then, there is no need for you to have all those practices.
You will always depend on a vendor, you always depend on a
third-party to be able to go to software for you, and that you
would manage the software from a perspective managing vendors.
So that's always been a premise for SES a utility.
How do I introduce this? Then is kind of straightforward
because things do not exist in the first place introducing.
It wasn't so much of when we shoot.
I think the difficult part of it was, how do we and then, as we
move towards building software for Utility itself and not just
for the new things. How do we involve those guys in
to the process? Because obviously, these are
going to be the users. These are going to be people who
run and operate and having these people who are very used to
dealing with vendors and dealing with operations.
How do they be part of the process and we build a software.
I think that was the most difficult part, but I think at
the same time there's always this thinking that hey, you
know, what? We are people doing the
transformation. We are somewhere people.
We do our age our processes and this is the right way.
This is the correct way of doing things and everybody should just
follow us. I think that's wrong because the
way that the unity has run his business for decades or some
hundreds of years and to tell them that here we are doing.
This thing is wrong. I think it's not just insulting
and disrespectful but you're also not respecting yourself
because obviously my thinking that you're always right, that
not only pushes away people, but I think it makes you lose out in
the learning opportunities going to a new domain, understanding
how it goes. What are?
You would also learn something out of it and maybe that will
bring new changes and you way of doing things within your domain
is really about the mindset of how you go in and engage with
people, that would make things easier or more difficult when
you do that. So, you mentioned in the last
one or two years. You've become the CEO of SBI
digital. Obviously, this is something new
for you personally, as well coming from engineering,
backgrounding engineering manager, director CTO and things
like that. So, can you maybe share a story?
Why do you take this? Opposition and becoming more
responsible about the company's pnl.
Maybe crafting the vision and direction for the company.
And what makes you want to take this role.
It's interesting. This is a question.
A lot of people ask me and to be honest.
I would say I didn't really think too much about it.
It's not something that I deliberated.
Obviously, I spent time thinking about it, but at the same time
it is something new for me. If I am somebody who always stay
on track with what I'm comfortable with and I would not
have gone very far. I think most of our developers
in a way adventurous. People who are Builders, who are
creative, because they wanted to try something different.
They want to build something different.
It's about building things, about doing things, where things
you like this before. I jumped into this in that same
Spirit where I'm trying to do something, they have not done
before I spend most of my time managing engineering teams and
managing a PL is completely different from anything
Ingenuity, but it is a new adventure is something that's a
different just like when you jump into a new programming
language, you jump to a new technology.
I've done many times. Why not?
Um, into completely new rope. So that is our one step further
down, but I don't think it is something that is outside of
what I would normally do. And that's the spirit of for how
I actually took on this role. So it's very interesting story.
Definitely one thing that you mentioned about the SP Journey,
right? You mentioned about the
failures. Will you be comfortable sharing?
Some of these values for the listeners as key, learnings,
what you should be aware of. If you're doing digital
transformation, what potential things that might be a top cause
of failure. What things that you should not
do. When doing this digital
transformation? I can share some of these
things. So obviously there is no
permanent failure and there is no guarantee of success, either
what you define success, what you define as failure is really
just a definition. So I would not say things are
absolute successes or failures, but we are still on that
Journey. One of the examples I can talk
about is how when we first tried to introduce certain
capabilities to our great, and we thought we could do it and we
actually technically could do it.
But the acceptance, Level and the Comfort level of the people
who are operating were not there.
They were not comfortable in using our Technologies because
it was too new, and they had no assurance that you will work.
And that was something that I thought we could overcome.
But reality is, we could not overcome at the end of the day,
while we push very hard and users for not comfortable using
our product, even though from a technical point of view it
succeeded but when the users do not use it and it's not a
success, so that is one failure, but we are still trying.
We're not giving up as we see this to be something that maybe
they are just not. Ready for it.
Or maybe there's something that we're doing that does not match
the things that were required and therefore, we are trying.
Again. That's what I mean early on.
When I say, there are no permanent failures because it's
just one data point for you to know that there is something
that you could do better, could improve.
You could just try a different way of doing things.
So, while they were ups and downs in the entire journey, I
think so far. We have not met and think.
So catastrophic that we recover but we definitely have a lot of
projects that we say, this is not going to work and we're
going to just leave it there for now.
And then we will try different things.
Maybe we'll come back to it later.
Another one that is kind of funny and I go see this quite
freely, because I think there was a technical thing that we
made a mistake on when we first started dealing with EV charging
stations. So obviously, we hardly worried
about it. So we tackled it in a very
different way. And I tried to do certain things
in a way that I thought would be easy.
And at the end of the day, we discovered that there was
another case electric vehicle. Charging station is actually a
sophisticated piece of machinery and my thoughts.
When we first encountered it I thought it was a dump is a
shooting. So what did he saw?
Some intelligence to it? So we actually over time,
develop this iot Gateway. And I wanted to stick that
Gateway into the EV charging station thinking that we could
bring more intelligence to it. We could actually make sure just
to how is being operated and so on without realizing actually
the EV charging station is self has something similar in it
already and it has certain capabilities that it is already
operating within an ecosystem. So in a sense, it was arrogance.
I would say that we could make changes to something.
That's existence and over time we discover that hey, you know
what? This thing's already exists the
industry with the exists and obviously realizing that this
technology change our course entirely and we pulled out, I
end up, not putting the iot gateway to the EV charging
station. And we are using the EV charging
station as how it was originally built.
And we are getting a lot more successes in it.
So, just give two examples one, which is a management failure.
We couldn't manage our users effectively.
And one is more of a technical failure.
Both cases. We learned and we recover from
it. I said earlier on there are no
permanent failures is just learning data points, where you
can continue forging ahead. Thank you for sharing the
failure, stories, and your insightful thoughts.
So, let's move on to another personal stuff.
So, I've seen your profile, you have won prestigious Awards.
If I can, name some of them like smart Nation Bellow, Microsoft,
Regional director, and executive of the year related to your
current role. Can you share with us?
What are these roles? And how do you actually win?
The, some of these things are not really with in a sense
Martin? Asian fellow was something girls
tag team wanted me to help out in some of the junior people in
Gulf Tech and they requested that I participate in this
program. And I did, we have a capacity
that I could to help augment that.
Realistically, it's just me trying to contribute to your
smart Nation efforts and I still do that.
Today. I still and part of a number of
committees within the gulf taxing, but Polly one of the
advisory committee members advising on their coursework.
I chair the ICT technical committee, where we
Collaborating with the likes of w3c and working on.
How do we improve the ICT capabilities of engineer's?
General in Singapore? Because that's the charter for
the IES Institute of Engineers inside for the Microsoft
Regional director. Again is a little, like, a
fellowship. It was an interesting Insight
because honestly, speaking, we do use Microsoft Technologies,
quite a lot, and I think they have really good Technologies in
particularly their cognitive abilities.
So I participated in this program because I was invited to
honestly and then there is a A group of a similar peers,
globally. I am one of two or three
regional directors in Singapore. The regional director is
basically like a smart Nation fellow just just the term that
they use. Essentially, this is a group of
people who Microsoft can tap on to bounce, ideas off and just
give feedback and executive of the year, was probably one of
the most interesting because it's not something that I
thought I would actually win and press kind of a strange thing
for me as well. So, obviously, we've done quite
a number of interesting things witness.
We digital the first year and I think, Probably got the notice
of that organization to give out this award and we thought that
for a utility Executives that came from the software world.
That is something interesting enough.
And after deliberation, the panel judges decided that maybe
that's something that it can want to be.
So very interesting experience in building, other Executives
running different companies, execute every year for utility.
That's one of the more interesting ones that I've
gotten over to you. So, you mentioned about
contributing to the community, right?
I see you. Very active in the community as
well. You have even run a Tech
conference, which is the go work on your also active in doing
public, good for like the gulf tag and the government in
general. So what actually motivates you
to do all these things. So I've always been in the
community, not a lot of people know this but I used to run a
Singapore. Java users.
Kruky ninety seven, ninety nine. So whole does 20 years ago, but
Java has gone on to a level where it's very common language
now, so the need to pop Rise, it do not exist anymore.
But the original intention at that point in time was really
for people who are interested in that technology and interested
in adopting those Technologies and I drove that for a while
with a bunch of friends and similarly was also part of the
Singapore Ruby Brigade driving. These simple Ruby developer
community and also part of the organizing team for the first
Red Dot Ruby. Conf many, many years ago.
And of course the graphic on. I've been running it as the
chair since 2017. Be rented for three years in a
row last year was the most Successful.
When I first started it I did a survey and asked would you be
interested in attending thing for a goal?
Programming language conference in Singapore got about 100
responses back from various people.
I will call disappointed because even though I've got 100
responses, maybe about 40 of them City will pay but then with
urging of couple of friends in the community say, hey, let's
just give it a try first give it a run and see where we end.
So it's quite surprising. The first year we ended up about
200 people who came and actually paid for tickets.
And so it was a Any successful conference the first year.
And the second year. We went out to about 350
participants and last year. We are 600 over people.
Unfortunately, of course, all of these things stop on its tracks
this year, but nonetheless, I think there's been an amazing
experience for me. Anyway, running tree at
conferences in a row, but I've always been interested in this
because I've always believed that I'm part of the community.
I'm not somebody looking from outside.
I have extreme interest in promoting the industry,
promoting the community and basically getting more people
involved because for me. So, The development is a team
sport. So my developers in professional
settings today, they work in teams and you can't really just
do things alone. So you do need to have people
around you. You need a community and you
need people. Whom you can bounce ideas off,
you can discuss things. And that's what we have since
we're pair programming and so on because you do need people to
discuss ideas to share ideas, and to correct you, if you're
going the wrong way, so community, and bring in a team,
is important. And that's the reason why I
always push for more communities, more be Ups and
more conferences, run by community, and so on and so
forth. Because I believe that sa
industry Community is one of the key parts of what we need and
what we are. So that's really it and I'm
still keenly interested in pushing this even in other
organizations. Like I mentioned early on I am
the chair. Now for the ICT, technical
committee for IES. We are talking about other
Engineers electrical engineers, civil engineers also fall.
So that's another trust that I'm having today.
Try to push together, all of these things.
So as to build a bigger community, Aditi for our tech
industry, so you ask me why am I doing this?
Why am I spending effort? I believe I'm part of this.
I'm trying to actually bring people together so we can make
this a much more vibrant and prosperous industry altogether.
So that's really the reason chopping as part of the
community myself. I would like to thank you for
your contribution including bringing all these conferences
for people to attend and learn something from it.
It's been a very great contributions.
So you also write few books. If I got it.
Correct, least like four books, things around.
Ruby rails and also go by programming.
What makes you want to write those books if you can also
share, how do you actually write those books while running large
organizations or being a director, or the CTO?
And CEO of the company? Is, how do you actually do that?
Yes, I have four books. Those are published books.
I was trying to create a blog as well for the past couple years
and I realized that probably I don't have that kind of
bandwidth. So ended up.
Now I write mostly for other Publications and the medium
probably the publication of contributed most.
Those two so far is to work together signs and probably
that's the case for the immediate future anyway, so as
to why I write, that's really a labor of love.
I've always liked writing and that stems from some interesting
fact that a lot of people know about me, which I was actually
an English literature student. So that's my background growing
up. Really my passion was inviting
and I wanted to be a writer journalist, but I think turn of
Fate. I ended up in a course where I
did completely engineering. And of course if you ask me, why
what happened to you Let's get your list.
I would say one word or two words, Asian parents.
So I hope that explains a lot of things.
But anyway, that's how I ended up doing computer engineering.
I would say it's not too far off the mark, because writing
software. It's not very different from,
right? Thinkers is both acts of
creation and you're creating something that did not exist
before I think writing in general where you create tags
and prose and so on really triggers the mind and creates
impact to people reading it. And really, that's the reason
why I want to write. Because I do want to have Have a
transmission of knowledge transmission or thought,
transmission of ideas, from one person to many people and so
obviously writing is one of the better ways to we as so how I do
it. I think it's with great
difficulty writing books in particular is not easy is
achieving a back-breaking. So imagine as a software
developer you participate in project and you have a project
manager and you have people who are always on your back to
deliver certain things. It's much the same as books, you
have your editor and you have multiple levels of editors
pushing you to deliver on time. When I was writing a book and
you need to deliver chapter a, to three weeks.
And attach up there could be 20 30 pages.
And if you are purely writing, that's maybe not too bad.
Obviously, you need to do a lot of proofreading when we are
writing code as well. And you need to write small mini
project, which is often what I do that doubles or triples to
work. So it is back-breaking work, but
I always think that is what it because the impact it has on the
readers. It's very, very satisfying.
The more recent things that I read on Amazon review of my
book. One reader was saying if I could
paraphrase it, the reader enjoy my Look so much that is starting
to impact his marriage and it's like, what, what, what are you
talking about? You know, it's so it's one of
the funnier comments that I've read en the reviews of my books.
There was another time where I was actually in Russia.
I was in Moscow and I was giving a talk and then after the talk,
one of the audience came up to me, so there was this lady who
came out with me and say, my husband loves your books, a lot.
He was standing next to her, but he doesn't really speak English
that well, so he wants me to tell you that he You're a lot
and he wants you to sign on his Kindle.
Wow, so he gave me a marker pen and his Kindle and he asked me
to sign on his Kindle heels permanent ink, so it was very
gratifying things that look it affected.
These people so much is less of ego and pride thing, but it's
more of the impact that I had on people that it actually brought
them understanding in brought them Clarity of things.
Transmission of thought, reflection of ideas across
through this particular medium. That's very gratifying to me.
So obviously today now, Lot of people do things like YouTube
and stuff like that. I still think they'd written
word is one of the most powerful medium.
And that's the reason why I still continue writing today
because I do want to continue transmitting, my thoughts and my
ideas and be able to influence people in that way because I
believe that all time, a lot of things would fade away.
But one of these things that would last much, much longer is
probably the written word. So those are pretty interesting,
anecdotes and stories that you have.
There is really, really interesting, for me, at least to
hear because like signing a No, it's like a permanent marker.
That's like the first I've heard.
Yeah, it was. You can imagine the shock that I
have as well. He don't have a physical copy of
it, but he bought the book and what's on the Kindle and say
that was the only chance because he will not be able to see me
lives in Moscow. So I've enjoyed our
conversation. But I think before we wrap up
here, normally I would ask every guest that feature in the
tekhelet journal to share some of the technical leadership
wisdom. If you can share with us, what
are some of the three technical wisdom that you would like to
share it. Us here to learn and think about
probably not go with the number because I'm not like some Guru
to be honest. I'm just this guy who had a very
different kind of Julie in his technical career, trying out
different things, but I would probably give this advice or
rather get something of this talk to the audience is really
to try and do not be afraid to try.
And I don't think this is something that most of the
workers who would happen. You should wave, but most of our
developers should try be a little bit more Brave and not
just on the court. In the careers and in real life
as well. Obviously, there are different
degrees to this but really, they are things are going to happen
and jumping into it and doing things and having that courage
to just go and try and do different things.
I think that's important. Obviously, you're not going to
succeed, every time they are no permanent failures.
You could always take those things that did not work so well
and work it into something that could benefit you in the future.
I don't really like the word. When people say, Okay, celebrate
your failures. I don't think people should
celebrate failure. Yes, I think people should learn
from them and using that learning to improve their next
round, because as long as you are alive, you can always try
again and again, and again until you succeed, but obviously, if
you don't try and you afraid to try, then you will never be able
to experience all those successes either.
So, I think for me, that would be the advice.
I would have just try to be brave jump into those things.
Like learning a new programming language.
Learning a new technology. Just do it trying out a new
career. Just try it out.
Who knows what's going to happen?
Who knows what you're going to gain?
The bigger the risk then we could again.
So anyway, I think that would be the point that I wanted to make
here. So yeah, I personally can relate
to your story saying that as a software engineer.
We are not afraid to try out new technologies.
New programming language. But yeah.
Trying and lives is something that some of us or at least me,
probably could see it as a bigger of a hurdle than all
these new technologies that are coming every day.
So thank you so much. So Sean for spending your time.
I enjoyed our conversation and looking forward to see you.
Again. Once we have all this lockdown
is of Yeah, thanks Henry. Thanks for asking me once again,
and also listening to all my ramblings.
I know sometimes I tend to talk a lot result of 0 H, by the way,
so I hope this has been interesting and thank you for
the opportunity to speak to this on you.
Thank you for listening to this episode.
If you highly enjoy it, please share it with your friends and
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Lat, stay tuned for the next tekhelet Journal episode, and
until then. Goodbye.