ICIK: Dr. Dave Osborne's talk on "Branding"

I am a member of the organizing committee of the International Conference on Integrated Knowledge (ICIK), in which I was in-charge of two matters: international liaison and moderation of talk.

I picked up Dr. Dave Osborne from KLIA last night and arranged for his accommodation at Summit Hotel in Subang. This morning, I took him to Monash University as he agreed to give a talk on "Branding". I had been appointed as the moderator of his talk. I made this opportunity for the Design Aesthetics students to attend the conference:
- to learn from the contents delivered by the speakers, particularly from Dr. Dave Osborne.
- to ask questions related to design aesthetics to the speakers, i.e. verifying what I taught them in the class.
- to learn from me in playing the role as a moderator, i.e. viewing how I put what I said in the class into practice.

Dave is based in Hong Kong and he owns two design companies. He received his PhD from Coventry University, and spent some time staying in Coventry because of that. As I lived more than two years in Coventry, we began our conversation by talking about Coventry and then his PhD. I was impressed by his passion in pursuing a PhD and I shared his pride of securing the doctorate degree. Through the conversation, I realised that he is a friend of my Dean, Prof Dato' Dr Ahmad b. Hj. Zainuddin. He was invited to become the external examiner of UiTM in early 2000s.

Fig 1: Dave's company "graphia | BRANDS" and his profile in the company's website

Dave talked about spatial design and the business of his companies. He raised the issues on old dogs in design work, which ignited the interests of some of students. The students asked the questions which I asked them in the class to verify whether what I said is actually parallel with what actually happened in the creative industry worldwide. This was indeed a good strategy, well-done my dear students! One of the questions they asked was:

How would you evaluate creativity?

En route to the airport after Dave's talk, Dave told me that he was really impressed by the proactive participation of my students. He can see good potential in them, despite the language barrier. I invited him to be our future external examiner, and inquired the possibility of having my students to do internship with him in near future. His answer was positive--although I wasn't sure whether or he was being polite and diplomatic, I was convinced by the extrovert quality of my students.