Friday, 16th April 2021: ASEAN PR Network in collaboration with Global Alliance for PR and Communications Management successfully organized the #GAETM the 2nd Live Webinar entitled “Technology Roles in Scaling Up the Education & Business in the Region” and was attended by more than 160 participants who came from ASEAN countries. This year, Mrs. Prita Kemal Gani, MBA, MCIPR, APR as the Chair of Asia Pacific for Global Alliance has been appointed to lead the GA Education and Training Month Campaign. The Global Alliance Education and Training Month was the first and largest ever free global education program undertaken. This included over 50 educational webinars with thousands of engaged professionals sharing their knowledge and insights from around the world during these unprecedented times. The campaign resulted in over €250,000.00 worth of free education, training and professional insights from around the world.
The webinar started with various videos; the Global Alliance profile then followed by the welcoming remarks from Mrs. Prita Kemal Gani, MBA, MCIPR, APR. It continued with Ms. Nadine Samala as the MC for the session welcoming and greeting of all of the audience and passed on to the moderator, Mr. Deddy Muharman, Head of Thesis for UGP at LSPR Communication & Business Institute who took over the discussion session.
The webinar consisted of 2 speakers; the first was Mr. Novistiar Rustandi, the Co-Founder and CEO of HarukaEdu. He presented on the topic “Improving Life through Lifelong Learning”. Mr. Novis explained that education has changed drastically this year with teaching moving to digital platforms with 34% of Indonesia’s Gen Z now using their smartphone to study online. Therefore, Technology plays an important role in scaling education and business in the region. At the end of his session, Mr. Novis mentioned that Pintaria is one of the No. 1 lifelong learning and career platforms in Southeast Asia. Its platform connects all the key stakeholders in the ecosystem through an integrated platform that connects the individual customers (B2C), who are looking for a job, to the business customers (B2B), who are looking for skilled workers.
The session continued with the 2nd speaker, Ms. Ana Pista, the Vice President-External PR Society of the Philippines and CEO of Ardent Communications. She presented her materials entitled “PR and Technology, The Way Forward”. Ms. Ana explained that PR pros everywhere are faced with enormous challenges in the face of a large captive at-home audience. We need to hurdle changes in, first, societal expectations, and second, changes in the available technology. She then mentioned that “The thread is being spun. This is the greatest story of our lives. Communications professionals should peak into the future and ask ourselves how we want to tell this story to our grandchildren. There are powers at work looking to hijack and change the narrative. We are uniquely situated, as story tellers, to conform or reform. When future generations “Ask what you did?” “How are you going to answer?”
Finally, the webinar ended with the moderator, Mr. Deddy, concluding that technology has now become the main actor. It plays an important role in scaling up the changes in both the education and business industry in this new normal situation. The webinar ended with the ASEAN Unite as One song and a group photo.
