TC is a technology corespondent who has written for this region and also internationally.
Presently, he is into all manners of writing and has been in publishing, marketing and advertising the last two decades. His work in advertising has won awards.
TC is, in particular, an excellent technical writer. He follows the footsteps of noted technical writers in the US where they are both humorous scribes as well as accomplished engineers. In Singapore sadly, the job of technical writing is relegated to a junior scribe often with no or little technical knowledge (let alone interest!)
TC began his career in RF engineering before being tasked to help build a New Product Evaluation department in a large, multinational factory. There he was also tasked to design and build an extreme time-saving test setup that was nominated for a national technology ward (the first two engineers to be so nominated). A consumer product designer of home appliances such as TV, hi-fi, etc., TC finished his career in Engineering as head of int'l training for Aftersales agent heads in the US and Japan.
In a career spanning more than two decades, TC has seen much and done much, including changing his PC OS, like, five times (Windows lah, what to do!) He has lived through the dotcom era, tasted Marcom and PR success at the CeBIT fair, viewed the 9/11 with alarm, assisted in the rise of Linux and Android, documented the frustration of enterprise IT users (esp the ERP kind), and participated in the rise of the cloud (and data centre). He also helped to market ultrawideband (now used in anti-vehicular collision) and wrote about Bluetooth, RFID and NFC applications.
The industries he has covered are not limited to IT only. He has done stories in medicine, retail (where to shop, dine and visit in the region and Singapore), defense science (e.g. drones, terrorist tracking software, wing-in-ground aerospace, 4G armies, etc); nanotechnology (where the low hanging fruits are); 3D printing and precision engineering, facility asset management, etc. He is the curious sort and continues to be.
Since a young age, TC was a voracious reader and has taken an interest in how the mind works. In this aspect, he has volunteered his time to help ex-mental patients and is himself a trained counselor and TA practitioner. As a latter-day adult, his interest in particle physics grew. He particularly likes hard science fiction and was past president of the Science Fiction Association of Singapore or SFAS. He has met Brian Aldiss, Doris Lessing and Aurther C Clarke, whose books he particularly liked.
Work-wise, TC has accrued much experience at agency level where projects are timelined in dog weeks, multi-tasked in octopus fashion, and with deadlines that were usually expired "the day before". He has kept his fair share of late nights and drunk barrels of coffee - something he does not recommend in retrospect. It kills vitamin B in you when you need it most.
In recent years, TC has done teaching cases for the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (he is after all a case trainer certified by Harvard School of Government). He has also written quite a few white papers in his long career; some of these include about ultrawideband, 3G "blue sky" envisioning, eye care (contact lens), desktop networking; shipbuilding, microprocessor architecture, to name a few. He has also revamped websites to be more corporate-like or friendly to engage with. He has also done many success stories of server use.
TC can certainly help any company create useful documents such as technology philosophies, process workflow, employee handbooks/banking e-handbooks, investment docs, biz-to-biz docs, and very-easy-to-follow operational or system manuals. He has even helped a client once to design a car service center!
Please take a look at his detailed resume and portfolio by clicking on the page tabs above. Do understand that the pictures are mostly of of publications and collaterals - stuff that have been crafted with thought and care (and experience). A case in point is the nine comment pieces he did for an Singapore IT Federation publication. It was all approved with little to no correction at all.
If you think there is a story or case TC should cover, or a project that can help a company advance and prosper, please drop him a note (contact details are below). He would love to explore the opportunity further. He can also help train marcom or PR staff so they can more effective and productive in their work.
To date, TC has done projects in China, Malaysia, Thailand, Japan, India, Sweden, Germany and the USA.
Note: TC holds the world's first MTM MBA (that's a "Management of Technology" MBA) specifically designed for technology managers and professionals. Said he: "I cannot credit this MTM course enough for the numerous real-world cases that I've come to learn about. We had to adopt a real-world business case from day one as a course project, something rather unheard of back in those days. Thus we learned to ask questions and do from the very start. This hands-on project (and the numerous cases studied during the course) gave me and my course buddies a lot of insights, especially those of how real companies and organisations failed or succeeded in reinventing themselves. In sum, the courage to do what needs to be done to ensure business prosperity, longevity and diversity. In the end, like having gone through a US Ranger course, you become a fearless soldier tackling anything that comes your way!"
To engage TC, please contact him at: monaco.lai@gmail.com
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Here are some matters to think about:
* Is wording on your packaging embarrassing you?
* You may have the best product but if spelling or grammar fails you, folks will think your quality is just as bad.
* Speak the lingo of your market properly.
* You can turn a customer off easily by speaking poorly in his language.
* You will soon disgust a customer by giving him a confusing instruction manual or process sheet. If you cannot tell him/her to use your product well, why should he care?
* Instruction manuals can be interesting, engaging and well illustrated. Also easy to understand.
* Are your ads doing you a service or disservice?
* Are they appropriate for your user maturity? Or is your market still new to your products?
* Is your launch timely?
* Are the ads crafted for the opposition as well?
* Are you getting the best media strategy and $$$ for your outlay?
* Are your marketers ready to conquer the market?
* Are their collaterals ready, effective?
* Are they part of a larger strategy?
* Are they mistakenly run by Sales and not Marketing?
* How good is your market knowledge?
* Have you considered all marketing channels?
* Do you know how to prioritize them?
* Do you have an effective communicator for all these channels? Is the effort well coordinated?
* What is a good budget?
* Which channel works best?
* Do not forget, you have a vendor channel also.
* Are your vendors well taken care of? Do they have incentives to do continue biz with you?
* How is marketing to vendors different?
* How is communicating with them different?
* Are brand values well communicated? Are mission and vision statements clear?
* Do your corporate materials come across as staid, 'boring' ad lacking soul?
* Is your technology confusing?
* How good are your press relations?
* Is there someone to write a good speech for your CEO?
* Someone who knows the industry and its key concerns?. Someone who can make your CEO sound and look good?
* Someone who can live inside your CEO's head and say the things he wants to say? Or needs to say?
* Is your CEO media trained? Is senior management prepared to handle a media crisis or bad publicity?
These are just some aspects of the Four Pillars of Comms that influence communications, marketing, and advertising in your organisation. Internally, do you have an effective communications and rule guide for employee interaction, desired conduct and mind-sell? Such things have to be best worded, best said and best thought-out. <end>
