By Charisse Tay / Citizen Reporter

12th DECEMBER — IMAGINE an environmental activist, social worker, and entrepreneur sitting at the same table — what would they talk about?

That is the concept behind Interesthink 3, a multi-disciplinary conference that aims to bring people and ideas from different disciplines and industries together.

The event, which was held on Friday and is the third in a series since 2007, was situated at The Pod, located in the National Library.

Speakers like gay activist Alex Au and political science academic Prof Ho Khai Leong have featured in past conferences.

Like previous editions, the audience was indeed varied with more than 80 members, comprising mainly youths ranging from junior-college students to young working professionals.

According to Kelvin Quee, one of the main organisers, InteresThink was set up in order to “bring people from different genres together so that [there is] a cross-exchange of information.”As there is no existing exploratory platform in Singapore that fulfils this need, InteresThink was then conceived to seed such meaningful conversations.

The topic for InteresThink 3 was “Causes and Ideas”, so chosen, said Mr Quee, because “we see the need to highlight important initiatives and innovative ideas in Singapore”.

He believes that “the best way to evaluate and translate these initiatives and ideas into reality is to bring a diverse group together for a meaningful conversation”.

The evening began with a series of impromptu Lightning Talks, described on the official InteresThink website as “short, 5 minute talks” delivered by anyone choosing to take the floor, with the intention of “sharing their passions”.

The Talks had diverse topics ranging from open-source software for use on mobile phones, to self-directed learning, and even to religion and inter-faith exchange.

Dr Dana Elliott, Medical Director of LifeResus, also talked about his work in training volunteers to use CPR and defibrillators. He aims to raise the survival rate of heart attack victims in Singapore from the current 2%.

The highlight of the forum was speeches made by several distinguished speakers from a wide range of backgrounds, mostly with experience in social enterprise.

The first speaker for the evening was Patrick Lambe from Straits Knowledge, who spoke on the importance of good knowledge management.

Fong Hoe Fang, Director of Ethos Books, next spoke on social engagement through business. “We can merge business with social organisations,” emphasised Fong, “Businesses do not have to be only profit-driven.”

Ethos Books is an independent Singapore publishing house that publishes contemporary Singaporean works.

On why his company had chosen this less-lucrative niche, Fong said: “We believe that writers of this line of literature are actually the ones that… focus on the social issues of the day.” Such issues, he said, “are the lessons that I think we must all look back to, and reflect on.”

Lastly, Tan Puay Hoon, President of the Restroom Association (Singapore), spoke on how restroom cleaners are the “unsung heroes” of our society.

She emphasised the need for toilet users, cleaners, and owners to co-operate through the LOO campaign, which aims to clean up 21,000 public restrooms in Singapore by 2010.

Each speech was followed by a round of World Cafe, a conversation tool chosen for its ability to cross-pollinate ideas across different groups of people.

The audience was broken up into small groups consisting mainly of acquaintances, and discussions were quickly started based on ideas thrown up by each forum speaker.

Many participants felt that the World Cafe conversation was a good way of facilitating the exchange of ideas, although some such as 28-year-old Ong Jiin Joo commented that the discussions were too short and too much of “a rush” to “truly draw out the passions of people.”

To round off the evening, Douglas Oloughlin, one of the figures instrumental in organising the event, commented in closing that “all the speakers were driven by a passion, the desire to step into a gap, … whatever the issues are.”

29-year-old Ted Tan, a member of the audience and participant of InteresThink 2, felt that the event was “valuable for youths to get a broader perspective of what the speakers have achieved in the workplace, [thus] inspiring them to better themselves through social activism”.

Blogger Gabriel Seah, 24, said that the Lightning Talks were “interesting probably because of the spontaneity and diversity of topics”, but felt that the diversity of the speaker line-up was “a bit unbalanced” and could be improved.

InteresThink 3 was supported by U60, a month-long series of events organised to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the inception of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Wee Yeong Wei, 19, a volunteer on the U60 organising team, was supportive of forums such as InteresThink 3. Wee said that he was “very heartened” by the sharing this evening, and commented that it was “rare to have instances like these in Singapore among youths.”

He added that he would encourage all youths to attend future InteresThink events.

Additional reporting by Pearl Lee

To read more articles on U60 and U60 events, click here.

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