Week in Review: We are hustling all the time

By Karamjit Singh August 30, 2013

DNA working hard to make it a great product for readers, the ecosystem
Readers playing their part too, but need to be more engaged

Week in Review: We are hustling all the time WHEN I am asked about how Digital News Asia (DNA) is doing, I just love to highlight the comments section of our articles as proof of the quality of our readers.

Often times, I feel the comments add more to the discussion than the article.

And in the online space, when a community starts to take ownership of the site, people start to also self-regulate the site. And today I saw a great example of that in Gabey Goh’s article that broke the news that Apple Inc was filing for a trademark on the word ‘Startup.’

The article has certainly struck a chord with readers and is already screaming up the charts to becoming one of our best read articles ever, and is already the second most ‘Liked’ article.

But one of the comments left by a frequent commentator of DNA had a line that is left open to a nasty interpretation and another reader called out that comment as being unfair. Then, yet another reader came in to share his view, defending the original comment.

All fascinating for us to observe as we watch DNA growing up fast as a product, although we are only 15 months young.

Readers being thoughtful and critical of each other’s comments is great too, as it raises the bar for all. Just as I constantly exhort all of you to help us make DNA a better product.

In journalism lingo, Gabey’s article is a scoop, but at DNA we rarely use the term because we do often break stories. And none of you will know it but A. Asohan’s piece on Steve Ballmer announcing his decision to quit last Friday was actually one of the first few stories that we know of, globally, on that issue.

Friday night or not, Asohan stayed up and worked on that article. He even gives us a name of a possible successor. Check it out and check out his own Insights piece that he wrote as a follow-up on Monday, working through the weekend on that.

Incidently, both Asohan and Gabey were up to the wee hours of Thursday night (technically, Friday morning) to get the Apple story up for you. And Asohan also whipped up his Insight piece on how our government is not being careful enough when making requests for user information from the global social media platform.

What’s that about? Read it right here!

And my message here? We are hustling all the time to make DNA a great product for you. Please play your part by contributing to the conversation too.

This week was also Disrupt week, the monthly ecosystem meet-up (hope Apple does not try to trademark this) we organise in collaboration with the Technopreneurs Association of Malaysia (TeAM). [Editor's note: Video of the full Disrupt session can be viewed below]

It was a sharing session about how entrepreneurs can get into the door and offer their services to large companies. AirAsia X CEO Azran Osman-Rani was one of the panellists, together with Andre Sequerah of Aexio and Bob Chua of Pulse Group.

It was a powerful sharing session with Azran emerging as a CEO (he is also a shareholder of AirAsia X) who is very open to using software and services from startups – as long as they help his company differentiate itself.

That’s an open invitation to all of you entrepreneurs! If you think you can help him and AirAsia X, reach out to him direct.

But also out of the discussion, it was predictable that the common experience most had was in the difficulty in selling to Malaysian companies. That is a wall that is proving tough for our enterprise focused entrepreneurs to scale.

And just like with DNA, Disrupt is made all the stronger and is more fun when our audience chip in, and they did. Someone from Khazanah was also there and told me the sovereign wealth fund has its eye on the startup ecosystem too but is deciding how best it can play a supportive role.

And that is also the main reason why our very own Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) has moved from the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (Mosti) to the Ministry of Communications and Multimedia (KKMM, its Malay language acronym.)

The official announcement was supposed to have been made on Monday but so far has not been forthcoming. But MDeC CEO Badlisham Ghazali actually tweeted about attending his first post-Cabinet meeting with KKMM on Aug 21!

Welcome to Twitter, Badlisham! And, welcome also Kal Joffres, a cofounder of social enterprise Tandemic, as the latest contributor to DNA.