Communication Technology Forewarned

Convention, City Centre – After much tweaking here and there, I have finally succeeded operating WordPress from my cellphone.

I would like to congratulate WordPress for their proactive and creative endeavours in catering the blogwriters’ unending needs.

From my experience of setting up sites with Geocities, Skali, Blogger, Google and Joomla, I have found no other application that is more user friendly and convenient than the amazing WordPress.

Even though its media storage capacity is a little constrained unlike Blogger, there are still other compatible virtual repositories that could be linked or embedded on its hosted blogs such as Photobucket and Youtube.

Technology, Communication and Society

The rapid proliferation of communication and technology advancement has affected various aspects of human lives in recent decades. What intrigues me most is the instrumental role of cyber applications in politics.

When a new means of communication is introduced, it is prone to be utilised as a tool to catalyze a country’s revolution or political change.

This is historically proven from the times of the traditional media such as the newspaper then there is the breaktrough discovery of the radio and television, telecommunication gadgets, computer and now the globally accessed internet.

Cybersphere played a big role in Malaysia’s 12th General Election where voters relied more on blogs or websites rather than the mainstream media to extract ‘real’ information on national politics.

In Iran, the popular web social networking, Facebook was banned to curb contagious updates by dissidents on its local election. The ban did not stop the party activists but had made people to turn to Twitter for instant micro-blogging updates instead.

Each new communication technology accelerates the speed and also transforms the nature of information dissemination in society.

I have read once when Allah asked one of his prophets (I can’t recall who) to convey His message for all people to worship Him, the prophet asked Allah how could he do it because he did not have the means to send out the Divine message to everyone.

The Almighty then advised the prophet to just spread the message and leave the rest to Him. Who could have ever imagined that futuristic human made technology would be able to fulfill this need?

The knowledge of creating modern technology is what Allah has bestowed upon us to spread His words to all parts of the world. Today, the notion of Islam is known to everyone especially since the September 11th tragedy. Terrorism is not an image that any muslim would want to opt to portray Islam as but at least the event had intrigued the non Muslims to try to make sense of the religion and the Muslims to try to clarify that Islam is not a religion of violence.

The internet is the best platform for political, religious and intellectual discourse but if not cautious, one could be derailed by misinformation.

I imagine that in future, the trend of mobile-blogging would be popularised when smart phone prices start to dive and mobile internet access facilities are upgraded with faster and more stable connections. By that time, we would see blogs complete with audios, videos and pictures uploaded by bloggers via cellphones realtime during  events.

If you have heard, during Judgment Day at the Mahsyar Field, our misdoings shall be replayed to the public on a “big screen”. I wonder does this realtime-multimedia reporting is one of the signs of such situation, where sins can not be concealed anymore because everybody can see one’s misbehaviour as it occurs. Privacy is liberalized and humans are victimised (or morally saved) by their own technological creation.

Be Human

Bee Hive, City Centre – As I stared at this stagnant site, I thought to myself where is this blog heading to because I have rarely posted anything here for the past two months. When I browsed through my wordpress posts list, there were like 25 unfinished drafts yet to be published.

My preoccupation with other daily commitments has unabled me to update anything mentally stimulating for you people. Mobile blogging is an impossible task with our ridiculously instable local wireless connection except for Twitter’s micro-blogging.

Blogging on this site has given me so many wonderful experiences and not forgetting the dreadful ones.  It has inadvertantly turned into an experimental ground for me to gain a better understanding of the cyberspace and its nature.

Despite of the rare post of articles, my wordpress stats has reported a few high hits for certain writings which are mostly informational subjects such as on Hadhari, Communication and most recently, Political Marketing.

I also get feedbacks telling me that posts narrated in simple English are more preferred by readers.

As compared to personal stories, posts on political issues acquired more hits from visitors.

Some people were pleading me not to just leave this site to wither and die. I as the so-dubbed  “perfectionist”  find that if I can’t narrate anything beneficial to others, I might as well not post anything at all because it would waste any reader’s time.

Then again, being human you can’t be mechanical at all times.  Emotion is an inherent gift and people should make the best out of themselves no matter how inane others may perceive them. It is the personal thought that counts, not other’s perception.

At least, it would be useful for my own introspection in the future. Wallahu a’lam.

Sahara Tent: Jewel of the Ain Arabia

‘Ala H. Salih, The Boss

Sahara Tent, ‘Ain ‘Arabeyya – The other day I had the best break fast treat for Ramadhaan. It has been quite a while since I have been yearning to savour juicy arabian lamb delicacy for buka puasa.

Alhamdulillah, Ala the owner of the famous Sahara Tent arabian restaurant was kind enough to host us at his exclusive eatery.

As we all ate and talked over politics and culture, ‘Ala kept cracking Arab jokes every now and then. I was the only one who laughed because the rest were too busy discussing about the office or did not even understood what his jokes were about. Luckily, I am slightly familiar with the Arab culture since I used to have uncles and cousins who graduated from the Middle east. Those days, when they came back for the holidays, they’d share cultural jokes that were a little alien to our Malay-Arab worldview. Of course, they had to explain to me the true culture of the Arabs before I could really succumb to their jokes.

I looked around and reminisced the first time I discovered the restaurant back when I was a student. It was in the year 2000 and after 9 years, the place was still around and in fact the business has prospered very well. The survival of Ala’s enterprise among the mushrooming Arabian restaurants in KL was due to the fact it had its own niche as compared to the rest of its competitors. It involves the location, concept, food quality, service and the owner himself.

Location

The Sahara Tent is situated in Bukit Bintang which is within the Golden Triangle in Kuala Lumpur. The area is a shopping hot spot for the Arab tourists in this country. The establishment of the Ain Arabia strip by the Ministry of Tourism was a perfect move that it had further boosted the restaurant’s popularity. With the operation of trains like the LRT and the Monorail, potential customers have the convenience of going to the Sahara Tent at any time of the day despite of heavy traffic jams.

Concept

As compared to Tarbush and al-Rawsha, Sahara Tent is built on the concept of the Arabian canopy used by the nomads or also known as bedouins (Badwi). The colorful interior design is made of bright colours red, orange, gold and also black. Typical Arabian embellishments such as tassled curtains, shisha pipes and musical instruments such as the ‘oud complements the exotic ambience of the restaurant. It definitely makes an Arab feel like home or perhaps remind them of their hometown in the middle-east.

Food and Services

Did you know that there are certain delicacies that would take hours or even half a day to prepare? ‘Ala prioritises quality in terms of taste, presentation and services. Looking at the way the staff work and respond to their boss, it indicates that good cooperation amongst them and their undivided respect for the employer also contributes to the splendid performance of the Sahara Tent as the Best Arabic Food Restaurant in 2004.

The Owner

I must say that Ala has very good PR skills. His sense of humour always works for ice-breaking measures with unfamiliar customers. From the testing questions that I asked him, I find that this Iraqi entrepreneur has planned out his life and business very well over the years. He knows what to chose, where and who to affiliate with.  Just look at the picture frames hung around the restraunt and you’ll know what I mean.

Till then, start moving and go get that succulent lamb at Sahara Tent! Walla marra lazeez. (Or in Azib’s words, hatta la tatakallam! LOL!)

Public Lecture on Political Marketing: An Overview

Uno Pace, City Centre – A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity of attending a public lecture by Dr Jennifer Lees-Marshment, a Political Marketing guru from the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

UiTM, Shah Alam 220709

Entitled “Political Marketing: Principles and Applications”, the public lecture was a stepping stone for the nascence of this new field in our local academia. In fact, the composition of the participants and their interactive responses during the Q & A session evinced the sophistication of Malaysia’s political society today.

Introduction to Political Marketing

Political marketing is how politicians adopt marketing strategies to effectively achieve their objectives. The main objective is to gain the people’s support and retain political power or public posts. Political Marketing does not only involve Political Communication or Political Advertising but it also encompasses market intelligence research and other salient product marketing methodologies. Hence, we could also view politics in the marketing sense such as following;

• The ’salesmen’ or ‘product ambassadors’ AS the politicians
• The ‘customers’ AS the people, be it voters or non-voters
• The ‘brand’ AS the political party / government
• The ‘product’ AS the policy / principle / doctrine / philosophy / project / programme

When a politician or the government plans to propose a political product or policy to the public, market intelligence research is utilized to identify the public’s preferences by clusters rather than in general. This helps the politician to incorporate appropriate market targeting, branding in devising successful political marketing strategies. The findings of the research becomes the blueprint for their strategies.

However, a politician does not necessarily need to make decisions solely based on the peoples’ interests or demands. The decision-making process also requires a wise leadership jurisdiction, by taking into account all the relevant fronts of an issue. (Of course, we know that decisions made by politicians are influenced by various variables such as his personal interest or the party’s). However, the politician must also know how to maintain the symbiotic relationship between party and the general public/voters.

Dr Lees-Marshment had also elaborated some tips on effective Political Marketing with these key points;

1. How to conduct research
2. The public should be consulted but only in a particular way
3. Market analysis does change the product, but not 100% (Product is improvised/ adapted)
4. Designing the political product
5. Using marketing to lead and achieve change
6. Strategising
7. Positioning, branding and authenticity
8. The party and internal marketing
9. Communicating (Interacting with the public through traditional and new media/technology)
10. Government and delivery (Do not bite off more than you can chew)

Political Marketing Research in Malaysia

The Political Marketing course has yet to be offered in any public universities in Malaysia. When queried, Dr Lees-Marshment suggested that the subject may be included in the syllabuses of politics, communication or even as one of the elective courses in the Humanities department.

In the real life political scenario, even though market researches have been carried out to explore the needs of the society, there is an obstacle that has yet to be surpassed which is the problems of co-operation between politicians and researchers or academicians. This was one of the causes that I tweeted “For intellectuals and leaders to work together in solving the problems of society , it requires trust and the abandonment of ego and narcissism“(2nd Mar 2009).

Other than attitude matters, not having a good grasp of both theoretical and experiential knowledge has become a hindrance for politicians to make full use of the research findings in their political strategies. Whereas academicians or researchers who do not work within the political organisation would propose too idealistic solutions which are not in tune with realtime politics.

Some political parties or politicians would prefer to depend on consultant agencies. These agencies tend to offer corporate-like measures in political marketing which overlook certain aspects of political sensitivities. Even though the situation does not apply to all politicians but the prevalence of this detrimental outcome would eventually take its toll upon the politicians and the organisation they uphold for.

The ‘Noises’ of Communication