Business Fair 2017

All freshmen at Faculty of Economics and Business Universitas Padjadjaran must take the “Introduction to Business” course. This course is taught by the lecturers from my department, i.e. the department of management and business, known as DEMABIS. This course is aimed at introducing the world of business to those new students who might come from different backgrounds. Some of them graduated from natural science class and vocational high school. So, this course is highly important to be studied by the students majoring management, economics, accounting and Islamic economics. This course is given in the first semester and currently about to end. Next week is the final exam and it’s been our tradition to hold a business fair at almost the very end week of the first semester. This business fair was held at LEAD Building area, Jatinangor Campus on Thursday, December 14, 2017.

As one of the lecturers, I was involved in preparing for the event, though the most of the works were done by my students. In this event, they learned a lot about holding an event. Besides, they learned how to sell and market the products because they collectively spent their own money as the capital. If they do not make any profit, they surely lose their cash. But, each of them surely has a share of the profit that would be attained. The students in my class sold three items, i.e. snow white ice, mango sticky rice and sausage. They have brand for each of these products, as shown in the picture bellow:

This business fair is the event hold by the new students at our faculty so there are some obstacles that they faced. Nonetheless, they could successfully make it. Students from other faculties gathered, buying products and watching some stage and offstage performances. There were several booths competing to be the best. Thankfully, the students from my class got all the awards, i.e. the Best Marketing and the Best Booth Decoration. These achievements are surely the rewards for every effort that they made.

Above all, this business fair is supposed to be the mini laboratory for them in running the real business. The theories studied in the class were practiced in the event. I hope that the business does not stop as the class ends. Indeed, the experience in promoting, selling, and then making a profit are all precious for them in the years to come. Although not all students would be entrepreneurs, I hope that all students will have at least the spirit of entrepreneurship so they can always create value by creating something new and different benefiting themselves and others.  

Problem in Writing

Writing has always been a huge challenge for me and probably for most of us. We tend to love speaking more than writing. In fact, the saying can easily be forgotten while the writing shall always be remembered by other people. Thus, should we have something good or valuable, it is better for us to write it down so there are more people who can ‘enjoy’ the writing. As the result or message of a writing is important for us and for other people, I believe that we should make effort to produce writing, either academic or nonacademic writing. Nonetheless, we often face several problems hampering us from producing any writing. There are at least three main things that may impede us from writing. 

Firstly, we do not read thus we don’t have anything to write. Being lazy in reading makes our brain dull. Reading is among the very first things that must be loved. What if we hate reading? We can start from reading something that we like; reading comic books or magazine? Aside from increasing our knowledge, reading will broaden our perspective and let us know what people think and how they express their opinion or idea. If we read a lot, there is more probability for us to write as what other people did. Besides reading, you may also write something that you have experienced or attended. For practicing, I sometimes wrote sort of excerpt or summary of a seminar or workshop. 

Secondly, we don’t know how to write. The absence of knowledge and skill in writing is surely the big challenge. It happens not just to common people but also to the college students and graduates who are actually the people dubbed as scholars. A professor from a reputable university in Bandung wrote in his book that the subject of Bahasa Indonesia at college is better to be replaced by “writing subject”. He argued that we have been learning Bahasa Indonesia since we were at early ages at primary school but we cannot write correctly in a writing. Following that professor, I agree that the subject of writing (in Bahasa Indonesia) should be present at college especially at undergraduate and diploma level. As the number of credit is usually limited, it may replace Bahasa Indonesia subject.   

Thirdly, there is no external motivation such as people supporting us to produce writing. It is a good move if we now start joining a writing community. To produce a writing, maybe we should be forced at the beginning. Later, we will get used to it. One of the communities that I know is FLP (Forum Lingkar Pena) available in almost all big cities in Indonesia. Being in a community, we will be inspired, motivated and forced to write. So, you may start look for writing community around you. 
Happy writing, again!

Mendeley

Last year I attended a seminar about “Writing the Article for International Journal”. Something that was very interesting for me was about Mendeley software. It was very new for me then. Thanks so much to Mr. Ade from UPI Bandung who has introduced me to Mendeley. What was Mendeley anyway? It is a software which allows us to manage reference when we write an article, especially academic writing as it requires us to put a proper bibliography. Mendeley helps me a lot, indeed. It does a great thing for three of the following reasons.
First, what I need to focus on now is the content of my writing. I don’t have to worry about the reference writing which I pretty much did in the past. I can now make sure that a proper reference has been put and every single source is cited well. In this reason, I could so far produce two articles by using Mendeley as the reference manager.
Second, Mendeley lets me manage the articles in its “window”. I can access the articles I want to read or cite easily. Everything is just there. When I double click the article, Mendeley allows me to read and comment in that PDF file. It is awesome. Commenting is easy, I can write the translation there.
Third, Mendeley is totally free. I know another software such as Endnote, but I have to pay for it if I want to use it. Indeed, Mendeley is worry-free reference manager allowing me to save my time and money as well.
Unfortunately, not all my colleagues have been familiar with it. I started to introduce Mendeley to my colleagues and friends. This writing is also intended to introduce Mendeley to anyone getting on this blog. I am also now a Mendeley advisor. I registered to be it several days ago. I haven’t made a significant contribution in disseminating this piece of software, though.
 I have a strong faith that every student and lecturer has to know Mendeley. We all need to be familiar with it. It’s part of my homework to do so. I hope everyone can also take part in socializing this software to Indonesian public so that there will be more writings or articles produced here.