The British Council Blogging Competition is coming to the second topic Knowledge Economy (KE). Actually I am more interested in talking about intercultural dialogue than knowledge economy, but as we are living in the global world where knowledge economy will help the survival of a nation I will try to give some of my cents on this issue.
As stated in the official website of BC now 60, British Council Indonesia’s programmes related to the KE issue are:
Creative Industries
Education UK
Scholarship Management
DelPHE
Primary Innovations Project
Today (May 24, 2008) Indonesians are facing the augmentation of the fuel price. There will be a lot of consequences coming from the increasing price, generally the transportation cost will be increased and almost all prices will going up with them. At the same time our capability of paying are not increasing so we are going to face a harder life.
It is a bit annoying that a country which is one of the oil producers could be beaten by the increase price of the oil market in the global world. Why can’t we enjoy the increasing price as an increase source of income? On the contrary, the citizens should be suffering to provide a proper life for their families.
Being independent economically will really help Indonesia to build its future. In this sense then knowledge economy is a very important issue in gaining a better position to be free in financial term.
Knowledge Economy is a very huge topic to discuss, I would probably limit myself with several sub topics although all of these programmes are very interesting to browse around to get new knowledge and inspirations.
I will start by talking about the creative industries.
There is a programme that I’ve also mentioned in my intercultural dialogue post; the International Young Creative Entrepreneur of the Year Awards (IYCEY). The Indonesians who were sent to London to join their other friends impressed the panel of juries, and for the year 2007/2008 Indonesia gained the honour to be the only country worldwide invited to compete for all four of the IYCEY awards.
I have been peeking into Yoris Sebastian’s weblog about his trip to the UK. It seems that this kind of travel to meet other participants will always trigger creative persons to have new ideas, or at least other reflective thoughts.
Yoris Sebastian won a consolidated prize in the UK for his Goliath proposal. He started to work on his project and did a good start. He invited Ben Drury from the UK to share Ben’s experience with digital music to the Indonesian music entrepreneurs. On the other hand, being Indonesian, he knew the Indonesian market and he had his own way in introducing the digital music to Indonesians. Sharing knowledge as Yoris said is not swallowing the whole knowledge from others and penetrating it in another country without knowing the market’s capacity.
Another person known from the IYCEY is Ridwan Kamil, an Indonesian architect –also an urban planner. His award winning perhaps has also showed the Indonesian peoples that we are also having local seeds to grow in the global competition.
Reading through other website I found out that his company Urbane was also offering a fellowship programme. And it turns out that the programme was also linked to the British Council. The final selection included the ability to make a presentation and answering interview in English. The important message from this programme is the need to improve our local architects’ competencies to be able to compete in the professional world sans frontier.
I am happy for this kind of achievements received by our young professionals. It would help increase the fighting spirit of their colleagues and for the whole young Indonesians in general.
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