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Dear Members,
Welcome to the June edition of Advance. The year is flying by and I’m sure many of you are busy now finalizing your Australian end of financial year reports. Good luck! June has been an exciting month for the AustCham team with a key focus on Australian Tax, Technology, and Alumni across many of our events.
The Australian Alumni Awards were hosted on June 22nd and competition was tough with our biggest field of applicants yet! Congratulations to all our winners, but particularly to our Australian Alumni of the Year award recipient, H.E. Dr. Pichet Durongkaveroj, Minister for Digital Economy & Society. And news just hot off the press… we are hoping to have Dr. Pichet appear as the key note speaker at an upcoming AustCham August luncheon, so stay tuned for more details coming soon on that exciting event.
The latest group of New Colombo Plan (NCP) interns arrived from Australia this month and were welcomed by His Excellency Mr Paul Robilliard at an afternoon tea at his residence on June 20th. The new interns have been placed at a range of businesses around Bangkok including with the Embassy, in the AustCham offices, and with Linfox, for a period of 6 to 12 weeks each. The NCP program gives students and businesses the opportunity to share skills and experiences between Australia & Thailand and learn more about each other’s cultures and ways of working. I highly recommend visiting the DFAT website for more information on how to get involved. Our Linfox intern Aki is only two weeks in and she has already produced some incredible results for us. http://dfat.gov.au/people-to-people/new-colombo-plan/mobility-program/pages/mobility-program.aspx
As my fellow Director Stuart Kelly spoke about last month, sub-committees are a fantastic way for everyone to get involved and help drive the direction of the Chamber, and to create events that are relevant and interesting to you. As CIO Asia for Linfox International Group, I have a passionate interest in being involved in and helping to shape the technology industry in Thailand and Asia. As a member of the Information & Digital Technology Sub-Committee with Stuart and Dwight Willis from DollarSmart, this month I’ve had the opportunity to help drive and support three Technology related events (though to be fair only one was directly organized by the sub-committee!).
Our first Technology event on June 6th saw us fortunate enough to be joined by H.E. Dr Tobias Feakin, the Australian Ambassador for Cyber Affairs, who gave a fascinating address on The New Digital World: Opportunities and Challenges. Dr Feakin discussed how more and more countries are implementing Cyber Affairs Ambassadors, who meet to discuss global strategies on cyber-terrorism and the increasing difficulties in managing the borderless internet from a security and economic policy perspective.
On June 15th Dwight Willis and I took part in a panel discussion on “Recruiting for IT: What can we do?”, where we were joined by Khun Thanakorn Charee, COO at MFEC PCL, and Sam Mattey, IT Recruitment Manager at PRTR, to discuss the current challenges around sourcing and securing upcoming IT talent in the Thailand market. One interesting insight that I gained from the session was that it’s now as much about companies promoting their value proposition to potential IT employees as employees selling themselves. Thailand’s low unemployment rates are driving some fascinating new behaviors in the marketplace that we rarely see in Australia.
June has been an action-packed month for the AustCham team with 11 major events occurring, so I’m sure the team are looking forward to a slightly less busy month ahead in July. One event that I recommend everyone should join is the Member Briefing on July 5th where Mr Peter Baines OAM, Chair, Founder, and Managing Director of The Hands Group, will speak about "CSR Activities for companies of all shapes & sizes". Corporate Social Responsibility and charitable activities are an important (and fun!) way to build a positive team culture within your business, and The Hands Group are running some exciting events in Thailand over the next 12 months where all proceeds will be going to support schools and housing for underprivileged children around Thailand. Linfox are a big supporter of the amazing work Peter and his team do, and we’re looking forward to working with them more over the next 12 months.
Good luck with your EOFY activities, and the Board and I look forward to seeing you at an AustCham event or on a sub-committee soon!
Yours sincerely,
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