At “Unleashing Women’s Leadership in Indonesia” seminar by McKinsey and Femina Magazine, when Joanna Barsh, writer of book “How Remarkable Women Lead”, ask about what barriers hold women in the room, most of the women said, it’s personal barriers that hold them back. Women tend to belittling themselves, have a sense of ‘I’m not good enough’, fear to take risks and the guilt of feeling choosing work over family that stop them from going to the top.

Cultural barrier, especially in Indonesia, also play big part. Being successful often seen as a negative term for women (or wife and mother), but highly encouraged for men.

If there’s a person that couldn’t see anything as a barrier, it must be mbak Marta Jonatan, HR director at Microsoft Indonesia who sat beside me at the event. She told me that her husband once willing to let go of of his job and going with her to work at Philippines and let her get to the top of the company. An example of a good communication and understanding between husband and wife. Mbak Marta also doesn’t really care what people might say about her family situation that ‘slightly’ different than other people. As a leader, you’ve got to be able to focus on the things that really matter.

Ibu Mari Elka Pangestu’s speech on the event sum it all up: we need to do the best we can and use technology as a tool to go to the top.

I’d like to thank my best girl Sati Rasuanto, the Managing Director of Endeavor Indonesia, to recommend me to attend this inspiring event.

Open for discussion!

Created by: MBAOnline.com

“As we alter our perception, we can change our emotions.” -Daniel Goleman

I watched Rory Sutherland’s TED Talk about perspective today. It’s a great talk and I totally agree with his ideas.

“In a party, when you can’t smoke, if you stand and stare out of the window on your own, you’re an antisocial, friendless idiot. If you stand and stare out of the window on your own with a cigarette, you’re a philosopher,” Rory opened his talk. Everybody’s laughing and everybody’s agree.

Perspective or shall I say perception is finally define the reality of what we see.

I was doing a weekend trip to several cities in Central Java last weekend and doing talks about business and also about creative writing. One of my friends said, “Don’t you have time for yourself?” I was shocked with her remarks.

In her perception, what I did = working and that must be tiring working on weekends. While in my perspective, I’m doing this to share my knowledge and hopefully will be useful for young people in my country. Most of the talks I did are for non-profits, universities, schools. Speaking and sharing is the time for myself. It’s my ‘me time’. I enjoy every single seconds of it.

Of course I can also treat this as a job. But that will make me very very tired. I had tight schedules and barely had time to breath. But my perspective keep me happy and strong physically.

Try shifting your perspective into a more positive and empowering point of view.

Rory also made an excellent point about three aspects to solving a problem:

Technical – Psychology – Economics

He gave example of Eurostar train from Paris – London. Instead of using billions of dollars to add technology in the train so it will arrive 45 minutes faster, why EuroStar didn’t invest in giving WiFi on the train so the journey will be more enjoyable and time become measured in relative way. Or, use some of the money to hire good looking models to walk every 10 minutes inside the train, he jokes. That’s how to use technical, psychology and economics approach to solve a problem.

Now, time to think how to solve Jakarta messy traffic problems using this method :))

April is a ‘woman’s month’ in Indonesian calendar, because April 21st is the day we celebrate Kartini day. Kartini is a daughter of Mayor of Jepara back then who believe in woman’s equal right for education. She wrote a lot of letters for her Dutch pen friends, explaining about her insights & vision for women in Indonesia. You can read the collection of her letters in Project Gutenberg > Letters of a Javanese Princess.

In the spirit of Kartini, Girls in Tech Indonesia create a meetup with a totally different format. We invite some speakers, mostly girls, to share how they use technology for their causes, we invite one guest speaker from foreign country to give us different perspective, we invite a ‘motivator’ kind of speaker to give us vision, and last but not least, in this meetup we have one male observer that will see from guy’s perspective on our very girly  event

Thank you speakers >> @motulz on how to use digital devices to draw, @rahneputri on @piknikasik  how to use social media to gather friends and enjoy offline moments, @LittleCaesara  on her animal rescue cause in social media, Sakshi Mehta from India sharing her view about woman & IT in India & she also share about the ‘Indian Kartini’, Kiran Bedi, with her famous quote: ‘I dare’, also our first male observer @lexdepraxis who’ve been live tweeting about our event

Thank you Project Eden for hosting the event! Thank you my partners @anantya @adheRiya also @GirlsintechID associate @Fikhanza – team from Think.Web and Think.Voice who’ve been helping us with the event.

Sati elaborate the answer on why Indonesian women matter. Women number is 51% of 240 million Indonesia population. We’re bigger in number, living in a country with 1 trillion dollars GDP, biggest economy as well as country size in SouthEast Asia. Growing 6.5 – 7%. Relatively stable, politically. And more than 60% are below the age of 39 years old. That is A LOT of energy that will provide a dynamic and creative workforce.

In few years, we will have the world! If women can initiate their way to entrepreneurship (unleash their potential and absorbs workforce) and learning how to give better nutrition and educate their children better as Indonesian next leaders.

So, (Indonesian) girls, are you ready for the challenge?

Check here for pics and like Girls in Tech Indonesia page on Facebook

Follow @girlsintechID on twitter for info about our next events

Inside the room, panelists are discussing on how to make Indonesia as the next IT hub, how to be the next Sillicon Valley. But Phil Whickham, CEO of the Society of Kauffman Fellows, said: Don’t try to become Sillicon Valley!

Sillicon Valley is unique. Indonesia should be Indonesia. We must know what we can build, what makes our ecosystem unique and figure out how we can connect. Because our startup is like neuron in the brain that will only good when it’s connected.

And that’s exactly what us from StartupLokal community been trying to do. The initiators, myself @salsabeela , @nuniek , @nataliardianto  and the associates @bayu99  @ilmanakbar  @hadigunawan , try as hard as we could to help grow and nurture the startup ecosystem in Indonesia. We partner with several Indonesia’s digital activists and creating @ProjectEden , an accelerator to incubate new ideas to become startups.

Telkom Indonesia playing important roles in providing infrastructure as the backbone of startup ecosystem. Indonesia Wifi @Wifi_id  project will make 500,000 wifi access points available all over Indonesia. The Project expected to be complete within this year.

We’re grateful with amazing line of speakers on our anniversary & judges for Echelon’s startup pitch: Brynerio, 4ID (Indonesia), Danny Wirianto, Mindtalk (Indonesia), Harry K. Nugraha, Intel (Indonesia), Kevin Mintaraga, Project Eden (Indonesia), Michel Birnbaum, SVCA (Singapore), Mohan Belani, E27 (Singapore), Phil Wickham, Kauffman Fellows (USA), Sarim Aziz, RIM (Singapore), Sri Safitri, Telkom (Indonesia), Simone Brunozzi, Amazon Web Service (Singapore), Vincent Lauria, Golden gate Ventures (USA)

I find Simone @simon  session very interactive and exciting, we know for sure, step by step, on how to start a startup. A very nice opening session for around 350 participants that mostly ‘new comer’. I can read on twitter timeline that people are inspired to start their own startup.

Big thanks to our generous sponsors: Finpay Online Payment Gateway, Telkom Indonesia and also E27 sponsors Amazon, Microsoft,  Global Brain and Blackberry. Thanks Telios.Tv for the opportunity for startups to promote their services.

Thanks our host partner e27 & their solid team: @mohanbelani  @joashweecikai  @gabtwitx – it was fun working with you guys.

The venue, Telkom office at Kebon Sirih, was packed with enthusiasts from 10am to 6pm, on Saturday, holiday weekend. Everybody was in awe with the energy in the room!

“Huge potential, amazing energy, very creative people!” are some of the comments I overheard from Japanese, Singaporean, French, American at the event.

The future is bright for Indonesia. Our job now is to stay positive, start building and make it happens.

My entrepreneur friend who just back from Arizona on Goldman Sachs 10000 women initiative said, the girls from other countries had dominating conversations in their business class at ThunderBird School. They make comment on things the teachers said, stated their opinion. And Indonesian girls? They stay quiet. Is it the ‘I’m not good enough’ (as Indonesian) feeling?

Well, now you should held your head up high because here’s why you should be proud to be an Indonesian:

Indonesia’s GDP now stands more than US$ 1 trillion Pak @GitaWirjawan said on @TEDxJakarta, make Indonesia to enter the Trillion Dollar club, an unofficial classification of the world’s major economies with a gross domestic product (nominal GDP) of more than USD 1 trillion per year. This make Indonesia be in the same club with giants like China, India and South Korea!

Where’s our SEA neighbors in the GDP rank? Our economy size is 3x bigger than Thailand and 4x bigger than Malaysia & Singapore. All these times we thought it’s Singapore, but turned out, they’re #4 in SEA but they can promote themselves better. And I think Singaporean is among the most confident people, it’s because they’re proud of their country.

Our demographic is excellent. We’re blessed with youth. At least half of Indonesian’s 240 million population is young people under 30 years old. Without youth, there’s no productivity, no creativity, no economic sizing. If we see more and more developed countries struggle to keep their population in balance, we have no problem at all :))

My friend Gabriel from Japan, who has visited 46 countries for business, said that Indonesian has the best warm personalities. The character is there. We’re not only fresh and young, also basically positive & lovable people, which is one of the most important qualities. As Gab said: “Places are all the same, you can always find beautiful scenery everywhere. Its the people that differ the countries. I like people in this country and I want to help to do more.”

Such powerful statement from a future investor. If only anyone do something about regulation to make it easier to build a company here *cough* because Gab is registering his company’s branch in Singapore.

Ok forget infrastructure for a while :))

So, if we have pride, choose hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict, create qualities of decisiveness, high commitment to pursuit excellent, promote our country better, perfecting ideas, avoid mediocrity, then with the size of our Facebook users (43 million users) and Twitter users (6 million users), we surely can start to hold the future.

This post is inspired by Pak Gita Wirjawan speech at TEDxJakarta: Deceptive Truths. Thanks to my best girl @asil & TEDxJakarta team for the invitation to the inspiring event.

Here’s what I did to finished the book:

• I create outline. It’s always the first step. I need to get a novella finished in 13 days. I need to get there precisely, there’s no room for mistake or confusion. So in order to stay on track to my destination, I need a map. In writing, the map is the outline. It’s where you know how the story started, the conflicts and the resolution. You have to know how your story ends. And this outline has to be solid first, so you can’t change the fundamental afterwards. So, I spend time on the phone with my editor, polishing, discussing and giving arguments over several points in my outline.  When it’s looking good, I can start scheduling.
• To write a 55 pages (A4) novella in 13 days, I need to write 4 pages a day. Religiously. On panic writing mode, I wrote 20 pages in the first 2 days. Which make a sense of relieve that I can continue writing with slower pace, because I still get plenty of time. Weird to say plenty of time when it’s actually 11 days left :))
• Write. After all the plan, you must start writing. I get a big lesson from my best friend & inspiration, Mbak Alberthiene Endah @alberthieneE – she said, “Make a movie first in your head about what your character’s doing, then you write it.” That’s exactly what I did. I try to experience what the character’s been through first (maybe visiting a cafe to see the possible activities he can do there), and write according to what I ‘watch’ in the ‘movie’ in my head. Your characters already have the story, you as a writer just need to type it down
• To write faster, I put some of my own stories & experiences inside the writing. I even managed to interview a person with similar personality with the novella’s character, just to see how he’s going to react on some situation and that has been very useful for the writing.
• Write with your best energy. Where you can focus 100% to your writing. For me, it means writing early in the morning before I start the day. I write while sipping tea, snacking, and classical music playing to stimulate my brain. That way, I can write more effectively than writing when I’m tired at night. Figure your best writing time and write regularly at those times.
• Write everywhere. It’s important to be able to write mobile, because sometimes I have early morning meeting or events that I have to attend and coming home late at night where I’m already tired and slept right away. So, between the traffic, waiting people for a meeting, you can always write.For that, I need a gadget that is light and thinner than laptop (so it’s not too heavy to carry around), have keyboard (because I can’t write in tablets), have long battery hours (because sometimes it’s hard to find place to plug & charge), easier & fast access to the internet and looking stylish to carry around.

  Lucky, now Intel has new line of products called Ultrabook™. It’s a super slim laptop, can be put to sleep and back on each in 2 seconds, with up to 7-hours battery life, all without comprimising its computing power. It’s been on my wish list since last year, and I’m very grateful that now I have my (limited edition design one) Intel Ultrabook™ to help me with my projects. If you interested to know more about Ultrabook™ you can check here or you can check specs & shop Ultrabook™ here.

  

• Because I write everywhere and I took some notes and inspiration using my smartphone too, I use some tools. I use InSync in my Ultrabook™ to sync my writing document in Google Docs. So if suddenly I want to write using my friend’s gadget, I can do that and continue writing because the document is synchronized. I also use EverNote for note taking in smartphones. And Mind Map if I need to generate ideas.
• Read a lot. In the writing process, I read books with similar topic that I write in the novella. A good book can inspire you to write more.
• Edit. Only when you finish writing, that you can start editing. Don’t do it during the writing process. So get your hands off that backspace key. Turned out I can finished my novella in 11 days So I have 2 days to edit. I send to my bestfriend & personal editor @emiralda . I’m enjoying the day while Em edit the first draft. Then after she finished, I am recharged and revised all needed.
• It’s a wrap. Day 13. Sending my novella. Stop being a perfectionist and cut the worry. You have tried your best and it’s time to close your draft and publish it into a book for the world to read.

I kept a writing journal when I write this novella, check it on my Tumblr >> project13

My novella will be a duet book and will be published by Gagas Media. Insha Allah will be published next month. Follow me on twitter @salsabeela and my Facebook for updates about my latest book.

At this point, I’m already starting a new writing project. How about you? Will you finish writing a book this month?

So happy to finally launch Salsabeela Boutique at Jl. Cipete Raya No. 9, Jakarta Selatan, Indonesia (just in front of Black Canyon Cafe). Here you can shop Salsabeela’s collection, offline.

At the launch event, Mbak Alberthiene Endah, my favorite writer and inspiration, come to be a moderator at the talk show with me and Mbak Yulia Astuti, founder of Moz5 Salon & MoAyu.

It’s a wonderful afternoon.  Thank you friends for coming & support Salsabeela. Also thanks to Moz5 Salon & MoAyu for your support!

I’d like to share a story about my friend Wulan who’s been confused on how to keep up with hijab update On Salsabeela boutique, I totally change her outfit, Salsabeela way

If you see on the pic, I’m wearing a black dress, it’s the teaser of upcoming Salsabeela Glam: Salsabeela new line in party and glamour dress. Stay tuned!

Being a fashion designer has been my dream, and dreams do come true. It was a very fast process. We have the idea in December 2011. Execute it in January. Finished design concept and everything by early February. And start producing, til it’s now ready for you guys to see.

One thing I learn from Salsabeela’s preparation is that my partner always give me deadlines (and it’s a very tight one). Submit my designs by this date, find model by that date, and so on.

A goal is a dream with deadlines indeed.

Salsabeela’s first collection is called: Prologue. I’m a writer, so everything about my fashion line must have something to do with writing. So, you’ll see a synopsis, novel, basic draft t-shirt, flashback polka dots shirt, and more I intend to put more of this writing energy into my designs for the second collection. Just stay tuned!

For me, Salsabeela’s collection is flattering, make you look slimmer, boost your confidence, and after wearing it myself since last week, I feel that Salsabeela’s the kind of outfit that will make people make that 3 seconds look at you (in a good way)! Salsabeela’s is a statement! With statement, people notice and remember you, and it’s one of key of networking success especially in business.

I have no background in fashion, but I love it very much and some people say I have good sense of it due to my personal experiments in the past year. You can read about it in SalsabeelaShop Blog. In 2 months while preparing Salsabeela, I read a lot of fashion and marketing books, met and chat with fashion people, attending fashion shows at Indonesia Fashion Week 2012, getting photographed by fashion blogger from London And it’s been a joyful journey.

And when you feel joy, you know you’re walking on the right path. Insha Allah.

I’d like to share the joy by making a writing competition to welcome Salsabeela. The prize is having a make over with Salsabeela’s collection and makeup by Moz5 Salon. Also first winner will get a beauty package by MoAyu 5 other winners each will get 1 of my hijab collection called Rose Hijab series. Rose hijab is one of Salsabeela’s innovations in hijab shape. So… I hope you’re excited Please click here to know how to participate in Salsabeela’s writing competition.

And now, without further due, please welcome: Salsabeela by Ollie.

Well, the conversation getting a bit ‘higher’ than my brain capacity hehe so I’d like to share a lighter story about Super Camp for the young people of Telkomsel community. I represent StartupLokal, talking about techpreneur in front of high school students. We’ve been doing this in several cities with Telkomsel, to create awareness and encourage young people to start using internet to produce their own content, to start aiming to become a techpreneur. In Bogor last weekend, I watched 150 sets of sparkling positive excited eyes when I told them about young people behind successful startups in the world.

At the end of the speaking session, one of them, a girl, 12 years old, asking me, how to convince Angel investor to invest in her business. A Justin Bieber’s merchandise online store. I assumed the angel investor must be her mom and dad So, I told her this, if I’m your angel investor, I will want to know:

• Whether you are trusted, have visions and very passionate with your business (or ideas) – clearly she’s very passionate about Justin Bieber
• If you have a solid team or partners to get things done?
• Did you(r business) solve problems? – I told her to convince the Angel saying that if teenager can be aware of the power of dreams that Justin Bieber has, from YouTube artist to mega-celebrity, then your business can bring positivity and the world can be a better place
• Your business model, how you make money, show it clearly – first from retail but maybe many other possibilities coming

I’m amazed with the little girl. She’s 12 years old. I don’t know what I was doing when I was 12. I have a big hope for Indonesia, seeing her! What she need now is a mentor to show her the right way. So, answering Mark’s question about what GEPI can help, creating Angels network is one thing (Renald Khasali said we need 1,2 million Angel Investors to support Indonesian entrepreneurs), but GEPI can also help creating a mentoring panel for many stages of business. And to be specific about startup, a lot of Angels feel uncomfortable to invest in technology that they don’t know much about, GEPI dan StartupLokal can collaborate to create more awareness for Angels about startup scene in Indonesia.

Playing ‘investor’ as one of partners in Project Eden, the startup we incubate, Spot Med group, just launched Spot Dokter apps. SpotDokter will help you locate the nearest hospital or health facilities you need. You can Download SpotDokter on your Blackberry and Android, iPhone app will come soon. The founders are young docs from Bandung >> Mendy Candella, Jaka Pradipta, and Pascal Christian. Very proud of you guys and Eden team for rocking the launch last week!

Eden will launch 2 more startup soon, so, we’re excited! And quoting my new friend Kevin & Vincent said on our conversation at the recent #StartupLokal meetup, Indonesia: where the opportunities are.