The Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations (HPAIR) Conference 2014
For this year, I was a Conference Ambassador to the HPAIR Harvard Conference 2014. I did my application completely on a whim, since I didn’t really think I would get in. I didn’t believe that my qualifications were at par with those of other applicants, so it was a pleasant surprise that I got in.
A little victory in being the only Conference Ambassador from the Philippines was that we had the highest number of delegates coming from the Southeast Asian region. It was also nice that we were able to meet a lot of Filipinos who were coming from universities in the US such as UPenn, West Point and Harvard.
At this point, I was working as Executive Creative Director for the Asia-Pacific Student Entrepreneurship Society (ASES) – Philippines so my field was more catered towards Tech Entrepreneurship. For this conference, I was under the Technology panel.
It’s a bit hard to explain why I’m in this panel particularly because I had just left my degree in Management Engineering for a Fine Arts degree in Information Design. But I honestly believe that design plays a bigger role than people think, especially when it comes to start-ups. Design thinking is a way of problem solving, and identifying needs from a creative perspective focused towards small improvements towards a greater goal.
How my course trains me to make seemingly overwhelming data into usable form is really helpful in the product development, because it allows me to explore the possibilities of development and compartmentalize them in such a way that they can be more tangibly used.
I’m also pretty thankful because the photographer of the event is a friend of a friend, so I have nice stolen and not so stolen pictures taken from the event. You look closely you can see me awkwardly sitting in the front row of the next two photos.
We spent the next three days together, heard from a lot of the leaders in the field, had a case study and conversed a lot with each other. It was an interesting experience to say the least. It was a refreshing intellectual discussion with viewpoints on the development of Tech Entrepreneurship all over the world.
To be honest, I had never seen so many black blazers all in one room. There were actually many moments where I felt incredibly under-dressed, especially since the snow didn’t allow for me to wear anything else but boots. I didn’t want have to have to change into heels because that would mean I’d have to bring around my boots the whole time.
I was actually wondering why they set the conference during winter time, especially since most delegates come from Asia and are not used to the extreme cold. It might have been because there was a holiday that weekend for them. The probability of their speakers and delegates not being able to make it were high also because a lot of flights were cancelled a few days before because of a snow storm. It must have been a logistical nightmare for the organizing team.
It was a bit strange though, that for a conference supposedly focused on the Asian scene, the talks and speakers were more adept to the Western scene. I can understand why this is so, since most of them are from the US, but I had hoped to learn more about the culture of Tech entrepreneurship and the issues it has in the Asian region in particular.
Of course, I also was able to see Gwen and Wayne again. We were all from different panels (Gwen in Media, and Wayne in Business Leadership) that we didn’t spend that much time with each other during the actual conference.
Listening to some of the speakers who were professors in Harvard made me think a lot about what my life could have been like if I had really tried to apply to universities in the US. When I took the SATs, it was more of in passing because I didn’t really feel drawn to studying abroad. I did get into a couple of great universities, but the 18 year old me was determined to stay in the Philippines.
In any case, the serious part of the conference (away from the parties and cultural night) was a great learning experience. More than the panels and the speakers, I think what I enjoyed the most was being able to meet all the great people from the conference.
It’s very comforting to know that no matter where you’ll be in the world, there are people who are believers of the ultimate capacity of every individual to contribute to the betterment of humanity through their fields of expertise.
*All photos with the HPAIR 2014 watermark belong to Lance Katigbak and the HPAIR 2014 Organizing Team
