Singapore Fintech Festival 2025

At Singapore FinTech Festival 2022

The Singapore Fintech Festival is now accepting free registrations from academics. This is a very big event filling much of the Singapore Expo center. In 2022 I never actually got to any of the presentations and just wandered around talking to be on standards (including mayy Australians) and at the drinks in the evening. To help get me to the  I have volunteered to fill in if the scheduled chair doesn't turn up for a session.

Misconceptions and Challenges with Open Educaiton Resources

Dave Towey,
University of Nottingham

Greetings from Yogyakarta, at the IEEE TALE 2019 engineering education conference, where Dave Towey, University of Nottingham is speaking on  "OER: Six Perspectives on Global Misconceptions and Challenges". He identified the issue of costly US textbooks as one of the sources of interest, but also misunderstandings, with Open Educaiton Resources.

"Abstract—Open Educational Resources (OERs) are freely accessible materials for teaching, learning, and research that have been made available such that they can be freely used, modified, and shared. Prompted by the potential positive impact that OERs can have, a growing community of OER enthusiasts
has been advocating for their adoption in higher education, and elsewhere. The growing demand for computer science education and training (especially in areas related to artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data) has led to speculation as to how OERs may be best leveraged to support such teaching and learning. The recent occasion of an international OER workshop at the 2019 IEEE Conference on Computers, Software and Applications (COMPSAC) allowed for six OER enthusiasts, all with extensive OER experience, to reflect on the status of OER adoption and understanding. These reflections, addressing misconceptions and challenges, form the basis for this paper."

The six misconceptions are (this is my interpretation, not the author's words):

1. MOOCs are open
2. If its on the Internet, it's open
3. If its open it's free
4. Lazy educators use open stuff
5. OER reduces cost
6. OER is low quality

At question time I suggested one way to promote OER is to apply the techniques provided in the start-up entrepreneurial centers at universities. OER done as an ad-hoc cottage industry will not be able to compete with for-profit professional publishing output. So I suggest applying the entrepreneurial approach used to set up new industries. This would look at how to produce a product which appeals to educators, how to obtain funding to grown the business. This is does not necessarily require a for-profit corporation, it could be a not-for-profit organization.

Square One Coworking Space at ANU

The Australian National University has announced "ANU Square One",  a coworking space for "student entrepreneurs working on projects, startups or freelancing". There will be a launch at 5pm, 21 August 2019. Students can apply now to be "onsite" members. As an ANU alumnus, I have applied to be an "off-site" member, to work on the "Async-Sync Learning System".

InnovationACT 2019 Team Hunt Tuesday

InnovationACT 2019 starts Tuesday in Canberra, with a Team Hunt. This is a ten-week entrepreneurship program, for teams of two to five ANU students (plus a possible "Wildcard entry"). Teams can work on social enterprises, or for-profit ideas.  Teams can share from $50,000 in grants,to develop their idea. I have mentored several successful teams in the past (including "OK RDY"), and volunteered again this year.

Online Graduate Certificate in Co-operatives Management and Organisation

The University of Newcastle (Australia), offer a "Graduate Certificate in Co-operatives Management and Organisation". Unlike business courses aimed at those in the for-profit sector, this looks at social enterprises. The not-for-profit sector is normally thought of as very small organizations run by well meaning, but poorly skilled part timers. However, the not-for profit sector makes up a significant part of the Australian economy, employing staff and providing important services. Cooperatives and mutual organizations are, technically speaking, profit making, but the profits go to members and customers.  The Certificate is offered online and while I could not quite work it out from their website, and the courses for this can be credited to an MBA.

ps: Given the revelations of misconduct from the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry, perhaps the for-profit sector needs some of this education on thinking about the customer, rather than just profit.

ANU Social Enterprise Bootcamp

Greetings from the ANU Social Enterprise Bootcamp, at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. This is hosted by the ANU Technology Transfer Office. The workshop is being run by Cindy Mitchell, Social Impact Strategist at the University of Canberra and CEO of the Mill House Social Enterprise Accelerator. Cindy has adapted the tools usually used to start-up a new for-profit business to the not-for-profit sector.


There do not appear to be many formal qualifications in this area. Macquarie University has a Master of Social Entrepreneurship and LSE an MSc in Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

We had to each complete a "Design for Impact for Scale Canvas".

For the purpose of the exercise I looked at how we might help early career academics and professionals  teach part time at university. The idea would be to have them see themselves as professional educators. They would be offered ways to become qualified in eduction without having to attend class or pay a lot of money. The emphasis would be on what saves time and frustration and gets them contracts, not education theory. This is a path I have been on over the last few years,but I would hope to make it a bit easier.