A Workshop and Perceived Gap...

I was involved in the system operators workshop organised by the colleagues from the SO department from 22-23 August. The workshop was held at the A'Famosa Resort in Melaka and was attended by about 50 people from the SO, OPP and RCC's departments. I have never been to this workshop before and when I was asked to nominate my engineers to go, I nominated myself instead ! Yeah, called me selfish but sincerely I really felt that this is one workshop that I should go to foster even better relationship with our counterparts in the SO office and also to understand their problems in operating the system daily. Nonetheless, there were 5 others from my office attended the workshop and I hope my presence would at least be a symbolic gesture that we are serious in closing the perceived 'gap' between the planners and the operators.



Although the forum coincided with the school 1-week holiday, I travelled alone because my other-half decided to preserve her official leaves for other important event later this year. Thus, on Monday at about 6.40pm after work, I drove to Melaka alone and arrived at the hotel at approximately 20 minutes past eight.

The workshop only started the next day on Tuesday and again our VP came down to officiate the opening, albeit his opening speech was deferred a bit after two presentations. Nonetheless, true to his form and energy, the VP did spend sometimes with us and I sometimes wonder how busy he is to do what he is doing.



The participants also include the technician level staff and several of them presented their papers. This workshop is more of of a forum of sharing information and knowledge and for a first-timer like me, the workshop is quite 'interesting' to say the least. A friend of mine did commented quietly to me on the quality of papers being presented having attended the Technical Forum a week earlier but I would say that it is good enough for non-exec to present papers and anything else would be a bonus.



For some reason, the organiser forgot to bring a camera for the photo session. Guess what, I was probably the only one who brought a decent one (apart from the mobile phone camera most people would have)and the organiser asked if I could take some group photos and also the event itself. Surely I would not object and thus I finally ended up taking close to 200 photos of the workshop and also the surrounding landscape of A'Famosa.




In summary, the workshop is totally new experience for me. At personal level, I feel kinda releive that I finally managed to participate in this forum and contribute during the discussion time. I also hope that my presence will be seen as sincere gesture of OPP to assimilate into or at least understand the 'culture' of real-time operators. Obviosuly we still have many differences in opinions and also the way we see things but as Maroon 5 says it, "It's not always rainbows or butterflies, but compromise that moves us along".