What's Keeping Me Awake in 2012

The end of 2012 is near.
It's time to look back what I've done during the year with hope there are lessons to be learned, or to find any pending tasks I should try to accomplish in upcoming year.

At the beginning of the year I made a promise to myself to spend more time to help professionals and students from Indonesia to prepare for the competition in global market. How far have I reached with this promise?

On March, after I did my session in Cisco Live Melbourne, I passed by my country to meet students from 4 universities in 2 cities. Then I conducted free 8-hour workshop for more than 100 professionals. I also had opportunity to met other CCIEs and a reporter from local media who wrote about my activities in the news.

But I've never had any thought to do all of these just to become popular.

I have been away from my country for more than 10 years, working as Global Consultant for different companies from multiple countries. During the past 6 years in Cisco I've done projects for customers in more than 30 countries. I have seen and personally tried competing in global market. So I know how it feels. I can use my knowledge and experience to prepare other professionals and students from my country to be ready for this global competition.

And I know, global competition doesn't mean only when we try to get a job outside the country or to compete in climbing the career ladder in global company. Until now I still see many consultants from different countries work and live in Indonesia. I'm not against them. Perhaps we really need external consultant for specific area. But for most areas, like in computer networking, many are doing the work that actually can be done by local consultant from my country.

How come we can compete globally if we can't even compete as consultant in our own country? Why can't we take over the work that is currently being outsourced to external consultant? How to produce more qualified consultants with global mindset?

Those thoughts are the ones that keeping me awake in 2012.

Couple of months after my visit I co-founded GEM Foundation with few Indonesian friends. It's a non-profit organization with focus to provide a bridge between global professionals, entrepreneur, young professionals and students. We've been doing regular bi-weekly session over online meeting tool Webex called WebexSunday. We had many Indonesian professionals from around the world and entrepreneurs filled up the 2-hour slot, sharing their knowledge and experience for free.

We even registered the organization to become legal entity in Jakarta. To run more activities we need to raise fund as organization. But then we found out as non-profit the procedure to run activities to generate fund is more complicated. All of us who involve in the organization have no time to deal with bureaucracy. So I decided to come up with another solution.

Few months ago I co-founded a company with focus on helping Indonesian professionals and students preparing for global competition by offering advance training system that is designed thoughtfully to answer industry's latest skill requirements in computer networking. Some of the products we created are CCIE93, world's first community based mentoring program to help to pass CCIE in 93 days, Network Engineer+ to produce network engineer with CCNA-level technical skill but also possesses other skills that are more relevant with the industy, and Global Consultant class which is a unique training to combine in-depth IP NGN skills, hands on lab, best practice deployment and consulting experience.

The concept is simple: those who can pay, pay to attend our classes. Those who can't pay, will get subsidized. We offer scholarship for students and those who are willing to learn but can't afford the training price. We use the profit to build CCIE lab that can be used by community. We develop online platform to offer new way of learning "anytime, anywhere", "at your own pace", and "learn one thing a day". I personally even conducted the IP NGN class by myself in Jakarta early December.

With CCIE93 my goal is not only to help more Indonesians to become CCIE, but to create strong community where CCIEs as mentors are helping the candidates in their lab exam preparation. With Network Engineer+ I want to provide easy first step for those who have no background in computer networking at all, to learn CCNA plus all relevant knowledge such as the big picture of networking, wireless and security, communication, team work and other relevant skills such as documentation and project experience. With Global Consultant, I want to train and produce more Global Consultant like me, who will work and compete in global market as well as to become qualified consultants to do projects in our own country.

Meanwhile I also founded CCIE Club Indonesia as the hub for communication between CCIEs and all other computer networking professionals. We conduct CCIETalk, regular monthly online meeting with Webex, where CCIE is sharing his knowledge and experience to the community.

There are still many things to do. With so little time. Because I still have to work as Solutions Architect for Cisco and most of the time I have to travel to meet my customers within Europe, Middle East and Africa.

I might have not done much in 2012.
But now I know what needs to be done in 2013.