Olina Qian

We had a great CINA event last night in Fenwick, the topic is keep your dream alive. We had about 60 attendees, and everyone had three minutes to talk about their passion, their dream and their new year resolutions.

I arrived Fenwick about 6:20pm last night, with two bottles of red wines and two bottles of white wines and three pack of cheeses. Incidentally Yesterday was also Simon Ma’s Son’s one month anniversary. So Vicki also prepared a big cake for him. Simon has been a great volunteer for CINA for long time, we appreciate his dedication and happy to see his son coming.

We started around 7pm. Vicki opened the session, she suggested us each used three minutes to talk about our dreams and hopes, then she turned the microphone to me, asked me to moderate the event. Without much preparation, I happily took this task and started with my dreams.

I first quickly introduced about myself and what I am working on. Then I associated the dreams with success. Since everyone wants to become successful, but what really does success means. First, it is a procedure, not a destination. Then, you need to find the purpose you come to this world, grow to the maxium of your potentials and sowing the benefit for the other people. Since it is not about what you can get from this world, it is about what you can give to this world.

Then everyone got three minutes to talk about there dreams. I found the following people are very interesting.

Vincent Yip, a Stanford professor, will start a course in Stanford about Entrepreneurship and Doing Business in China. He seems very knowledgable about what he is talking about. So pity that I need to coach Dale Carnegie Course every Thursday night, or else, I’d like to check out his class.

Angela Chou, CINA’s former president, she talked about career switch from Engineer to Executive assistant. And she suggested that do things you passionate about, it is very important.

Angelika? , when Vincent mentioned that the future of this world is US, Indian and China. Angelika said, I think the future of world is in China. Angelika will do some lecture in Vincent’s course too, and she is a branding expert. I like the way she present herself.

Michael Lu, I know Michael Lu about one year already, and I was deeply impressed about his presentation last night. He is passionate about the green tech industry and wish to contribute his part in it. I connected him to some of my friends who works in this industry today and if you happens to be in Green Tech and wants to find some partner, Michael can be a great candidate.

Victor Huang, he mentioned about there is a Gene inside of everyone. Did he read the book ‘The secret’? I think it is very true.

Kevin Wang, he is working on a Pubsubnetworks, pubsubnetwork.com (or p11k.com) is a web service to publish your messages to anyone who subscribed to your topic. Sounds really interesting to me.

It was a great event that I felt there are so many positive energies in this room. Our event finished around 9pm, and people started to do networking. The chat went so well that they don’t want to leave until 10:30pm. Yes, I believe everyone has something he passionate about. But there is not much chance that we can talk about our hopes and dreams. Thanks for Vicki Young who brough us together and gave us this great opportunity share our passion and our dreams. I did enjoy the session, I am impressed by each and everyone of their dreams and I wish all those dreams can come true for them.

On my way back home, I listened to the Stanford University’s Entrepreneur Corner. And the speaker is Gregory Waldorf, the investor and CEO of eHarmony. He mentioned the 5 must haves he considered for a great entrepreneur. I totally agree in his five points and would like to share this to you tonight.

1. Working with Great people. It is not easy to found the next google, but you can always choose to surround yourself with great people, no matter for work and life. What’s the key element for great people? My take is: Integrity, postive, dedicate, commitment and williing to give.

2. Taking smart steps while not following the safe risk. It is intersting that he said, don’t compare with your peers, don’t change your decision because you are afraid of getting behind of your peers. I feel it is so true.

3. Facing the unexpected with adaptability. It is very true. You can have one dream now, then you start the journey. It is allowed that during your trip, you find out there is something works, and something doesn’t work. So we all got to have the flexibility to adjust ourselves and embraces changes.

4. Passion: The driving force behind an Entrepreneurial career. Yes, you need to do things you passionate about. It is very very important.

5. Don’t wait, put your plan into action. Executive is more important than Vision. So don’t only dream about things, start to work on it. Starting from today, starting from this moment. I wish all your dreams come true!