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The KBC 9.9 with Daniel

"Which topic over the past year was most important, influential, or the one you enjoyed the most here on KBC?"

Click the button to hear the podcast online, or download the mp3 file to your computer (10:50 min. length).

In this podcast, Daniel Lafontaine is joined by three other KBC members (Rich DeBourke, Vincent Rubino and William Sisson) to discuss the week's topic.

Full Transcript of Podcast

Daniel:  Hi, everyone. This is Daniel Lafontaine, KBC 9.9 with Daniel. Today we have a very interesting topic. As you know, KBC 9.9 has been here for almost a year now, and as such, I thought it would be a great way to look over the past year by having a topic which covers the past year. So today’s topic is “Which Topic Over the Past Year Was Most Important, Influential, or the One You Enjoyed the Most Here?”

Today I have three old-timers, or reasonably old-timers, on KBC. We have Rich DeBourke, William Sisson, and Vincent Rubino. A little bit about yourselves first. Rich, would you like to start it off?

Rich: I’m Rich DeBourke. I live here in Seoul. I do a mix of business consulting with Korean companies as well as still doing some English teaching for executive levels and also occasional students.

Daniel:  Wonderful. William, what about you?

William: I’ve been in Korea – actually, in about three days it will be my four-year anniversary. Currently I am an executive search consultant or headhunter for multinational companies in Korea. I also am the Event Korea KBC administrator.

Daniel:  Excellent. Vincent, what about you?

Vincent: I’m Vince Rubino, and I’ve lived here in Korea for a little over three years this latest round. I also lived here for a year and a half in the 1980s, early ‘80s. I’m working for a Korean government research institute in Daejeon.

Daniel:  Excellent. As you all know, my name is Daniel Lafontaine. I have been here since September of ‘99. So that means I’ve been kicking around for the last 12 years. I’m on my 12^th year.

So what do you guys think? What was the most influential, important, or anything that you enjoyed the most here on KBC for the last year? Anybody want to start it off? Let’s open.

Rich:  If we’re going to go with KBC in general, not just the 9.9, the best thing for me has been the events.

Daniel:  Really? Which events have you been able to access since you’ve been on KBC?

Rich: The two KBC events. Of course the first get-together over in Seocho, and then the monster event that William put together more recently over in Insadong there. Both of those were great events. But also through KBC, connected up with the Seoul Global Business Support Center, and they’ve had a number of events, different seminars and presentations. It’s a great chance to actually get out and meet people.

Daniel:  For me, I haven’t been able to do that since I live in Ulsan, which is about four or five hours away. I went to the major event last October, but other than that, nothing. I haven’t been able to branch out too much.

Rich:  I find it’s a great place, because on the home page, Steven’s got over on the left side the events section, where all the upcoming events are posted. He had the one – I didn’t go down for it, but I’ll watch it later on when they get it updated, the TEDxKAIST event there.

Daniel:  Exactly. What about you, William? Have you used the events calendar a lot?

William:  You know, when they were putting together the event, we’ve been using the event calendar. When we put the event together, we used the whole event program.

I do check out the events calendar on the left-hand side quite frequently, since I’m also involved in a lot of the networking outside of KBC as part of my job. A lot of these are redundant, but it’s really nice that members take the time to post it and share it with the rest of the membership. I think that’s really good.

Daniel:  What about you, Vincent? What do you think?

Vincent:  I enjoy the online aspect of KBC. I haven’t been able to attend any of the events. Usually they’re in Seoul or otherwise difficult to arrive at the event.

Daniel:  Exactly. We’re both Southern boys. You’re in Daejeon. I’m in Ulsan. So we can’t really access these events too much.

Vincent:  I think it’s really important that at this place in history that we try more and more to try and leverage these new technologies, these tools for communicating over the Internet.

Daniel:  I think you’re absolutely right, in that sense. Korea is a networking country. All Koreans, they are massive networkers, whereas Western countries – for myself, Canada and America were so big, were so huge, were so everywhere. For us, the network [05:28 inaudible], whereas Koreans, they network a lot. They can push it, whereas we – networking is tough.

What do you think, William? Do you think that that makes sense, that the social network is helping Western countries keep up with Korea?

William:  Well, that’s a loaded question, but I will try my best. Networking anywhere, whether you’re in New York City or whether you’re in Tokyo or Seoul, it all depends on you and whether you sit on your butt at home and do nothing and you wait for people to knock on your door or call you, or you get out and you start networking with people.

This society has turned into such a stay at home and call it networking via just sitting behind a computer screen, and that’s not the same thing as getting out meeting people face to face.

Daniel:  That’s true. What about you, Rich? What do you think about that?

Rich:  The face-to-face aspect is definitely very true, or even a little bit lower level is the telephone. But I think sitting behind a keyboard, that’s not really networking. It’s an easier way going through the Internet to find the people, but you still have to – as William says, you’ve got to get there and sit down, have a cup of coffee.

The great thing about networking I discovered many, many years ago, you can contact a complete stranger, and 99% of time they’re willing to help you. They may not be able to know something directly you’re looking for, but they’ll say, “Ah, I know a guy. Call this guy. He knows about that.”

Daniel:  That’s true. I think that that’s the beauty about social networks. For myself, I was able to get a job. I’ve been trying to get a university job for the last couple of years, the last few years, actually. By being on KBC, I got Lara, one of the members – she knew of a job and she wanted me to apply for it.

So I sent her my resume, and she asked me, “Hey, can I change your resume?” Since she changed the resume on me, I’ve had three university offers, and I had a Samsung electronics executive offer to teach Samsung electronics executives.

Networking is a great thing. I think social networks are a great thing. But other than that, William, what do you think? What did you get out of KBC mostly in the last year?

William:  Well, I’m also in agreement. I follow the discussion forum. Some of them I don’t participate in via interest or content.

Daniel:  What is your best content? Which content do you like the most, or which one do you enjoy the most?

William:  Of course the one I posted about LG which had 180-plus responses.

Daniel:  That’s true. I remember the one about the pushing.

William:  See, that would be on the other end. That would be living in Korea. It’s important, but it was done not jokingly, but kind of as a –

Daniel:  Getting everybody to just –

William:  Yeah, but I didn’t realize it was going to turn into such an ethical communication and discrimination talk. You never know with our members, I tell you.

Daniel:  Exactly. What about you, Vince? What did you enjoy the most?

Vincent:  Well, yes, I enjoyed those few discussion threads that William instigated. The one about pushing on the subway, the takeaway message that I got from that is that if somebody’s pushing you on the subway it’s actually a good sign. What it really means is that you’re just one of us. You’re just part of the Korean community, and you should look at it as a good thing.

Daniel:  I don’t know if anybody ever heard about the saying, don’t expect to be treated any better than the Korean treat themselves. I don’t know if that’s being naughty or anything, but here in Korea, people bump into each other all the time. You don’t have to say thank you. You’d have 50 million thank-yous every ten seconds. Korea is a very tight country.

Other than that, this episode is coming to a close. I hope you guys enjoyed yourselves. Rich, William, Vincent, thank you very much for coming.

Vincent:  Kamsahamnida.

Daniel:  Kamsahamnida. Thank you.

Rich:  Thank you.

Daniel:  I hope everybody enjoyed the show. If you want to join the discussion, please let it be known on KBC. Have a nice day.