Khaeruddin Sudharmin MBA (1994)Asm. wbt & Greetings fellow Hull Alumnus,
Firstly, I accept your challenge with great humility, to lead the Malaysian chapter of our university's alumni association. I am not so sure if I should feel privileged or punished when I was told that I had been elected the new president of the Hull University Alumni Association in Malaysia, in absentia. Over the years since I graduated, I had been in the executive committee and had served as deputy president when John Loh was president. Some people act and think as though they had not been born mere mortals as others were, but had been carefully lowered from heaven (Sean O'Casey). I certainly am not one of those people. I like to thank all those who voted for me, and I also like to take the opportunity to congratulate the new office-bearers.
There is much to be done. We need to rebrand, re-energise, re-strategise the alumni association and bring back the glory, pride, dignity, well in a sense, preserve the 'arrogance' of our british education as well (hehe). Afterall, we (The University Hull, England) was at some point in time, a University College of the University of London much in the league with Bristol University, Nottingham University and a few other british universities. In Malaysia, I remember, when I was deputy president, we (Hull) were second only to Imperial College at the annual Malaysian
British Universities Graduate Games!
We cannot run away from global issues that affect us all, like climate change, for instance. It is a race against time says Jeremy Rifkin (Wharton '67) president and founder of Washington DC- based Foundation on Economic Trends. Like him, I too have been critical of technology, there are some technologies I like and some I don't. I look at technologies in terms of the human story. This third industrial revolution is a human story. Rifkin refers to the third industrial revolution as the adoption of a distributed renewable energy network that uses hydrogen fuel cells for energy storage as described in his book The Hydrogen Economy where he goes on to say that history's most significant changes occur when societies rework their energy regimes and reorganise their communication systems around them.
Fellow Hull alumnus, that's exactly what your new committee intends to do! The convergence of new energy and communications systems are pivotal points in human history...the distributed communication system of the Internet must now be translated into a distributed energy regime. We have a new email address, we now have our own official blog that I encourage and urge all fellow members, and friends of the alumni association and the university, to use and share
ideas or to network.
Business leaders no longer just look at their bottom line, but they're beginning to realize that their bottom line is about their children too and globally there seems to be concerns of having a balance between margins now and the future of the human race. I see a change in business culture, even here in Malaysia. There were very few people challenging the corporate framework. Now things have changed, more and more have grown up with the idea of sustainable business and corporate social responsibility. The idea of challenging conventional wisdom is coming from the business community itself. Thats the big picture.
Coming back to the realities of transforming our alumni association, despite the value-adding activities and the generic merits of networking, keeping in touch or to put it in the way Hull Alumni Office at Cottingham puts it: Friends are for life! we need to really give a new spirit and meaning to alumni work. So, my friends, please do give your generous support in cash or kind so we can carry out our ambitious plan of activities much of which will be our contribution to giving back to society while keeping the Hull flag flying high at all times. I am accessible 24x7. You may email me at ksudharmin@gmail.com, or please visit my blog at http://khaeruddinsudharmin.blogspot.com/ or text me a message at +60193224344.
Cheers!
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