Although StartSphere was quite a jarring way to be welcomed to my new job, I really appreciated the opportunities it afforded me to get to know my coworkers. With the scale of the event, there wasn’t time for me to be shy or sit back and quietly wait for someone to tell me what to do. I asked a lot of questions and got to know my coworkers pretty quickly (they’re great, more on them later). It was really cool to meet entrepreneurs from all over the world and see firsthand the types of events my company puts on.
After StartSphere ended, I felt like I didn’t have much to do. The National Development Council Team (aka SIT) was preparing for their biggest event of the year, a 10 day business trip to the Taiwan-Japan Summit in Tokyo. Since I just started at the company, obviously I was not invited, and since everyone on the SIT team was busy, no one had time to tell me what I should be doing. Meanwhile, the Taipei Entrepreneurs Hub (TEH) team had already started planning its next event and needed more hands to help out. So, although I was hired for the SIT team, I’m working with the TEH team until the end of October after our event is over.
Right now, we’re planning for our AI + Demo Day event where we have invited six international startups to come to Taipei for a three-day networking and connections event that will culminate in them delivering their company pitch to a full audience. For this project, I’m in charge of coordinating all the logistics for the international guests. I’ve been communicating with our travel agent, making sure we have everyone’s information, and answering questions. For our event, we also have to invite local Taipei startup resource partners and keynote speakers. I’ve spent lots of time fighting with Canva (an online design tool) and Google Slides (yes, we use Google, not Microsoft) to put together informational materials and proposals used to invite these guests. I’m also collaborating with the project lead to put together the schedule, make sure there’s continuity across our documentation, and keep track of the project status. I’m not the official project manager of the project, but I guess some of the things I’m doing are project management things.
Outside of our AI + Demo Day event preparations, I’m also helping to manage the Taipei Entrepreneurs Hub Facebook page which is humorous considering that I am not very savvy on social media. Anyway, posts on the facebook page from the second half of September are all written by yours truly, sometimes with the help of ChatGPT.
I have very mixed feelings about ChatGPT. I think it’s a wonderful tool that has a lot of benefits. I’ve used it a lot to help write code and learn technical skills, but that’s the extent of it. I’m adamant that I’m a better writer than ChatGPT, and refused to use it in school for writing essays. I’m realizing though, that in school, writing has a dual purpose: communicating information and teaching. When I was a student, my writing projects often involved a lot of research and critical thinking. If ChatGPT did my writing for me in school, I wouldn’t have learned anything AND would have had a terrible final product. However, at work, I’m writing a lot of social media posts and emails. I even used ChatGPT to help me come up with the structure for a panel discussion. It’s been a great tool for more “generic” writing that is common in business/corporate spaces, and I’ve found it quite useful. I still roll my eyes when I use it, despite its usefulness. Here are two of my favorite run-ins with ChatGPT thus far:
