1^st Asia-Pacific Regional Conference Story – 29~31 July

The 1st Asia-Pacific Regional Support Team Meeting was held in Auckland in July this year. This time, we had Ashok (from India), Alex (from Australia), Wen and Suresh (from Malaysia), and Eric (Global) visiting our beautiful & peaceful country. Our main objectives for the meeting were to build and get to know our team, to learn from each other and to agree a strategy and plan to expand and strengthen our region!

Team Building - 1^st Challenge

The first challenge for the team was to accomplish the Team-Building Exercise, called “The Photo Opportunity”. It was a 4-hour session where we had to solve numerous small puzzles and physical challenges and win as many photo pieces as possible from the Instructor. During the exercises, the team also have the chance to walk through the some key tourist landmarks in Auckland CBD such as, SKY Tower, Aotea Centre, Auckland Town Hall, Albert Park, Queen St, Downtown, Viaduct Harbour…etc. Towards the end of the challenges, the team has to find the exact location show in the photograph from the reward photo pieces with the given amount of time! And yes, we did it!

Two of major highlights in the exercise were;

·         “Tent building” – The team were separated into two groups and had to build tent whilst  wearing a blindfold. It was very interesting to see how one of team was dominated by 1-person (with tent building experience) and successfully completed the exercise almost by himself! However, the other team was bit more (maybe too much) team-orientated but it didn’t quite complete and ran out of time. That was bit unfortunate! But, Hey! We still won as a team at the end!

·         “Transmitting and Receiving” – The challenge for the team was to develop a transmitting language across 100m without using any verbal communication, or using mobile phone, or handwriting messages. The task was to develop a language to deliver the given message from one side of Aotea Square to the other. It was quite interesting how the team came up with the idea of using their fingers to represent each of English letter as a transmitting language! The 1^st person’s 10 fingers (Left hand little finger=A, Right hand little finger=J) represent the 1^st 10 English letter and the 2^nd person represent the following the same definition and so as 3^rd person…! The key learning from this exercise was how we can easily visualize the difference in Planning and Execution department in business!