VSee's sharing:

Today the CEO of VSee, Milton Chen, came down and gave a talk. I didn't know about VSee before (even though I vaguely heard about the company from the NOC seniors). But it doesn't matter. Mr Milton's talk just fascinated me.

VSee's video conferencing technology is amazing. It's able to deliver videos at high speed and high resolution. Not only that, VSee allows users to share files and work on the files in real time. It raises significant interest in me. Recently I've been particularly interested in XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol). I've been trying to create stable web-based XMPP applications but failed many times. Making it work is not difficult, but keeping it stable and scalable is a huge technical challenge for a 2nd year student like me. That's why to me what's VSee has done is so magnificent. I really want to learn more about the technology the company's using as well as the XMPP video standard Mr Milton created.

Ok let's move away from the geeky stuff. The message that Mr Milton delivered to us today is actually about life, leadership, and relationship. I want to write everything here, but I'm quite sleepy already. So let's just summarize what I find the most interesting and meaningful:

- Breaking patterns: I've been doing it for many years already. Basically breaking patterns is about changing habits of doing normal, daily stuff. For example, sometimes I write with my left hand (I'm right-handed btw), open my room's door with my mouth, walk to school instead of taking bus, etc. I feel great everytime I do it. It makes my brain alive. I become much more aware of things around me. And it makes me feel even better knowing that Mr Milton, a successful entrepreneur, also does the same thing.

- The "Sandwich" method: It's a great human management technique that Mr Milton is applying. When you want to criticize someone, start with a compliment, then give the negative feedback, and end with a compliment again. I agree that the method works all the time even when the other party is aware of it. It helps the other party receive the negative message less painfully and prevent his defense mechanism from triggering. I'm gonna apply this technique extensively from now on.

- Being soft on people: I really respect the way Mr Milton treats his employees. He doesn't want them to call him boss. He listens to their criticisms, lets them work from home, applies the "Sandwich" method so that he doesn't heart their feelings. Most importantly, he makes them feel comfortable when working at VSee. His soft approach to people management promotes his employees' loyalty toward the company, as proved by the fact that his NOC interns are still working for VSee after their internships.

- Marrying the right person: Prof Ben's out-of-nowhere relationship lesson is super interesting. If you want to be workaholic, you have to marry the right person who can let you work on your own stuff. Also, you should get married first before being workaholic. If you do the opposite, you may not have time for dating and probably may end up alone. Well CS3216 is such a unusual course. I never know what I'm gonna learn :-P

One more thing I like about Mr Milton is his passion and affection for what he's doing. He can work 7 days a week simply because he loves his company. VSee has become a significant part of his life that he cannot live without.

And for me, I don't know if I'm a workaholic (yet), but I certainly love what I'm doing.