[Vnbiz] English website for college students

Fri Jun 27 13:15:40 PDT 2008

Dear brother Hong Hai & CACC,

Thanks for the note and your enthusiasm, brother Hai.  And thanks for
volunteering.

Let me do a quick feedback on your points, while waiting for other
brothers/sisters to chip in.

1.  Subject and format:  Yes, we want to have some depth for college
students to be interested in, but not too deep to make it too complex and
hard to read.  It is a fine balance to strike.  We'll figure that out.
Sometimes we may have to try a number of formats before striking the right
one.

2.  Financial and technical support:  To start out, let's make it easy.  I
will pay for the cost of a site out here with simple user-friendly
technology and we all can access to work from anywhere in the world.  (Not
that I have so much extra money.  But that is much easier than spending time
asking for donations. We all are so busy, we don't have time to run around
asking for donation.  However, whoever wants to donate money, that would be
wonderful,  Please just tell me).

And the site has to be outside Vietnam, so that the Vietnamese government
will not complain "Hey, do you have a license for the site?"  For God's
sake, nobody in the world needs a license for a site, except maybe in
Vietnam :-)   Not that I mind about licensing, but we don't have time to
fool around with things like that.  We just need to structure things in an
extremely simple  way so that we are not bogged down with unnecessary things
like fund raising, donations or licensing.

About offline meetings and so onr, well, we can do it vnbiz style:  Whenever
we have a gathering, everyhone chips in to pay for the cost of the event.
Again, the principle of  simplicity.

Of course, if the project becomes successful, we can get fancy and change
ways of doing things.  But let's start it extremely simple.
3.  Human resources:  We just work with whoever we can get.   If we have
lots of expert volunteers, we may do thing this way. If we have few experts
we may do things that way.

One of the things I am thinking about is how to bring students into the
admin group so that studetns will play a major role in managing and creating
it.  It would be boring to have a website for college students but
professors are the only people who run the site.  Of course, professors and
professionals may play a very critical role in substantive subject matters
and in advisory capacity, but every day management work can be done by
students completely (if we have a group of students who have good management
capacity).

4.  Political issues:  Well, this is an easy problem to solve.  Just go
where the major newspapers go-- Tuoi Tre, Thanh Nien (oops, TT & TN just
went to jail :-(, Phu Nu, Lao Dong, etc...  Don't go further than these
newspapers, then we will be on safe ground.  (Whoever wants to go further
can just join VNBIZ  :-)

Thanks again for volunteering, brother Hai.  That is the spirit!

That is my quick response.   Hope to hear more from everyone.  Please chip
in.

Great day!

Hoanh
On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 3:04 PM, Hai Tran <haihong.tran at yahoo.com> wrote:

>    Dear anh Hoanh and CACC,
>
> As a lecturer, I must say the idea to create an English website for our
> students is an excellent start to make the dream come true. Yes, all of us
> always long for a day when Vietnamese possibly use English as fluently as
> Singaporeans and since then Vietnam economy and culture could be much more
> integrated into this flat world.
>
> As I've observed, many, many Vietnamese students have been looking forward
> a quality website/forum to practice English through exchanging ideas on
> socio-economic topics. Thus, I completely agree with your suggestion and
> promise to be a volunteer from the very beginning to make this idea reach
> its destination. Once the web established, I'll try my best to encourage my
> students to join in to improve their English as well as enhance their
> knowledge which covered by topics on the forum.
>
> However, to make the project become feasible, I think we need to overcome
> these foreseeable barriers:
>
> 1. The subjects/topics and format of the website: To attract students and
> encourage them to come up to the website, the first thing we need to
> consider is developing the contents in terms of depth and breadth. Until
> now, in Vietnam, we have a large variety of websites for younger, however, there
> exists no English websites for academic and formal discussion. Here, in
> marketing term, we have to create a differentiation to compete with other
> existing rivals :). Therefore, we don't have to cover up all the topics in
> this life, however, emphasise on topics which are academic but need to be
> practical and helpful for students is a must. (For instance, I think many
> economic students, these days, want to deeply comprehend how the inflation
> rate in Vietnam has skyrocketed recently and the affect of it on USD/VND
> exchange rate and the stock market?)
>
> Regarding the format of the page, I imagine the website will be an open and
> virtual place where Vietnamese students can show up and discuss with each
> other their ideas and thoughts on every aspects of socio-economic conditions
> in Vietnam. Thus, looks like we will have another VNBiz forum after all?
>
> 2. Financial and Technical supports: Like other professional forums, we
> need financial resources to build up and maintain the website as well as
> organise off-line meetings, events and activities in the future. If we
> succeed in creating an English portal for students, certainly the website
> will gain supports/sponsorships from companies/organisations whom want to
> headhunt excellent/qualified students for their staffing later. In this
> aspect, no need to worries about once the website is well run and developed.
>
>
> 3. Human resources: We need the voluntary cooperation from gurus in all
> socio-economic aspects. They should be responsible for positions such as
> advisors/moderators of specific sub-forums. With working experiences and
> knowledge, these experts can assist students to answer their questions and
> therefore, make the website more and more attractive. Could we easily find
> experts who have time and are willing to do that?
>
> 4. The hardest barrier - no political issues should be mentioned if we
> want the website could be widely spread among students. We all know in
> Vietnam, there are lots of things which can't be mentioned publicly since
> the government considers they're sensitive. Look at what the government has
> just done with two journalists whom bravely fought against corruption
> recently and well, we need to be always self-censored first and then step
> away from many hot topics? Surely we could hardly overcome it, since we all
> know that there's a strong relationship between socio-economic, cultural
> issues with politics in our real life. And if we can not mention all the
> aspects of one problem/issue in our discussion, it's not valued for a penny
> at all.
>
> Have a good weekend,
>
> Hai Tran.
>
> --- On *Wed, 6/25/08, Tran Dinh Hoanh <tdhoanh at gmail.com>* wrote:
>
> From: Tran Dinh Hoanh <tdhoanh at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Vnbiz] English website for college students
> To: vnbiz at vietlinks.net
> Date: Wednesday, June 25, 2008, 2:31 AM
>
> [ Vietnam Business Forum ]
>
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-- 
Tran Dinh Hoanh, Esq., LLB, JD
Washington DC
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