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2 | www.travelweekly-asia.com NORTHSTAR TRAVEL MEDIA (ASIA) GROUP PUBLISHER Irene Chua Tel: (65) 6801 0451 | ichua@travelweekly.com EDITORIAL EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Yeoh Siew Hoon Tel: (65) 6801 0450 | syeoh@ntmllc.com EDITOR-AT-LARGE Ian Jarrett Tel: (618) 9433 6455 | ian.jarrett@travelweekly.com EDITOR Natalie Chen Tel: (65) 6801 0453 | natalie.chen@travelweekly.com WRITER Corinne Wan Tel: (603) 2201 1979 | corinne.wan@travelweekly.com INDIA CORRESPONDENT Neelam Mathews | neelam.mathews@gmail.com HONG KONG CORRESPONDENT Catharine Nicol | cn@monsterpix.hk INDONESIA CORRESPONDENT James Read | jim_s_read59@hotmail.com GRAPHIC DESIGNER Lim Bee Bee Tel: (65) 97508 405 | bb.bbcreative@gmail.com SALES & MARKETING REGIONAL SALES DIRECTOR Katherine Ng Tel: (65) 6801 0460 | katherine.ng@travelweekly.com CHINA OFFICE GROUP PUBLISHER (China) Rebecca Zhang Tel: (8621) 5179 8363 | rebecca.zhang@ntmllc.com BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR Shawn Li Tel: (8610) 8532 4021 | shawn.li@travelweekly.com EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Susan Li Tel: (8610) 8532 3611 | susan.li@travelweekly.com MEDIA REPRESENTATIVES HONG KONG/MACAU ZAM International - Manna Ma Tel: (852) 9650 0518 | manna.ma@zamintl.com.hk KOREA Young Media Inc - Keon Chang Tel: (822) 2273 4833 | ymedia@chol.com INDIA MHI Communications - Smriti Khanna Tel: (9198) 1040 7483 | skhanna@mhi.com.hk AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR - ASIA Patti Mo | patti.mo@travelweekly.com DATABASE & FULFILLMENT MANAGER Zoe Chu | zoe.chu@travelweekly.com FINANCE ASIA FINANCE MANAGER Nicole Yong | nyong@ntmllc.com CHAIRMAN AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Thomas L. Kemp CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER Lisa Cohen PRESIDENT, TRAVEL GROUP Robert G. Sullivan EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, DIGITAL MEDIA Thomas Cintorino EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, GROUP PUBLISHER David Blansfield SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, PRESIDENT, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Lori Cioffi SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Arnie Weissmann SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, HUMAN RESOURCES Janine L. Bavoso VICE PRESIDENT, MARKETING SOLUTIONS Michelle Rosenberg VICE PRESIDENT, PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AND PRODUCTION Roberta Muller VICE PRESIDENT, CONTENT LICENSING Sheila Rice VICE PRESIDENT, IT INFRASTRUCTURE AND OPERATIONS Rich Mastropietro VICE PRESIDENT, DATABASE PRODUCTS Elizabeth Koesser Published by NORTHSTAR TRAVEL MEDIA SINGAPORE PTE LTD SINGAPORE 91 Bencoolen Street, #05-08 Sunshine Plaza, Singapore 189652 • TEL: +65-6801-0450 FAX: +65-6801-0469 BEIJING Room 024, Building 8, Qijiayuan Diplomatic Compound, No.9 Jianguomenwai Street, Chaoyang District 100600, China • TEL: +8610-8532 3611 | FAX: +8610-8532 5293 SHANGHAI Room 2553, The Headquarters Building, No.168 Central XiZhang Road, Shanghai 200001, China • TEL: +8621-5179 8360 | FAX: +8621-5179 8360 Travel Weekly Asia is published on a monthly basis by Northstar Travel Media Singapore Pte Ltd. Located at 91 Bencoolen Street, #05-08 Sunshine Plaza, Singapore 189652. All rights reserved. Volume 6 Issue 4 Please address all subscription mail to the above address, Fax +852 3020 5794, or email travelweeklyasia@asia-ad.net. Online Subscription: www.travelweekly-asia.com/subscribe For reprints or copyright permission contact Wright's media at +877 652 5295 ext 102 or niademarco@wrightsmedia.com http://wrightsmedia.com/reprints/contact.cfm?magrid=3500 Printed by SUN RISE PRINTING & SUPPLIES PTE LTD Siew Hoon is a traveller who loves to write and a writer who loves to travel. She's combined her two loves into a career in travel journalism that has seen her launch several travel industry titles and conferences, including WIT. She loves the change and discovery that comes with travel and the business. An awkward silence descended in the tent. We had just discovered there was no connectivity in the desert. I mean, what did we expect? We were seated in a tent in the desert at night – the only things visible on the horizon were the camels which had kindly brought us to our dinner venue and two four-wheel drives which had made us rather green in the face as they went up, down and sideways through the dunes. This is as far away as you can get from Dubai, the city of blinding lights and sky-touching buildings, and I suppose we had assumed well, this is still Dubai and in Dubai, anything is possible, so it must be possible to get wifi or 4G in the desert, right? We looked at each other across the table. If it were anyone else, I suppose I'd be fine with being disconnected for a few hours but I was with seven men, all of whom make their living off the Internet. All run e-commerce companies, all breathe wifi for a living, all would have devices attached to their navel, if they could. The safari had been organised by GoPro, an online marketplace for tours and activities. The co-founder is a Chinese-German (more German) named Tao Tao, who's all of 30 years old, and he founded this business while he was a student and since then, has raised US$45.5 million. One of those super-smart whiz kids who can probably count the stars and then create an algorithm that would allow us to "Shazam" each star so that we wouldn't have to guess which star we were looking at. But hey, wait, it's great for making small talk – a concept you know is alien to these wired warriors to whom three seconds is all you have to make sure your website downloads or you've lost them. "What star is that?" I asked. Well, at least, I didn't ask them what star they were. That'd be a lame girl thing to do. "That's not a star. That's a satellite," said the Lebanese-French IT executive among us. I guess he's hoping the satellite will send us a signal soon, so he doesn't have to answer my questions. But at least a spark is lit and soon, we are talking, actually talking, making conversation, asking questions, finding out about each other, getting to know one another … And the talking continued when we moved to a magic carpeted area and smoked shisha, drank tea and other liquids. It's the desert; you have to drink a lot. And it made me realise that actually talking is as old as time. In ancient times, camel traders and nomads would wander the desert from oasis to oasis, set up camp and sat around, trading goods and stories. As the stars got brighter, and the night turned colder, we got more inspired and we started sharing ideas about our business and how we could all work together – you know that feeling of camaraderie that develops between people who've been thrown together and experienced something special together. Well, a week after I returned, I got an email (confession – we switched on our devices as soon as we could on the way back to Dubai city) from Remo, an Italian who runs Travelstart in Dubai, saying he was trying out an idea I had suggested. Amazing how productive being unproductive can be, right? We should have more brainstorming in the desert or places where we can disconnect so that we can connect. CONNECTING THE DISCONNECTED TALKING POINT

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