Dear Lasallians,
I am privileged and honoured to become the 34th President of La Salle College Old Boys’ Association (the “LSCOBA”) and I promise to serve the LSCOBA to the best of my ability. I am totally conscious of the fact that I am having broad shoulders! My predecessors have carried the baton with pride and taken LSCOBA from strength to strength and I hope to carry on that legacy with the support of you and my committee.
Before I provide an outline of the plans of the LSCOBA for 2012/13, I would first like to acknowledge the marvellous work of the outgoing President Mark Huang. Mark has been married to the LSCOBA for longer than I can remember and provided leadership in the last two years. During his leadership, the Young Members forum had flourished and the participation of this once-overlooked group become extremely engaging. I believe all of us will not agree Mark to retire so easily but to carry on with the good work. The following are some of the objectives the team wishes to achieve in the term 2012/13:
- To brush up the financial fundamentals andget prepared for the unexpected situations and future growth of the LSCOBA.
- Albeit we managed to keep the cash flow to a safe level in the past few years, a more sustainable and proactive approach should be in place to improve the financial position.
- Instead of relying on sponsorships, we should develop a broader source of income.
- We will look into the following ways to increase our recurring income:
- Aggressive promotional campaign to encourage the use of LSCOBA credit cards in the Lasallian communities. The monthly rebates generated from the spending will contribute a steady income to the Association.
- Expansion of the souvenir product portfolio to improve revenue.
- Consideration of allowing commercial advertisements on our web site and newsletter.
- To embrace different voices.
- I am a believer of Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood – The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. Only when we practice emphatic listening, we will be able to appreciate that others’ opinion may worth more than two cents.
- We aim to conduct regular open discussion forum to reach out to fellow members who genuinely cares about the LSCOBA and the alma mater. We welcome friendly debate and challenges.
- To escalate the electronic communication platform to the next generation architecture.
- The current LSCOBA website was last overhauled in 2003. Some of the functions and features are a bit behind today’s web standard. In this term, we have six committee members working in either the information technology domain or the project management field; we shall leverage the expertise of these professionals to bring forward our website to Web 2.0 and beyond, characterised by interactive user participation, real time content, collective intelligence, etc.
- Some near future projects include:
- www.lscoba.com revamps.
- Introduction of smartphone application based on iOS.
- As I write this message, the Information Technology and Communication Subcommittee is working hard on the smartphone applications. Hopefully we will launch it by the end of 2012.
- To conduct a constitutional review on some administrative and procedural areas.
- We look forward to engaging the Committee and our legal advisors to review some of the old fashioned articles to make communications more efficient and more environmental friendly by leveraging and making use of modern telecommunication technologies.
- Consultations will be conducted.
There is quite a fair bit of work to be done in the next nice months; my Committee and I will rely on your feedback and support to make it successful, we look forward to hearing from you. Yours in de La Salle, 
Willie C. Wong (84)
President, LSCOBA 2012/13
Email address: [email protected]