A big thank you to Malum Nalu for his interview with me in the National Newspaper. The newspaper version has been modified but you can see the full interview below, oh and this is a picture of me having lunch with the Digital Posters’ software crew in Malaysia.

1. Emmanuel, congratulations on this new concept of digital posters. Can you tell me more about it and how it works?

Thanks Mallum. Digital Posters are a new, dynamic and captivating medium in PNG for products and services to be advertised to consumers. Quite simply we run advertising on 32” flat screens in retail outlets. The two most important features are firstly that you can advertise where consumers make buying decisions and secondly it is dynamic so that messages and content in the ads can be updated monthly or daily or even hourly if necessary. We now have approvals for setup in SVS and three Stop n Shop outlets in addition to our current locations Boroko Foodworld and Andersons, Harbour City. Advertisers are charged a flat monthly fee and from our office in Gordons we send out Ads to the screens over a wireless broadband network. The service is only in Port Moresby for now, but we will be looking at expanding to Lae later in the year.

1. Is this a significant milestone for Masalai?

Yes this is definitely a milestone for Masalai. I actually got the idea in 2002 from Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi movie ‘Minority Report’ where a number of futuristic marketing mediums were showcased like Digital Posters. But although the idea came to me in 2002 it has only been now that the technologies and financing has been available for us to start this concept. I’d also like to mention here that we also wouldn’t have been able to start without the great support of Tim Doyle at Coca-Cola Amatil and their belief in us. I had to wait a whole week in Lae to pitch my idea to him and when I did see him, it took him 5 mins to agree that Coke would come on board. It was then that I realized that we may have finally come on to something special here.

1. What other major projects have you worked on?

Other major projects we have undertaken are data/voice cabling for the 4 storey Post Haus in Boroko, data/voice cabling for the fisheries department in Deloitte tower, SMS voting for Ice Discovered on EMTV, Email to SMS for Australian mobile phones which never really took off though. Right now we are working on Touch Screens for customer feedback for ANZ Bank and looking at a number of e-commerce initiatives.

1. When did you start Masalai?

I started Masalai in 2001 and I used to work from my bedroom with a dial up connection.

1. How did the company start?

My interest in IT and initially websites first came from seeing the Trading Post newspaper in Australia in 1999, so I thought to myself what if we had a website like that newspaper in PNG. I started the www.pngtradepost.com.pg website and then set about teaching myself how to design websites from a ‘HTML for Dummies’ book. The Trading Post website, due allot to my lack of attention has not developed as much as it could have but this was what lead me into website development. I met a friend called Phillip Korare who worked in Datec at that time and he taught me allot of the basic HTML programming to get started.

Masalai itself then came about from meeting two like minded friends; we thought that we knew something about IT so we decided to give it a go. I was actually still in Legal Training Institute after law school and I decided that I wanted to do something different which could make a difference. I know that sounds really cliché but my friends and I really believed that. They both have since gone their own ways, one is in London now and the other is Brown Omotosho of Nichtosh. Brown and I are still very close and we still do allot of projects together. He speciliases in electrical and data/voice networks.

And just so you know we have started on redeveloping the Trading Post website.

1. How have you progressed over the years?

It hasn’t been easy that’s for sure, I think the hardest part for me was convincing my family and friends that I was going to actually make some money. But they have stood by me and to be honest I didn’t really make any money in the first 3 years. It was only around 2004 that website development work started to pick up and I started to break even to cover my costs. Again I couldn’t have done it without the support of my family and friends, because it was in late 2003 where I actually considered quitting and going back to law. I was at a point where I thought what am I doing here and I wasn’t getting any younger and the shame of having to be helped by my family burned me each time I thought about it. So it has been a very slow and hard progress. But along the way I have met allot of very supportive clients and business associates who I still keep in touch with today.

1. What type of work do you specialize in?

Our bread and butter is website development, hosting and our Content Management System for updating websites without any need for programming skills and website analytics with Google.

1. Who are some of your major clients?

Our Major clients include, Coca-Cola Amatil, PNG Ports, National Maritime Safety Authority, Internal Revenue Commission, PNG Events Council, Fisheries Department, NASFUND, PNG Gas Project, Autonomous Region of Bouganville, Privatisation Commission (now IPBC), Pryde Furniture, Ela Beach Hotel, Supreme and National Court of PNG, Pacific Assurance Group and many more medium to small clients. All up we have done over 30 websites since 2001 and this year we have about 20 jobs to deal with.

1. How does it feel to be a young Papua New Guinean with his own IT company?

I think you go through allot of different feelings. I feel allot of freedom in what I think and can do, I think that would be the big benefit. I guess I’m only restricted by my cash flows and dreams really, so it feels good knowing that. Of course with that freedom comes the responsibility I feel of doing something that changes the country hopefully and doing it right. I also do feel allot of pressure to get things right and it does hurt when I fail at anything or I fail clients.

1. How many staff do you have?

I currently have 6 staff with me, 3 of them are freelance contractors. Freelancers help keep down my costs and also allow me to source from a wider pool of talent, so I’m not stuck with one creative type of model. It helps me to source the best talent for any given project. But I am now looking at increasing my staff numbers this year so I could end up with about 10 by the end of this year.

I feel fortunate to have met the people in my team, they have been a great support in getting us where we are today and obviously we still have more to do in improving ourselves and our skills and services.

1. What are your thoughts on the status quo of IT in Papua New Guinea?

IT is a broad area and if you separate it into offline usage and online usage then you can understand better where we are at in PNG. IT’s aim is to share information which means that an online PC or a networked PC in an office will have more usage and demands from the user. So in PNG the most networked PC’s and the most PC’s hooked onto the internet are the ones in businesses.

Papua New Guineans today are allot more familiar with IT and what it can do for them, more people now through internet at work have email addresses now as opposed to back in 1999. But IT usage now is primarily in the business world so the social and personal aspect of IT has not been developed enough yet in PNG. The only way for people to personally interact on the net is in their work time, why? because the total costs for accessing the internet at home or personally through say your mobile phone or a PDA is prohibitive or non existent and that is a direct consequence of the pricing hurdles set by ISP’s and Telikom’s Tiare Gateway.

Businesses bear allot of costs for IT now and they can afford to even though it is expensive, but until the cost for personal access and overall access of internet is lowered we will continue to lag by 5-10 years behind the rest of the world. So 2 things need to be done, firstly internet prices need to drop so Internet penetration rates can be increased and secondly entrepreneurs and businesses need to show consumers how their daily lives can be improved and be more efficient with IT initiatives and I mean initiatives that can touch everyone in PNG from the cities to the villages.

1. What is the future of IT in Papua New Guinea?

The future is bright and since we still have a long way to go, the only way is up so to speak. Internet prices will drop and the different forms of accessing the internet will increase, whether it be from a PC at home, a PDA at a restaurant, your laptop at a hotel lobby or your mobile phone in your hand. This is inevitable with the way the rest of the world has gone, but for us it is only a question of how quickly that happens?

1. How can IT contribute to the development of Papua New Guinea?

IT can contribute to development in 2 major ways.

Number one is through increasing business efficiency, examples that come to mind are processing systems at banks, no downtimes at ATM’s, efficient SMS delivery, proper document recording and retrieval at government departments, all these contribute to an organized and well run country. So we spend less time with admin issues and more time living.

Secondly dissemination and creation of information. Education material could be emailed to classrooms in a village to keep costs down so more money can go into the quality of our education. Villagers could search on the internet to buy things more cheaply on www.ebay.com.au because similar goods in PNG are too expensive. With web logs (or commonly known as blogs) and personal websites you can tell anyone anything about PNG or your business without having to be in the newspapers.

I’ll give you an example, we did an interview with Akay47 for his band Massive Sound System on our blog, http://masalai.wordpress.com/ and within 5 days we had 1,000 hits. In short we were able to tell hundreds of people in PNG and around the world about this new band and give them music samples to listen to at only the cost of getting onto the internet. There is a fine line today between the users and creators of information on the web, information creation and dissemination is no longer limited to big media companies, great examples of these are www.pngscape.net, www.myspace.com and www.youtube.com

So the better and more efficiently we are informed the better life and business choices we are able to make. At the end of the day IT should compliment and improve what we already want to do in our daily lives.

1. What are your thoughts on Papua New Guinea generally?

I think PNG is going through an exciting change recently, more people seem to have money, banks are giving out more loans and so the future right now looks quite promising. There is also a huge generational shift occurring and it is exciting to see people in my generation being promoted into jobs where we can make a difference. On another level though we have a huge amount of work in connecting with rural PNG and even in the towns for creating more jobs. We need more entrepreneurs; we need more successful businesses being built, of any size, because more companies mean more jobs and more jobs mean more Papua New Guineans involved in developing our country.

The government will not help any of us and so we can start by helping ourselves.

1. What do you think about IT as a career for young people?

IT is a great and varied field and I obviously enjoy what it allows me to do. I am not qualified to give anyone career advice the only thing I can say is that whatever you do make sure you have a passion for it. If it’s all you dream of doing, if it’s all you talk about to your family and friends then go out and do it because your passion for that dream will be what takes you through the rough times.

1. What are you currently doing?

Clearing website jobs and planning for our Digital Posters installations in Port Moresby

1. What are your thoughts for the future?

I’ve temporarily put on hold any thoughts for the future, I have to get past this year first with making sure we have the right people and infrastructure in place to carry out all our existing services.

1. Emmanuel, now tell me a bit about yourself (perhaps your CV would do): where are you from? How old are you? Married with how many children? Your schooling? Your work experience? What are you currently doing? What prompted you to set up your own company and be self-employed? Etc? Is there any thing else that you want to say?

My father is from Wewak and my mother is from Morobe, I’m 29 years old and I am single. I went to St. Josephs Primary School, Wewak International Primary School, Marist Brother Ashgrove in Brisbane and UPNG for my law degree. I’ve had experience in a number of jobs from part-time legal work, car sales, working on a vineyard in Australia, laying concrete in Australia, managing a work shop all which I was never really good at. I am currently the General Manager for Narokobi lawyers in addition to running Masalai Communications. I am also the President of the New Guinea Energy University Rugby Union Club and President also of the Port Moresby Rugby Football Union. I really want to start playing rugby again, but I can’t seem to find the time anymore. I recently started the masalai blog and I’ve been a bit addicted to it, you can see it at, http://masalai.wordpress.com/

1. As a matter of interest, there is this “greenie” anti-logging group which goes under the name Masalai and circulates a lot of propaganda to support their cause. Some people mix it up with you, prompting you to take up a newspaper advertisement. Tell me a bit more…

Yes I get confused with Masalai-i-tokaut all the time. I get people congratulating me, shaking my hand and even ringing me to say what a good job I’m doing but sadly I cannot accept all the good wishes. They are definitely a separate group and it is just co-incidence that we share the same name and operate on the internet. But as a website they are a great example of the power of the internet. Whether they are good or bad, I think like anything else on the internet it’s up to people to decide what is good or bad for them.