/issue/2018.12

Stand-up Comedy is taking the Asian nightlife by storm. With an increase in the number of local comedy groups, stand-up comedians have embraced this opportunity to showcase their comedic talents to a laugh-hungry audience waiting to be entertained. Local comedy sets in India, Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong are mostly sold out on weekend evenings and many established global comedians such as Russell Peters and Michael McIntyre have had more shows in the Asian region in the last few years.



Speaking to INQpop, Paras Sharma, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Southeast Asia, Viacom International Media Networks, commented, “We saw solid viewership of Season 1 of Comedy Central Stand-Up, Asia! last year, which demonstrates that Asia originals have strong appeal with our audiences.” They are also looking at ways for audiences to enjoy the comedy shows live, on-air and importantly on online channels too. CEO of LOL Events, Rizal Kamal also mentioned that stand-up comedy in Asia is at its prime at the moment. In terms of comedy acts and the quality of material, Asia has developed in leaps and bounds to make her presence known on the international stage.

A bunch of the comedy clubs mentioned above have also embraced the use of the .Asia domain name. Crackhouse Comedy Club (http://www.crackhousecomedy.asia) was established in 2014 and is the first and longest running comedy club in Malaysia. They have had the likes of Paul Ogata and Douglas Lim perform there. Another example is The Comedy Club Asia (https://www.thecomedyclub.asia/) who are based in Singapore and have been around since 2008. They have had hundreds of comedians perform at their venue and have entertained more than 100000 people. A recent initiative called Comedy Fest Asia (https://comedyfest.asia/) is going to start featuring more acts from foreign and Asian comedians in the coming years. One confirmed comedian on the site, starting his Asian tour soon, is Tom Green. His tour includes stops at Singapore, Hong Kong and Thailand among others.

With the appetite of online entertainment on the rise in Asia, the importance for these comedians to have an online identity cannot be understated. The next stand-up comedian may come from Asia and having a dedicated website can be perfect way to start his/her path to stardom.

Our NetMission Ambassador Jenna Fung (Class 2017-2018) and Hong Kong Youth IGF 2018 representatives Faith Lee and Angel Ng have attended the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Paris 2018 at UNESCO building from 12-14 December which marked our last event of 2018. Although it was a shorter IGF, consisting of 3 main conference days as opposed to the usual 5-day meeting, the takeaways are no lesser. This year the IGF was opened at a high with French President Macron delivering a 20-min long opening remark. While people may not always share the same viewpoints as him, his presence certainly made a strong note on the significance of IGF. As a first-timer of the IGF with an keen interest on refugee rights advocacy, Faith personally feels very encouraged by the commitment from the multi-stakeholders to take action on building digital skills of refugees at one of the related workshops that she attended. While digital skills are undeniably important nowadays, Angel echoed further on the Workshop #355 panel that achieving youth digital mobility will help eliminate disparity and develop global citizenship, and work towards global problems. Last but not least, we are motivated to hear from Jenna at the IGF closing plenary that this conference journey ignited further her sense of mission to continue speaking up for youth in Asia Pacific. Take a look at our ambassadors’ blog posts at http://www.netmission.asia/category/blog/.

Looking ahead, we are excited to welcome 30 new students onboard the NetMission 2019 family! Hailing from 16 economies including Australia, Bhutan, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, and even a Malian student currently studying in China, we have high hopes for our new cohort! Their training will span across Jan and Feb before they roll-up their sleeves and get busy in our community work.

Millions of users may be denied access to your services – and that’s not fair to you or to them.
Since 2010 the Domain Name System (DNS) has expanded dramatically, not only fueling competition, choice and innovation, but truly enabling a multi-lingual Internet. There are now more than a 1,500 top-level domains (TLDs), many of which are longer than the traditional two- and three-character names (e.g. .com, .hk, and .org) or are in non-ASCII based scripts – such as Arabic, Cyrillic, Thai and Chinese.  In Hong Kong, HKIRC have offered domain names in .香港 since 2010.

The issue at hand
Many organizations and businesses have not updated their systems to accommodate the new domains or what we call become Universal Acceptance (UA)-ready. As a result, many applications and Internet-connected devices and systems are unable to accept, validate, store, process or display all domain names. This causes problems for organizations and headaches for users because if the applications do not recognize or appropriately process the new domain names or email addresses that use these extensions, it will result in lost customers and a poor user experience.

Resources available to assist you
To address these issues and provide support, stakeholders and industry leaders such as Apple, GoDaddy, Google, ICANN, Microsoft, DotAsia and Verisign, created the Universal Acceptance Steering Group. The UASG exists to help organizations ensure their systems are UA-ready and able to accept all domain names and email addresses in any valid script.

Visit the UASG website and view these helpful guides, and to get involved with the UASG so we can work together to fully incorporate these new domains for the benefit of the next generation of Internet users.

Follow this link for the full article.

By Don Hollander
Secretary General
Universal Acceptance Steering Group

About the author: Don Hollander is the secretary general for Universal Acceptance Steering Group and former CIO for large domestic and international corporations.

The recent launch of the Jockey Club PolyU Human Libraries Hub, operated by universities and community partners, aims to support both the education sector and the public to deepen their understanding about 100+ human stories in Asia. The lens will be focused on characters’ interviews with extended study & references; thematic pages about society, health and humanity e.g. Transformation of Labour in Digitalization, Rare Diseases, Genders & Identities, Active Aging as well as Life Education etc.  

With the same vision focus, Go.asia will join the Humans.asia team and continue to contribute itself as a content provider in the coming year and bring Asian readers more dynamic and inspiring great big stories through our website and social media channels. Let us know what concerns you in Asia and keep your fingers crossed for our new page ahead!   

Source of information: Jockey Club PolyU Human Libraries Hub

Do you still remember my #SayNoToPlastic Challenge from earlier? If the issue hasn’t caught your attention yet you’d better listen up now!

Indeed only 9% of the world’s plastic we make is being recycled, and that means 8 million tonnes of plastic waste reach the ocean every year. These statistics are of course quite alarming. Yet what you should be aware of is not only the plastic wastes harboured in our Oceans now, but also in our stomachs. Recent research showed that microplastic particles could be found in the sea salt that we eat daily, as well as our human sewage. What if they are not coming out as stools but as the breastfeeding milk for your baby? While the health risks to our human body is still unknown, the need to #BeTheChange and #SayNoToPlastic is known!

One of our NetMission.Asia alumni, Desiree Ho, has integrated this environmental cause into her passion on dancing. She has choreographed a short dance film in collaboration with the Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation to advocate plastic reduction. The film featured 8 young dancers looking back from 2050 with dance moves narrating the hope and grief of our human behaviours. The short film was premiered at the first Hong Kong Eco Film Festival on 17 November 2018. Check out the short film at http://aji.asia/change.

Awareness raising alone will not help the situation if no one acts upon it. The good news is that many governments are already trying to pose a ban on single use plastic or deploying plastic bag tax. For instance, Australia has seen a drastic 80% decrease of their plastic waste since their policy came into effect from late July. We hope there will be many more following suit. Read up more at www.un360.asia.