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Mr Alex Choo
An aircraft engineer by training, Alex first stumbled across IT when a friend introduced him to Apple II. Taken by the “new toy”, he spent the next one month playing “Apple Panic” from midnight till 3am every day. Since then, he has never played another computer game with such enthusiasm again.
Computer graphics and animation was his primary interest, but he could only take it as a hobby as he has no professional knowledge in this area. He would often spend his holidays in the United States and Canada visiting computer graphics conventions and exhibitions to learn about the latest concepts, developments and applications. It was certainly an expensive hobby.
His other interest was scouting. He would encourage his scout unit to use IT in their practices and even donated his old computer so they could use it to write their meeting minutes and compile campfire songs, or design campfire programs. He even expanded this interest onto the national level.
In November 1997, he was voted into chairing the one-year pilot project called the IT Scout Badge. The success of this scheme prompted the IDA to develop the current E-Ambassador Program that is highly successful and involves over 30 leading agencies, including the Scouts. For his active involvement in the Scout Movement, he was appointed the IT Commissioner by the Chief Scout, President Nathan, who is also the Scout Patron.
Together with the support of IDA, Alex Choo’s other contributions include:
- Exposure of Scout HQ staff to the potential of IT through the use of the IT-Coach from IDA
- On-going participation of Scouts in the IT Scout Badge and the E-ambassador program
- PC-Reuse scheme where Scouts are involved in providing refurbished PCs to needy individuals
- E-celebrations where Scouts had a booth that allowed the public to see how easy it was to create digital movies for themselves
- Tamil Internet 2000 where Tamil-speaking Scouts were on-hand to introduce Tamil applications and services on the Internet
Armed with his academic knowledge and technical background, Alex set out to develop his five-year IT masterplan for the Scout Movement. This was a daunting prospect but Alex drove it with high spirit, energy and determination. He saw the exciting opportunity to marry information communications and technology with scouting, and he devoted himself to bringing new synergies to all aspects of traditional scouting practices in the information age.
At the National Scout Level in the Movement, Alex introduced:
- IT training for all staff and introduced emails in regular correspondences at all levels
- JOTA - Jamboree on the Internet
- Adobe PDF as a document standard; Filemaker as database standard; and QuickTime as video standard to provide a common platform for information from HQ to be disseminated
- A Scout Resource CD to all Scout Units. This Resource CD contains Scout Clip-art, electronic forms, literature and other electronic resources
- Registration database program to improve and shorten the annual registration process for membership registration
- A national Scout and Guide Web site competition to encourage more Scout & Guide groups to use IT and to create greater awareness of the available Scout and Guide Web sites
During this period Alex was also nominated to represent Singapore in the Asia Pacific Internet Team – a committee set up by the region to promote Internet usage amongst the 35 scouting countries in the Asia Pacific region.
In a major scout event, Alex conceptualised a Digital World-theme pavilion to introduce practical IT to 800 scouts from different countries. Campers were introduced to Internet technologies via mobile phones.
Given the limited resources and funds available from the Movement, Alex has volunteered his time and even sponsored some projects. The StarScouts Web site server was a pilot project set up in early 1998 to promote IT in his own Scout Unit.
It was also used to host the first "online" scout membership registration program for the Singapore Scout Association. He had provided an R&D environment for his team of scouts to experiment, test and create an Apache-MySQL Web server hosting the Scout Unit Web site, using two off-the-shelf computers that operated for two years without any major failure.
In early 2002, Alex has introduced new IT initiatives including a WebMaster’s Scout Badge, E-Ambassador’s Badge and IT Instructor Scheme. He has also upgraded his Linux-based server.
Alex recognises the importance of IT in the development of the Scouting Community. His establishment and active promotion of an IT culture in the Singapore Scouting goes a long way to enhance the objectives of the Movement and its role in the development and training of the experience of scouts. These scouts, in turn, will bring the knowledge and experiences with them to enrich the organisations they eventually join.
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