During the recent WCIT (World Congress for IT), CXposé.tech had the opportunity to speak to WITSA CEO, Datuk Dan. Khoo, and catch up on what he has been up to since the last WCIT he famously brought to Malaysia in 2008. 

Any journalist above 30 years of age (ahem!) or even a keen observer of the local tech ecosystem, would have come across the name Dan E Khoo. In the 1980s, he founded Computimes, the IT news pullout of The New Straits Times (NST) in the 1980s with his brother, Derrick Khoo.

After that Dan E. went on to head up the IT business division for the NST Group and put on a tech entrepreneur hat later, to found an internet advertising startup during the dotcom boom pre-2000.  But this was not before becoming a minority shareholder in a software company that went public. 

Later, what was supposed to be a short stint at MDEC (at that time MDC) before he joined the National ICT Association (PIKOM), became a long-term journey as he helped spearhead MSC Malaysia initiatives as its Head of Strategy and later as President of MDEC Americas, 

Tech Pullouts

With an obvious love for technology, what led to the founding of not one but two IT sections in two of the nation’s mainstream newspapers? It all actually boils down to his love for computing, technology, and coding.

On his Linkedin page, he shares about how he had been given a programmable calculator and then a challenge by his engineering professor for his whole class.

“I ended up coding Mastermind in Fortran (language) that ran on a DEC PDP 11.”

Looking back at the origins of the tech pullouts, Dan E. said to CXposé, “So, it was an intersection of computing with communications, and the ability to scale the impact. Because we want it to impact education and not just in the way which education is being delivered, but actual computer education.”

The strategy was to amplify the need for computing education via mainstream mass media, and Dan E. added, “It was (to achieve) beyond just awareness. We brought topics about computing that were perhaps in the realm of nerds and I think for a long time also maybe not available, into the mainstream.”

We fondly remember the good ol’ days when the computing era transitioned to the IT or information Technology age, and Computimes expanded from being a weekly section, to a twice weekly section.  

“I ended up coding Mastermind in Fortran (language) that ran on a DEC PDP 11.”

Dan E. reminisced that it used to have bumper issues with one particular numbering 160 pages. “I recall it was the biggest and heaviest we had, even bigger than the main paper and the distribution vendors were complaining about the additional weight they had to carry!”

Reflecting on a crystal ball

Dan E. said, “I believe that innovation in technology has not stopped and will not stop and will continue to astound us. I am happy that I’m privileged to be in this industry, and at different points in my life have played a part in it, however small or minor. I am happy from that perspective.”

Today, he sees himself first and foremost as a strategist having had experiences as an employee, intrapreneur, entrepreneur, and even work experience with government. “I bring those elements and I understand the core communities that we want to impact.

I understand and bring mental as well as execution models whether they are from Silicon Valley, or greatly influenced by concepts like Lean Startup and Blue Ocean strategy.”

Now at WITSA, or the World Information Technology and Services Alliance, as its CEO, Dan E leverages a combination of his experiences, and during planning can be agile enough to change, amend, adapt, as they build, measure, learn, loop, and then pivot, if they need to.

In conclusion, Dan E. said, “So I’m at a stage where I would want to impact change on a global scale. I believe I can do that through entrepreneurship, innovation and technology. So, WITSA allows me to have that interplay and impact that change at a global scale, or at least be one of the key components of the change that I believe is possible.”