On Saturday, 24 October 2026, DNVB Indonesia and Jenjang held a one-day offline event at the Gmedia office in Jogja. I was on DNVB's product team and ran it from the first idea to the last session: what the event would be about, how it would run, who would speak, and what each speaker would say.

At a Glance

  • Date and place: Saturday, 24 October 2026, Gmedia office (PT Media Sarana Data), Jogja
  • Partners: DNVB Indonesia and Jenjang, hosted by Gmedia
  • Format: sessions built around short self talks of about 20 minutes, each with Q&A, and networking through the day
  • Speakers: Meika Hazim (Cokelat nDalem), Ramadhanti F. (Oase Media Indonesia) and Dadang Kurnia (Nobi Project)
  • Room: 80 seats, theater style, one stage without a podium
  • Audience: business owners, HR and people managers, and team leads growing a team or a business
  • My role: concept, proposal deck, topic and format, speaker curation, talk development, and the run of show

Not a Seminar, Not a Webinar Moved Offline

Most business events in town follow one shape: one speaker talks for an hour while the room listens. I wanted a day people would remember and talk about afterwards, so the event was built around short self talks in the spirit of TED: one stage, one speaker, one honest story. Each talk ran about 20 minutes, which keeps a room focused, and was followed by Q&A, so the audience shared back instead of only watching.

Slide explaining the concept: research-backed, premium perception, stands out, sharing first

One Topic Everyone in the Room Had Paid For

The theme was The Cost of Misunderstanding People. A people problem that is not handled well always has a cost, and it is usually bigger than expected. Some of it shows up in the books, such as rehiring, turnover and lost time. Some never does, such as broken trust, a strained culture or a reputation that does not come back. Business owners and HR people have all paid one of the two, which made the topic universal across industries.

Slide introducing the theme, The Cost of Misunderstanding People

To help speakers find their story, I mapped the theme into six areas they could draw from:

  • Hiring and team structure, such as hiring in a rush while scaling
  • Generations and culture, such as culture clashes after a merger
  • Retention and turnover, such as losing key talent to a competitor
  • Leadership and delegation, such as the "promoted to manager" trap
  • Performance and feedback, such as KPIs that point the wrong way
  • Pay and fairness, such as incentives designed the wrong way

What I Did

The proposal deck

I wrote and designed the 20-slide deck that brought the partners on board. It covered the concept and the research behind it, the audience persona, the theme, potential speakers, the session structure, several rundown options, the venue, a clear role split between DNVB Indonesia and Jenjang, and a full list of what the stage, sound, seating and documentation needed.

Cover of the proposal deck: Offline Event Collab, DNVB x Jenjang, Kantor Gmedia, 24 October 2026

Curating the speakers

The brief for the line-up was different industries, same people problems, so the room would hear the theme from more than one angle. Three speakers took the stage:

  • Meika Hazim, Cokelat nDalem, a chocolate brand from Jogja
  • Ramadhanti F., Oase Media Indonesia
  • Dadang Kurnia, Nobi Project

For each speaker, I matched their own experience to one of the six areas above, so no two talks told the same story.

Developing each talk with its speaker

A good self talk is not a slide deck read aloud, so I worked through each talk with its speaker: finding the one mistake worth telling, shaping it into a story, and rehearsing the delivery. Every talk followed the same guide, not a script:

  • Hook (0 to 3 minutes): win the room's attention
  • Context (3 to 5 minutes): the background the audience needs
  • The mistake (6 to 12 minutes): what happened, told honestly
  • The turn (12 to 15 minutes): the moment it became clear what to change
  • Takeaway (15 to 18 minutes): what the audience can take home
  • Close (18 to 20 minutes): one closing line

The bar for every talk: practical enough for others to learn from, thought through, with the logic behind each decision, told as a story, delivered as if talking with friends, and backed by data where it helped.

Slide showing the talk structure from hook to closing, and what was expected of each speaker

Running the day to plan

Jenjang handled the venue, documentation and day-of operations; DNVB Indonesia handled the topic, the speakers, ticketing and promotion. On the day, my job was to keep the plan intact: a printed run of show for the crew, a countdown timer and confidence monitor for the speakers, a small green room to prepare in, and backup rundowns prepared in advance, so a late start or a long Q&A would not push the last session out.

What a Speaker Said

"We couldn't have delivered this without the man behind the product at DNVB, Kak Akbar!!! Thank you so much!!! Learned a lot from you to make this happen! Hats off!"

Meika Hazim, Cokelat nDalem. Translated from Indonesian.