Mazlan Abbas · Founder Reflections · 2025
Life on Stage: The Journey of a Speaker Who Never Asked to Become One
From a single university talk to hundreds of stages across four continents
If someone asks me, “Mazlan, how many times have you given a presentation?” I’ll just smile. Not out of arrogance. But because I honestly can’t remember. What I do remember is that it didn’t start because I wanted to be a speaker. It started because I had something worth sharing, and people began to listen.
This isn’t a post about achievements. It isn’t a resume list. This is a story about what happened between all those numbers. What I felt standing in front of a room. What I carried back to the hotel. What changed in me, one presentation at a time.
Every time I stepped onto a stage, I asked myself the same question: am I here to teach, or am I here to learn?
The answer was always both.
The expert in anything was once a beginner who refused to stop showing up.Helen Hayes
In the early days, I was talking about something most people hadn’t fully grasped yet. IoT. Internet of Things. Back then, when people heard “IoT” their faces went blank. I remember giving a talk at UTHM with barely any questions at the end… but I knew the seeds had to be planted early. Someone needed to walk away thinking, “Huh, that’s actually interesting.”
When I delivered the keynote at the International Conference on Soft Computing in Data Science 2015 at Pullman Putrajaya, I could feel the shift. People were beginning to take it seriously. “Internet of Things and Big Data: The Perfect Marriage” was the title I chose myself. Not for the glamour, but because I genuinely believed these two things were made for each other.
These years were relentless. Singapore. Sydney. Jakarta. Kuwait. I was standing in front of people from different countries, talking about smart cities, IoT ecosystems, how technology could reshape the way we live. At the Smart Cities Expo World Forum in Sydney 2016, my message was about citizen engagement. Not just infrastructure. Not just data. People.
That’s what everyone always misses. Technology can be brilliant. But if citizens don’t engage, a smart city is just a smart facade.
Kuwait, Singapore, Sydney, Jakarta… not to collect passport stamps. But to bring back perspectives that no office or lab could ever give you.
2017 was also the year I realized something important: I was no longer just an academic or an industry guy. I had become a bridge. Universities invited me. Industries listened. Government agencies started calling. And with that position came a responsibility I didn’t take lightly.
There is one moment I will never forget. Keynote at the Smart Cities Global Technologies and Investment Summit in Algiers, Algeria, June 2018. A single Malaysian standing before an audience from North Africa, talking about the IoT innovation ecosystem. There was a flutter of nerves. But far more than that, there was exhilaration.
Because what I brought to that room wasn’t just theory. It came from the real, lived experience of building Favoriot. From every failure and every struggle that no one in the audience could see behind the clean, polished slides.
2019 was even more intense. IIUM. UTeM. UCSI. Polytechnics. Borneo. Istanbul. Sarawak. Topics widened too, from IoT for the Construction Industry, to IR 4.0 for MINDEF. I had stopped talking about IoT in a narrow box. I was talking about transformation. About the future. About how human beings need to adapt or be left behind.
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.Albert Einstein
COVID arrived. Everything moved online. Webinars became everyone’s new language. And I, someone who had grown used to feeling the live energy of a room, had to adapt. Talking to a camera. Q&A via chat box. A different kind of connection, but the same message.
What I valued most during that period was that people still wanted to listen. MaGIC, UTHM, UiTM, USIM, ADTEC, Politeknik Mersing, UKM… the 2021 webinar list was endless. That told me something: curiosity about technology doesn’t stop, even when the world is falling apart.
I gave a talk on “Jobs That Don’t Exist Yet.” Halfway through, it hit me: several of the things I do today didn’t exist ten years ago either.
The talk at MMU on “The Entrepreneurship Journey of Pre and Post Covid-19” was when I felt closest to my audience. Not because the slides were great. But because the story was real. Favoriot faced the same tsunami. We survived, but we carry the scars.
By 2022, the nature of invitations had shifted. People no longer called to hear a general talk about IoT. They wanted specifics. ESG. Manufacturing. Financial services. TVET. Smart cities. The energy sector.
That is a sign of maturity, both in the industry and in myself. Penang, Smart Factory Conference, October 2023: ESG in Manufacturing. That same month, ICSIMA at Tamu Hotel: Smart Measurement with IoT. Then WCIT 2023: 10 Ways IoT Can Drive ESG Compliance.
Some weeks had two or three events. The body was exhausted. But the mind couldn’t stop.
And then there was the keynote I gave with the most heart: ICoICT 2023, August that year. “Humanizing IoT: Placing People at the Centre of Technology.” That wasn’t just a title. That was my philosophy. After years of talking about devices, sensors, and connectivity, I needed to remind the room, and myself, that at the end of every data pipeline there is a human being. A mother who wants to know her child is safe. An elderly man who wants to live with dignity at home. A farmer who needs to know tomorrow’s weather.
The DSA 2024 talk on secured IoT communications marked my entry into the cybersecurity conversation in a more serious way. Smart applications demand secure communications. That is not optional. It is a requirement.
UTAR Talk, November 2024, “The Ultimate Things about IoT.” The audience was energetic students, full of questions. The best one: “Sir, in ten years, will IoT still be relevant?” I smiled. In ten years, IoT will be like electricity. You won’t see it, but you’ll need it everywhere.
And most recently, WCSC 2025. “From Smart to Regenerative: Rethinking Urban Transformation through IoT.” This represents a major shift in my thinking. Smart cities are no longer enough. We need cities that can heal themselves, adapt on their own, regenerate. Not just connected, but alive in a deeper sense.
Through all of it, I saw one common thread: I was never really talking about technology. I was talking about the people who use it, and the people who get left behind when they don’t.
At the National Address Conference, July 2025 at WTCKL, I carried a message about Technology and Data Sovereignty. This wasn’t purely a technical talk. It was about the future of a nation. Whoever holds the data holds the power. Malaysia must understand this.
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.Ralph Waldo Emerson
From 2013 to 2025. Hundreds of times standing on a stage. From UTHM to Algeria. From a small webinar to an international keynote. From speaking in front of 20 students to thousands of delegates.
What do I bring back every single time? Not the applause. Not my name in a programme book. Not a selfie with the organizer.
What I bring back are the questions people ask after the session. Simple questions, but deep ones. Questions that remind me why I started doing all of this in the first place.
This journey isn’t over. The next stage is already waiting. And I still have a great deal left to say.
Because technology keeps moving. And people need to move with it.
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