Q&A: Ronald Tse, founder of Ribose, co-host of CalConnect's Hong Kong event, April 18-22

CalConnect XXXVI is just 12 days away. It's a special event -- the first CalConnect event in Asia. Previous events took place in North America and Europe. This month's event is April 18-22 in Hong Kong.

Since I am chair of the CalConnect board, I thought it would be informative to post a brief Q&A with Ronald Tse, founder of Ribose, which is the co-host of the event, along with Hong Kong's Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO). I also encourage you to consider attending if you want to get in on the ground floor of advancing calendaring and scheduling interoperability in Asia as well as the rest of the world. It should be one of CalConnect's most memorable events yet.

With that, here is my Q&A with Ronald Tse.

Calendar Swamp: Please briefly tell me who you are and what Ribose does.

Ronald Tse: I am Ronald Tse, founder and CEO of Ribose, one of the two co-hosts of the 36th CalConnect conference in Hong Kong. My passion and background is in computer science, having received both masters and bachelors degrees from Brown University in this field.

Ribose is a secure cloud collaboration platform used by organizations worldwide in industries that need to share and work with highly confidential and sensitive information, such as in pharmaceuticals, healthcare, and engineering.

Calendar Swamp: What does it mean to Ribose to host the first-ever CalConnect meeting in the Far East?

Ronald Tse: This is the first time CalConnect is being held in Asia, and this event aims to make CalConnect a truly global organization. I still remember the day we first talked and you, as the chairman of CalConnect, discovered our existence and invited us to join as CalConnect's first Asian member. We really appreciated that and can't express enough of our gratitude. Especially since we have now discovered the benefits of working with calendar standards. From the very beginning, our aim is not only to bring the conference to Asia, but to link up Asian tech organizations with CalConnect the organization, to improve calendaring for the Asian population. This is exactly the expectation [CalConnect Executive Director] Dave Thewlis had when we joined. And I'm happy to say that we have fulfilled at least part of the promise 3 years after joining.

Many people know of the CalDAV and iCalendar standards, including ourselves before we joined. However, what people don't realize is how accessible these standards are. If anyone is doing anything about calendaring or scheduling, be it delivery schedules, manufacturing schedules, or travel itineraries, it would be of massive benefit of everyone to implement these according to standards developed through CalConnect. We want to share this experience with other organizations that have not yet had the right exposure and encouragement especially in our part of the world.

CalConnect has a very established following in the U.S. where it originated and where the technology heavyweights are based. CalConnect is now also successful in Europe with an annual event there every year. With Asia's technology industry maturing at full speed, we want to make sure our region understands the benefits of these standards provide, or so to speak, how to stand upon shoulders of giants.

Calendar Swamp: How is use of calendars and schedules different in Asia than it is in the West? And how is it similar?

Ronald Tse: While Asia holds the world's largest population by far, it is also houses the most diverse set of cultures. Chinese and Indian calendar systems date back to ancient times. Similar to the Western world, historically being mainly agrarian societies, the calendar is most useful for farming schedules.

However, the significance of the calendar doesn't stop there: since the calendar touches everybody intimately, in certain cultures there is the concept of the calendar era, with each new ruler naming a new calendar era which the year one starts over again, signifying change. This tradition is still kept in Japan and to some extent in Taiwan today.

Speaking from personal experience, in the Chinese and Korean cultures, people are still ingrained with the traditional lunar calendar for important events and celebrations such as birthdays. Here in Asia, calendars do much more than just keeping time and tracking the movement between the earth and the sun: it is prevalent in East Asia to use the traditional calendar to demarc seasons, direct daily activities, for fortune, luck and taboos. And of course for fortune telling, date choosing, geomancy and so forth. While the Gregorian calendar is close to being the world's common calendar, more so than English being the common language, there are other calendar systems that are still alive and kicking, and rightfully so. And I believe CalConnect is the platform to reflect this fact.

Calendar Swamp: What are some of Ribose's biggest opportunities and challenges?

Ronald Tse: At Ribose we are a user driven organization. Our biggest opportunities (and challenges) are in satisfying our users to collaborate effectively while providing them the security protection needed for their data. Security is often considered to be a roadblock to user experience: our challenge is in how to provide the necessary security measures without overwhelming or hampering the user experience, especially in calendaring.

Calendar Swamp: If you had to summarize what sharing calendars and schedules means to people who do not think about it much, what would you say?

Ronald Tse: Time, being something that cannot be bought, should be important to anyone. If you ever found yourself having missed an important event, maybe it's time to consider using the excellent calendaring and scheduling tools available today!