Oon Yeoh
Oon Yeoh is a Malaysian writer, editor and New Media consultant. He has nearly two decades of experience in the journalism and publishing industry spanning various media such as print, web and mobile.
Though his career has primarily been focused on news media work, from January 2007 through December 2008 he worked as a senior research scientist at Telenor Research & Innovation Centre Asia Pacific, located in Cyberjaya. He headed the "Mobile Media" project focusing on mobile web (WAP 2.0) concepts. He returned to the journalism industry in January 2009, taking up the position of editor for New Media at The Edge. He left The Edge in June 2010.
As a new media consultant his clients included BFM89.9 and Multimedia Development Corporation (the government agency in charge of the MSC Malaysia). He also taught courses in interactive multimedia at UCSI. He is currently a senior consulting editor at MPH Publishing.
Yeoh is widely regarded as the country's first political blogger, having launched his "Transitions" blog on Malaysiakini on 1 January 2003. Jeff Ooi started his blog "Screenshots" one day later on 2 January 2003. Both of them considered each other as sparring partners on the nascent blogging scene, often responding to each other's blog and cross-linking each other's postings.
He later went on to pioneer political podcasting, creating a program called "Realpolitik" with political analyst Ong Kian Ming, which debuted on Malaysiakini on 7 April 2008. Since Ong was at the time based in the US (doing his PhD at Duke University), the duo did their podcast recording via Skype.
Yeoh has authored several books on judo, ICT and politics. His judo books include "Great Judo Championships of the World", "Ashiwaza" (co-authored with American world champion, Michael Swain) and Judo Evolution" (co-authored with British world champion, Neil Adams). Both books were published by Ippon Books of London. His ICT books include "Transition -- Making Sense of the Digital Age" and "Go for Broke -- Tales of Technopreneurship". Both were published by GoodBasic Media, which he co-owns. He edited "Tipping Points -- Viewpoints on the reasons for and impact of the March 8 election earthquake" (published by The Edge) and wrote "No Honeymoon -- Najib's first 100 days" (published by GerakBudaya). He recently edited "Clean Sweep -- The Global Triumph of Bersih 3.0" (published by GerakBudaya).
For the 2006 International Wesak Film Festival in Kuala Lumpur, he made a short film called Chief about the late K. Sri Dhammananda, a prominent Buddhist monk.
Prior to his career as a journalist, Yeoh was active in judo. He represented Malaysia in the -60 kg category in the 1993 World Judo Championships in Hamilton, Canada and the 1995 World Judo Championships in Tokyo. In 1994, he was the Malaysian national judo champion at -60 kg. That year he also won the silver medal at the Malaysian nationals in the open division where he fought competitors from different weight classes.