My Interview with Software Park Thailand's Director

Say "hello" to Suwipa Wanasathop, Director of Software Park Thailand. I just interviewed her about the Park's history and mission, its prospects, investment in the Thai software industry, a little bit about Cloud Computing, what motivates her, and why investors should be motivated to place a bet on Thailand. The interview ran long, so I broke it up into two parts, which can be found at these two URLS:

http://readnowmag.ulitzer.com/node/1391290

http://readnowmag.ulitzer.com/node/1393452

She was a liberal arts major in her home country, then won a Fulbright Scholarship and earned an MA and an MBA in the US. She's also spent many years in Europe, and led a trade mission to China, before assuming the top spot at the government-funded Software Park a few years ago.

During the interview, she emphasized collaboration--among developers and investors in Thailand, and among nations--and threw in a pitch about Thailand's status as an ASEAN nation.

I'm a big ASEAN fan, as it acts as a regional governmental cooperative that represents almost 600 million people. With the twin elephants China and India in this neighborhood, that fact sometimes gets lost in the discussion.

But Indonesia now has one of the world's top 20 economies, and Thailand has a higher per-capita income than its archipelagoan neighbor. ASEAN is often criticized as a mere "talk shop," and is under fire these days for being soft with the dictators in Burma. To me, talk is not cheap in the world of diplomacy, it is the coin of the realm. Better to be talking than to be shooting.