Here are some thoughts on yesterday's talks : a) General Performance My first rule for free talks is that the Sponsor must succeed commercially for future talks to take place. As this is a talk sponsored by Maybank Kim Eng, what is important to me is that they find sponsoring not just me, but other financial bloggers, worthwhile. As the talk is free, we have a 45% rate of folks showing up based on sign-ups which was about average for the industry but we have a decent number of folks opening accounts on that day so I am very pleased that the sponsor met their objective. This clearly opens the doors to more talk of this nature in the future where BIGScribe fans can attend a finance talk for free. b) Open-mindedness is important to be a good corporate sponsor At this stage, I also liked to thank the sponsor ......