After being at SGE for about seven months now, I’ve noticed something about Singapore entrepreneurs: We’re pretty adept at taking a business concept from overseas and applying it locally.

Which is fine by the way — as long as it isn’t blind copying.

The latest to follow in this fine tradition is Singapore-based Connoisseur Club, which is essentially an online restaurant reservation site combined with a group buying site. Think Open Table and Groupon‘s love child.

Connoisseur Club was started by Bel Hwang and a partner this year. It is inspired by Savored, a discount dining site for high-end restaurants that is gaining traction in the United States. Savored was on track to generate US$25M in sales last year.

I’m curious to see if Connoisseur Club will take off in Singapore.

An interesting feature of this site is that customers must pay a fully-refundable S$3 to S$5 reservation fee. The fee is supposed to serve as a confirmation of your attendance. If you want to cancel and retrieve the fee, you need to do so before 24 hours from the date of reservation.

I’m not quite buying it. Why bother troubling the consumer with a fee that is refundable, when practically no other restaurant I know of does this?

Savored, on the other hand, has a non-refundable reservation fee, which makes more sense. I certainly won’t mind paying a fee in exchange for curation of the best restaurants in town, especially if the fee is offset by a steep discount from a posh restaurant.

Another intriguing feature of the service is that discounts are charged discreetly to your bill — which I like.

Trust me, I’ve dined at a restaurant after purchasing a deal from a group buying site once, and the process is unpleasant. The waiter looked confused when we showed her the discount coupon on the iPhone.

The manager then swooped in, requesting that my girlfriend and I present a physical copy of the deal receipt.

We ended up using the hotel’s business center to do the printing — how ludicrous is that?

So I like the fact that Connoisseur Club promises to make the whole process seamless and fuss-free.

Discounts for the various restaurants can range from 5 percent off the total bill to as much as 25 percent.

But I wonder though if these steep discounts will subject the restaurants to the same sort of predicament faced by merchants in their involvement with group buying sites?

Namely, will customers who’ve bitten into the deals return? Also, will brand equity erode, especially since customers would start associating these restaurants with a lower price point?

Also, the startup should really do something about the look and feel of the site. It looks dated and drab — something that belonged five years ago and not in this spanking new decade.

A bigger problem with the Connoisseur Club’s user interface though, occurs at the reservation page of a restaurant. For some reason, I can only make a reservation a few days in advance — which is a big letdown. Chope, on the other hand, lets me book a table on Valentine’s Day, right now.

What’s worse is that instead of telling me that the date is not available, the site tells me that the slot is “fully booked”, which is utterly confusing.

These are little kinks the startup needs to iron out.

Nonetheless, I think the Connoisseur Club is a welcome addition as it brings something new to the group buying scene in Singapore. It might actually have a better chance of surviving, since it probably has a better business model — a combination of a transaction fee from the deals, plus either a subscription fee or one-time fee charged to restaurants for using the online table management system.

However, there are already dozens of group buying sites in Singapore and a plethora of online reservation sites that have emerged last year.

This new startup faces some stiff competition.

Chaos Gate will be released in China in April this year.

Developing computer games is risky business. More so, if you’re creating a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game (MMORPG), which requires a massive investment in capital and time.

But that is the risk Singapore-based Time Voyager‘s founder and CEO Chris Loo is willing to take. By developing their first title — Chaos Gate  – for the fast-growing China market, they could potentially reap big rewards. Last year, a report revealed that sales from the China games market reached US$7B last year, a 32.4 percent year-on-year increase.

Time Voyager’s risk-taking spirit is something Canon’s Think Big campaign aims to promote. Think Big encourages entrepreneurs to not just earn a profit, but also to expand their business horizons by doing what was thought to be impossible.

For Chris, this meant venturing beyond local shores to develop a full-fledged MMORPG game from scratch, a category that is dominated by established game developers from the US, Japan, South Korea, and China.

He is certainly no wide-eyed neophyte, and has no illusions about the challenges of the gaming industry. Even big name game studios flounder from time to time.

“The survival rate for MMORPG games under development is very low. According to my opinion of the market, three out of four developments will fail before closed beta, and another 50 percent of the remaining commercialized MMORPGs will have mediocre results. It’s a high-risk endeavor,” he said.

But with the right approach, he believes Chaos Gate, which will be free to play, can do well in the China market when it launches there in April.

Already, it’s off to a promising start. Kingsoft, a top ten games publisher in China, has picked up the title. They will handle the game’s marketing push in the country.

What sets Chaos Gate apart from other MMORPGs is that it caters to casual, intermediate, and hardcore players at the same time by adopting the best features from games that target the various market segments.

Casual games that find it hard to play the game with both the keyboard and the mouse — a standard configuration in 3D games — can navigate around using just the mouse. If they want to complete a quest, they can set their avatar to ‘autorun’ to the quest location.

Hardware requirements are also quite lenient — a gamer doesn’t really need the latest rig or state-of-the-art internet connection to run Chaos Gate smoothly. This is a crucial step to ensure widespread adoption of the game in China, since high-end machines and lightning-fast internet connections are out-of-reach to the average consumer.

Hardcore gamers who like more of a challenge can revert back to the keyboard and mouse combo, complete high-level quests that require teamwork between players, and collect armor that have cool special effects when worn as a set. The armor pieces can also be progressively upgraded.

The game also has social media elements embedded in it. Players can easily share about their achievements and conquests on platforms like Facebook.

What’s important in any RPG title is the story, and Chaos Gate seems to have an interesting premise: In the not-too-distant future, aliens have invaded earth, and the only way to save it is to travel back in time to retrieve special stones that can help save the planet.

These unique features underscore Time Voyager’s desire to set itself apart from the competition. The ability to innovate and redefine an industry is another trait Canon Think Big aims to encourage in Singaporean entrepreneurs.

Chris Loo, founder and CEO of Time Voyager.

With the game on the cusp of commercialization, it’s easy to forget that Time Voyager’s three-year, well, voyage from idea to product was not exactly a walk in the park.

Hiring and keeping top talent in China was a challenge. While the company now has about 40 staff in China which mainly handles art and content creation, the most crucial step was hiring the first guy.

“In China, staff need a strong leader to make decisions and resolve disagreements. Once you hire good top people that are renowned in the industry, the rest will follow,” Chris said.

He added that hiring talent people starts with a long process of courtship and relationship building.
“The work environment is very family-based. Potential employees want to know that you can be trusted.”

Interestingly, Time Voyager’s ability to retain talent was a factor in Kingsoft’s decision to pick up Chaos Gate. In the Chinese gaming industry, company loyalty is hard to come by. A lot of game developers are ambitious and want to be ahead of the pack.

This is even more pronounced if they have peers who are doing exceptionally well in hot-selling game titles.

Therefore, in such a competitive environment, the rate of poaching is very high.

“Kingsoft likes game studios who have the ability to keep people,” he said. “They adopted a wait-and-see attitude at first, visited our studio every month and monitored our progress.”

“But eventually, they were quite happy with what we’re doing.”

There are differences between the Chinese and US gaming markets too.

In China, for example, gamers tend to be a little bit more impatient. They want their characters to be well-dressed at the beginning, otherwise they’ll be turned off. They also want to reap rewards more quickly. US gamers, on the other hand, prefer a more gradual approach, and have a greater need to feel some sense of achievement.

There’s also a difference in the approach towards marketing games. In China, Internet cafes are popular, and many young people flock to these places. As a result, publishers need to incentivize these cafes to install their games, and hope that players are hooked on it.

In more developed countries, however, gamers usually have their own computers at home. The marketing methods needed to reach these gamers changes drastically.

By understanding the market deeply, working hard to retain good staff, and creating a differentiated product, Time Voyager hopes to create the next big thing in the Chinese gaming market.

Time will tell if they can achieve their aims.

But whatever happens, Chris is right up there with the other entrepreneurs promoted by Canon Think Big — flying the Singapore flag abroad and doing the country proud with their vision and boldness.

This article is sponsored by:

Guided by its kyosei philosophy that focuses on “living and working together for the common good”, Canon is dedicated to producing innovative products and technologies to improve efficiency at home and in the office. It is committed to steering its research and manufacturing processes towards sustainability, providing a safe and healthy workplace, and delivering high quality products to its customers. Read more about Canon’s Think Big campaign.

Company & founder: Gina Romero

Biggest mistake made: Failing ask for help from others when confronted with an unexpected big offer

Most memorable setback: Missing out on a potentially big deal – to be the main wireless Internet infrastructure supplier for a housing estate.

Setting up a base in Singapore only last September 2010, Gina is fast becoming a familiar face in Singapore’s startup scene. A mother of three, a manager of a family-run farm, a air-stewardess, and a former director of an IT consulting company, Gina is indeed a lady filled with experience and enthusiasm to make things happen. Today, she is the head of The Athena Network (Singapore, APAC), and founder of a business community, Business Rocks.

Rewind back to 2001. While on a visit to the United States, Gina noted that cafes offering wifi Internet are getting popular. Recognizing the immense impact this would have in the UK, she nudged her tech-savvy partner Bobby to explore this field. Together, they researched and marketed wireless Internet to over 100 housing units in a pilot project for a leading property developer in London.

Opportunities will come when you least expect them

It all started with a house visit to a friend of Gina’s newly bought apartment, which was managed by the property development company. Observing that the apartment was not Internet-enabled, she proposed setting up wifi access for her friend. Her friend was excited by the potential.

Gina then further pushed boundaries and proposed having a “Demo Day” for the entire block of the apartment. Not over-analyzing the situation, she rallied her crew —  family and friends — and started handing out promotional flyers to every other housing unit. On Demo day, the wireless Internet was activated, with the main Internet cable hanging down from the friend’s apartment at level six to the ground lobby floor. However, fellow residents were too in awe of the technology to pick on the unpolished set-up.

Despite such ghetto set-up, a big opportunity came knocking after the demo. The Managing Director of the property developer proposed having Gina to be the main supplier of wireless Internet for his company. This proposition came unexpectedly. But it was only made possible with Gina’s eagerness to market the technology to the UK and to her friend’s apartment.

Seek help, especially when it comes to renegotiating a deal

Yet, Gina shared how one mistake she made led to her missing out on this opportunity.

During the months-long preparation for the boardroom meeting, Gina came up with a business model of charging a monthly fee for each household unit; giving the property development company the full liberty to charge any final service fee they wish to the each household. This allowed Gina to have minimal upfront capital costs.

However, the directors counter-proposed that Gina incur the full installation costs, while giving Gina full ownership to charge a final price to the households directly. Daunted by the high capital costs required, Gina backed out of the deal almost immediately.

It did not cross her mind to seek advice from others on how to re-negotiate the deal. This incident occurred even when she had an advisor who was a veteran in the telecom industry.

“As an entrepreneur you can’t be good at everything — So don’t be afraid to ask for help. Be completely honest with yourself about your strengths and weakness, and build a network of experts across different business areas who you can call on for collaboration and support,” she said.

Photo: Jasmine Vincent

A huge success in the UK since 2005 with over 2600 members, The Athena Network is a networking organisation for professional business women from all industry sectors. Gina is launching The Athena Network (APAC Region) in Singapore on February 24th 2012. Visit the Athena Network Facebook Page for more information.

Many of us would scarcely bother with the worksheets — since filling in the blanks wasn’t exactly our idea of fun.

I can’t imagine how fortunate today’s students are, especially with apps like Trail Shuttle, which allows students to participate in interactive learning trails.

Developed by Singapore-based game product development company Rockmoon, Trail Shuttle consists of three components: A web-based toolkit that allows users to create their own learning trails, a mobile Exploring app that allows students to experience these trails, and a mobile app for teachers to monitor student activity real-time via a map.

The Exploring app has the following features:

• An augmented reality way-finder and scanner to unlock tasks
• Ability to consume images, videos, and audio, as well as upload them
• Learning trails are available through the cloud, which means no need to download new trails.
• Quizzes to test student’s knowledge
• Chat feature
• Ability to check in at hotspots

Through the use of technology, Trail Shuttle has the aim of promoting collaboration between students, developing creativity, as well as promoting self-directed and immersive learning. Students will get a chance to design their own trails and set goals to accomplish. In total, about 16 schools are on board.

The app has been used in institutions like Crescent Girl’s School, which is part of a Singapore’s Ministry of Education called FutureSchools@Singapore. Schools under the program have enhanced diversity of educational offerings and greater integration of infocomm technology in their lessons.

That includes arming each students under the program with an iPad.

While I don’t think technology is a silver bullet that will suddenly make lessons more engaging and productive, such developments do widen the exposure that students have with technology. And that can only be good for the tech industry.

In the restaurant-eat-restaurant world of the F&B industry, few local brands have stood out as clearly as Crystal Jade, one of the market leaders in Singapore. Celebrating its 20th anniversary last year with a refreshing of its identity that involves extensive refurbishments at its restaurants, Crystal Jade enjoyed a turnover of S$240M (US$189M) in 2010.

Over the last three years, it has expanded aggressively, investing S$25M (together with partners) to open 39 new outlets across Asia. This year, the F&B group will sink in a further S$17M to open 17 new outlets across eight cities. These efforts helped it to achieve a targeted 10 percent to 15 percent yearly growth in sales.

Beginning from a single outlet in Cairnhill in 1991 — which was closed and reopened with a Kitchen outlet in Shaw Plaza and a Palace outlet in Ngee Ann City – the group now has more than 100 outlets sprawled across 18 cities in nine countries. Half of these are in Singapore while the other 50 are in China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and more.

To find out more about Crystal Jade’s longevity in the hypercompetitive F&B market, I had the pleasure of speaking to Mr Ip Yiu Tung, its Group Chairman and CEO. Joining the company in 1992, he was responsible for the group’s sterling performance in the last two decades. With a passion for pianos, the former engineer by training is surprisingly soft spoken with a gentle demeanour despite being the chieftain of such a large enterprise.

Three Keys to Success

Keeping things simple and straightforward, Mr Ip’s business philosophy is embodied in three basic principles:

1) Offering great food;

2) Providing attractive service; and

3) Caring about the dining ambiance.

While innovation is part and parcel of Crystal Jade’s strategy, the group has not veered away from its core competence in traditional Chinese and East Asian cuisine. To ensure that every dimension of the business runs like clockwork, Mr Ip travels extensively to his outlets around the region. He also has his pulse on the business, knowing its ins-and-outs down to the nitty gritty details.

Sourcing and Buying Fresh

Sacrificing profitability for customer experience, Crystal Jade spares no expense in sourcing for quality ingredients in its dishes. Mr Ip shared that its restaurants actually imported higher quality soya sauce from Singapore (which costed about 23 RMB per bottle) rather than buy cheaper alternatives costing 4 RMB in China. They also use hazelnut oil sourced from the UK for their Yusheng dishes, giving it greater fragrance compared to its competitors who use cheaper peanut oil.

Known for its roast meats, Crystal Jade also purchases 49 day-old ducks from a farm in Ipoh. Unlike the more conventional 40-day old birds that other restaurants may purchase, a 49 day-old bird is lighter and leaner with more muscle mass and less fat. Pound for pound, Crystal Jade is willing to pay more to ensure that customers enjoy a premium dining experience.

Innovating to Please the Customer

To understand what its increasingly demanding customers desire, the Group conducts regular surveys to gain their inputs. These insights help to spark new menu ideas or service improvements. It also operates a full-time customer care team since 2005 with a hotline and email for customers to contact them during retail hours. A service call bell is also installed at the tables of new restaurants like Scott’s Square.

While the group is focused on traditional Chinese cuisine, it hasn’t stopped inventing new ways of serving its customers. The group was one of the first to offer takeaway Yusheng back in the old days, and has recently pioneered a new dish called the Pagoda of Eight Treasures. Every quarter, its menu would have a new chef’s special, and seasonal promotions help to keep its customers coming back.

Responding to feedback from businessmen and PMET customers, Crystal Jade has recently launched a new Nourishing Treats menu that combines fresh, high quality ingredients with taste, texture and health. I had a chance to sample some of these dishes and thoroughly enjoyed myself without feeling the typical guilt accompanying a trip to a Chinese restaurant.

Recruiting, Retaining and Motivating Staff

People are the most important resource in the manpower-intensive restaurant business. Running the Crystal Group chain of restaurants is an army of more than 4,000 chefs, waiters, operations, and office staff. To keep them happy, Mr Ip adopts a simple management mantra of giving them respect and allowing them the freedom to innovate. Believing in staff empowerment, managers are free to handle their subordinates.

To ensure that it recruits the most talented chefs — considered the lifeblood of the F&B business — Crystal Jade gives aspiring joinees a cooking test. In a manner reminiscent of Iron Chef, candidates must cook in front of a committee and pass the taste and food presentation test. Once they join the group, however, all chefs follow a strict training programme to ensure that they could meet the high quality and standards needed by the Group.

The Road Ahead

For the journey ahead, Crystal Jade is paying particular focus on marketing strategies that help it to draw closer to its customers. Other than refreshing its logo and restaurant designs, the group will continue to engage both traditional and social media channels, working with journalists and bloggers alike to get the word out. Future innovations include the refreshing of its website and the introduction of a customer loyalty programme to allow priority queueing for members.

Photos courtesy of Crystal Jade

About the author:

Walter Lim is a corporate professional with more than 15 years of experience in marketing, public relations, social media, events management, strategic planning and corporate development. This article was republished with permission from his blog: coolinsights.blogspot.com.

Deadline for this year’s applications is 31st March 2012. Prior to the main event, shortlisted candidates, selected by a panel of judges, will be invited to participate in satellite events in Singapore, Jakarta, Manila, and Hong Kong, where they will pitch their products to an audience.

Last year, over 1,000 attendees turned up, and the exhibition saw participation from startups from over nine countries. Some of these companies have gone on to secure funding and strategic partnerships.

Following the satellite events, the top 50 selected startups will be given an exhibition space at the main event on 11th to 12th June 2012, which will cost S$400. The top 10 will be given an opportunity to pitch on stage to the main audience.

The Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace was previously known as the Echelon Launchpad and Startup Exhibition. The platform was revamped following feedback from Echelon alumni, placing more emphasis on startups themselves.

To apply, fill up this form.

With Chinese New Year approaching and families making the rounds visiting relatives, it can be a pickle to decide where to shop and dine, especially with so many options available.

Chalkboard, a Singapore and US-based location-based ad network that has mostly been focused on reaching out to businesses, is now targeting consumers with the recent launch of its new Facebook app that allows people to find out what offers are nearby, all at one glance.

The app (try it out on Facebook) is created by UI designer Serge Baluyot and software engineer Anuj Bheda.

According to Anuj, the app “acts as a one-stop shop for our users to find out what are today’s specials that are around them and what their friends have been viewing.”

He added: “One of the things we have never had at Chalkboard is a consumer-facing dashboard to let users interact and engage with small and medium businesses. We created the Chalkboard Facebook App to act as a one stop shop for our users to find out today’s specials that are around them, what their friends have been viewing, examples being freshly brewed coffee or newly imported beer and accordingly decide where the best place to hang out would be.”

So if I am heading to the Joo Chiat area, I can fire up the Facebook app, indicate the location on the map, and instantly see a list of offers from merchants around the area, and even how far the particular restaurant or shop is away from the selected location.

The app is designed to take advantage of the virality of social networks, which benefits both businesses and consumers on the Chalkboard network. “We hope to increase the sharing and discovery of specials coming from our merchant partners and induce a form of virality that will help them attract more customers,” said Anuj.

If I like a particular cafe, I can “follow” it within the app, which will alert me to any future updates the merchant posts on Chalkboard. And if I have Facebook friends who is also using the app, they will know that I’ve followed that particular cafe. All this is happening within the “Activity” page of the app, which acts as a hub of social activity.

Of course, the app allows me to recommend a merchant to my entire social network on Facebook too.

“Our design philosophy while building the app was to create something that lets users view, share and access content in as few steps as possible,” said Anuj.

The company has been introducing a slew of improvements to its product, but so far they have been business-facing. Late last year, they enhanced their merchant dashboard, allowing it to sync with the merchant’s Facebook Page. Any updates that they make on Chalkboard will now show up on their Facebook Page.

They also introduced a heat map that lets merchants see which areas around them has the most interactions.

From the looks of it, I’ll speculate that Chalkboard is heading towards becoming an end-to-end e-commerce platform that aims to connect businesses seamlessly with consumers. There certainly is room to integrate an e-commerce feature into the Facebook app, allowing consumers to make transactions more directly.

I certainly won’t be surprised if they come up with a standalone offering on the App Store.

This is where you and your friend's activities appear.

Users can see detailed information about their favorite merchants.

Professor Dr. Wong Poh Kam here provides an overview of role of Venture Capital and Angel Investors in teh-startups scene in Singapore. It has been republished here with permission. A more detailed version of this will be published in the Annual SVCA Directory 2011/12

High-technology entrepreneurship has been identified as an important driver of Singapore’s knowledge-based economy, and increased policy attention has been given to encouraging the formation and nurturing of high-tech start-ups, especially those with significant intellectual property (IP). To this end, in 2010 the National Research Foundation (NRF) engaged me, as director of the NUS Entrepreneurship Centre, to conduct a study of high-tech start-ups in Singapore. While the survey covers many aspects of the high tech start-up dynamics, including characteristics of the founders, their sources of technology and funding, growth strategies, performance and challenges, this blog highlights some salient findings on only one aspect of the survey: the performance of start-ups that have received funding from venture capitalists or angel investors versus those that did not.

The survey focused on young ventures that started-up or began operations no earlier than 2004 (i.e. companies that were at most five years old in 2009), and that fall within sectors classified as high-technology using a definition adopted by the United States Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS), which includes all sectors with proportion of employment in R&D exceeding the average for all sectors. Based on this definition, nine manufacturing sectors and three service sectors categorized at the 2-digit Singapore Standard Industry Classification (SSIC) level are included as high-tech sectors in Singapore.

Based on over 300 responding firms covered by the survey, we estimated that less than 10% of high-tech start-ups in Singapore have received investment from VCs or business angel investors (VCA). The majority of high tech start-ups that did not receive VCA funding reported that they faced two hurdles when attempting to raise funding from VCA. Firstly, they reported that VCA investors tend to impose harsh terms or offer valuations that are too low. Secondly, they reported difficulties in attracting the interest of such investors.

While firms receiving VC/Angel (VCA) investment represent only a small share of tech start-ups in Singapore, the survey results show that VCA-funded firms outperform other start-ups on a number of key indicators.

a) High-tech start-ups that have received VCA investment tend to be more innovative and IP-intensive

Start-ups that have received VCA investment are more likely to conduct in-house R&D (83.3% vs 51.7% for other firms). Correspondingly, they have a higher propensity to develop their own core technologies (88.9% vs 70.5%). They are also more likely to have introduced significant product or process innovations over the preceding three years[1] (76.5% vs 62.5%) and have a greater tendency to possess Intellectual Property (IP) assets (52.9% own/have applied for IP assets vs 11.5% for other firms).

b) High-tech start-ups that have received VCA investment have higher employment growth…

Start-ups that have received VCA investment experienced much higher employment growth rates since their first year of founding (329.8% p.a.) as compared to other start-ups (175.0% p.a.).

c) High-tech start-ups that have received VCA investment had greater growth ambitions

High-tech start-ups receiving VCA investment have a higher propensity to expand their operations to overseas locations (52.9% have overseas-based operations, as compared to 27% of other firms). They also have more ambitious growth targets for the future. Almost three-quarters of VCA-funded firms project growth rates in excess of 20% per annum over the next three years (versus 61.3% of other start-ups).

In summary, our survey of young high tech firms in Singapore show that while less than one in ten of them received VCA investment, those that did get funded by VCA showed higher average employment growth, greater growth ambitions, and tend to be more innovative and IP-intensive. This difference is likely to be due to a combination of the selectivity of VCA investors who chose to invest in more scalable ventures, as well as possibly the value add provided by the VCA investors to the start-ups, enabling them to invest more in technological innovation and to accelerate their path to growth.

About the Author
Dr. Wong Poh Kam [LinkedIn] is a professor, angel investor and consultant. He holds positions at the NUS Business School, (by courtesy) at the NUS Engineering School and LKY School of Public Policy. He is also the Director of the NUS Entrepreneurship Centre. As an angel investor, Dr. Wong has invested in many high-tech firms and sits on the boards of many. His portfolio companies include Invantest, iWow and GlobalRoam. He has consulted widely for international agencies such as the World Bank and ADB, various government agencies in Singapore such as EDB, IDA and A*STAR, as well as many high tech firms in Asia.

Dr. Wong Poh Kam blogs at Connect The Dots@Singapore.

Image credit: visualpanic

“HackerSpace requires substantial dedication and effort, and thus can be considered to indicate the existence of a more developed and substantial geek community,” she wrote, adding that Hackerspaces are gaining momentum in Southeast Asia. These spaces are distinct in that they are independent from the government and large corporations.

Within a year, four new establishments arose in Indonesia, and they are located in the cities of Bandung, Surabaya, Yogyakarta, and Medan. Jakarta is on track to have one too.

HackerSpace Bandung was in fact inspired by HackerSpace.SG. A group of Bandung geeks visited Singapore and enjoyed the activities, venue, and vibe in what was nicknamed the “Zouk of Geekdom” (Zouk is a popular nightclub in Singapore). The Bandung establishment in turn inspired similar venues in other parts of Indonesia. Malaysia has two HackerSpaces in Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru. Vietnam and the Philippines too have their own establishments.

Zane also touched on the popularity of BarCamps in Southeast Asia, which in fact sowed the seeds for the genesis of HackerSpaces in the region. The first BarCamp was held in Singapore in 2007, and quickly spread to other parts of Southeast Asia. The initiators behind these meetings are usually geek entrepreneurs who, in exchange for their organizing efforts, receive new contacts, increased visibility and authority.

Malaysian BarCamps are described as “One big tech kenduri“, a Malay term which means celebration, religious ceremony, or feast. In Myanmar, the opening of BarCamp Yangon saw over 4,000 participants, making it the world’s largest event of its kind.

Online platforms have also arisen to serve as information sources for geeks and a first point of contact for someone from Silicon Valley who wants to know the local geek communities. Websites that Zane highlighted include: Dailysocial.net from Indonesia, Entrepreneurs.my from Malaysia, as well as e27.sg and SGE from Singapore.

To conclude, Zane highlighted existing tensions between local geeks and the environment they reside in. She noted that much of geek culture is adopted from the West, resulting in some discontent with local circumstances.

She quoted a Malaysian geek entrepreneur: “I am banana: yellow outside, white inside… I don’t belong here.”

In many cases, geek status is not entirely accepted by parents and not well-loved outside of the geek community. In the cases of Malaysia and Indonesia, infrastructure remains a problem; while in Singapore, its small market of five million and cultural incompatibilities are seen as troublesome.

“Geeks in Singapore often joke that Singapore is too perfect and controlled to actually have ‘space’ for the next big thing:  creative innovation that could shake the technological universe,” wrote Zane.

“Cultural explanations are sought to explain success or the lack of it. An excessive focus on prestige and success, risk aversion and unwillingness to share new ideas and collaborate, is often mentioned as the reason why the Singaporean cultural environment is not well-fitted for entrepreneurship.”

Having only attended the first part of the event, I got to sit in at the sessions where Google showed off these new technologies.

Here are some takeaways.

Google+ isn’t a new product. It’s a feature added on to what you’re already using.

Ever since Google+ was announced, it’s been frequently compared to Facebook. But as I sat down and use Google+, it became clear to me that Google is not trying to build another social network.

They don’t have to. If they wanted, they could map all your social connections by analyzing your email patterns. Here’s what they’re trying to do: They want to add a common social platform across their various products.

Think of it as an upgrade to your existing Google experience. Unlike some new social network that’s going to require you to sign up all over again and manage yet another account, Google+ is all about enhancing the products you probably already use on a daily basis – Chrome, Gmail, Reader, Search, Android.

If they can build it to the point where it meets most of your social needs, then you can literally stay on one platform for work and play.

HTML5 is going to destroy Flash as we know it today.

Eric Bidelman gave a quick demo about the capabilities of HTML5 and it totally blew me away. Take a look at his presentation (preferably using Chrome). His entire presentation was made in HTML5.

While I don’t think it’s the end of Flash, HTML5 is definitely able to replace a whole range of Flash functions when it comes to delivering rich, dynamic media content.

Of course, this is going to be very browser dependent so I’m not sure if it’ll pan out well if other players don’t support it in a uniform fashion.

When Ice Cream Sandwich comes, it’s the real beginning of convergence between our real and digital worlds.

Convergence between the real and digital world has largely happened through overlaying data onto maps or using Augmented Reality to overlay video and pictures. But I think things are about to take a huge leap forward.

A lot of problems have been brought up about the Android ecosystem since Day One with fragmentation being a major complaint. Gingerbread is still phone-optimised, while Honeycomb is more tablet-optimised. But when ICS finally comes, they’re going to start allowing developers to set options to change the look of applications depending on whether it’s a tablet or a phone.

Take that, and their Android@Home project, and I think the possibilities are endless: From your Android device, you’ll be able to do scour the web for information, leverage the cloud for processing, wirelessly interact with stuff around you and eventually even control the appliances at home.

The time to dream and build is now.

I think there is no better time to think about what sort of things you want to do when it comes to digital communications because the Google platform as a collective is almost ready, the developer base is huge and it’s all either free or really affordable and accessible.

About the author

Starting and maintaining Ridz.sg aside, Ridzuan Ashim is the co-founder of Senseless Labs – a software solutions company currently focused on building mobile-based Marketing and CRM solutions. He has been dabbling in both web and mobile development since 2003. His interests include how technology can be used to improve the human condition, poverty alleviation through sustainable development, education and microfinancing.