Singapore Entrepreneurs

Kudos to the E27 team, the Unconference Singapore 2008 held in Matrix, Biopolis had been a fantastic and well-organized event. It had an overwhelming turnout, hitting between 200-250 people. From a surprising excellent keynote from Daniel Ingitaraj (Director, Developer & Platform Evangelism, Microsoft) to the enthusiastic pitches from many start-ups in the event, it was a gathering of many enthusiastic minds for a growing and emerging Internet industry.

Of course, the event started with registration till lunch. There was an exhibition area where Microsoft had a booth allowing the audience to try out their latest Xbox craze, Guitar Hero II. Other than that, we have the founders from several start-ups, for example, Homespace, ZopIM, Eteract, Widgeous, Phlook, GoThere, Podfire, Hibernater, Yum.sg, PatSnap and many others featured here. Surely with the good food and drinks, we mingled around the area to watch demos from the entrepreneurs about what they have worked on for the past few months.

Following on, the event started with a keynote by Daniel Ingitaraj, (Director, Developer & Platform Evangelism, Microsoft Singapore) entitled ““Innovation: Persevere or Perish”. In the talk, Daniel went from a slow start in defining two important ideas from Ted Levitt’s “Marketing Myopia” article from Harvard Business Review and Christensen’s “Innovator’s Dilemma” about disruptive technologies and talked about how technology has evolved from the past to present. He went to discuss the three major trends that is to come: (i) user experience, (ii) collaboration and (iii) cloud computing. The talk ended with some interesting demos (likely we will get a video soon). After that, the keynote was followed by the start-ups pitching about their products and demos.

Once that ends, the event is followed by the six major breakout sessions split between 2 hours: (i) Enterprise 2.0, (ii) What’s so difficult about valuing and investing in Internet Companies? (iii) Mobile Platforms, (iv) Social Media in Asia Pacific, (v) Web2.0/Mobile Startups in Eastern Europe/Africa/East Asia, and (vi) Interoperability for Startups.

The event has drawn a lot of people together, bring back old friends and new ones to the grassroots movement. Sometime back, Preetam (a well-known web evangelist in Asia) and BL (our editor in SG Entrepreneurs) have expressed a worry that they have been meeting the same people over different events in Singapore. Since the eBay.dev.shack till this event, we are heartened to realize that we are now meeting new and enthusiastic people from all walks of life who come and share their ideas and thoughts on the industry. Of course, we do have interesting photos to share with you for this event. :)

Related Links

• 1. Mohd Hisham, e27 Unconference LIVE Update using Plurk and e27 Unconference Summary.
• 2. Thinking Nectar, Unconference 2008.
• 3. Thinking Nectar, Unconference 2008 - More Start-Up Pitches.
• 4. Young UpStarts, Singapore Startups at the e27 Unconference Singapore 2008 and Photos from the event as well.
• 5. Claudia, E27 Unconference Singapore.
• 6. The Armchair Theorist, The E27 Unconference was Definitely Unboring.
• 7. BL, The IVF Drip - Realities about Raising Capital for Tech Companies in Singapore on the breakout session he conducted for the Unconference 2008.

Photo 1: Unconference Singapore 2008 Exhibition Area.

Photo 2: Peter Du and Michael Cheng at the Podfire booth.

Photo 3: Ridzuan evangelizing about the Widgeous platform at his booth.

Photo 4: Royston pitching Zopim to interesting enthusiasts.

Photo 5: Talk by Daniel Ingitaraj (Director, Developer & Platform Evangelism, Microsoft).

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