Barcamp Malaysia 2008 – Aftermath and Thoughts about Malaysia Web Tech Scene

After going through the two days in Barcamp Malaysia, I am now back in Singapore. To be honest, the Barcamp Malaysia has been an eye-opener for other fellow Singaporeans and myself who took the trip up to check out the interesting web/tech scene in Malaysia. Developers, entrepreneurs and investors from all walks of life are all gathered in this event, and the best part is that the event still go on with lighting talks (5 minutes given to each presenter and one of the speakers talk about Google Gears) even the official schedule is over.

Even though there is no wi-fi access despite the best efforts by the organizers to procure one, I felt that the event was very successful and exciting. The first thing I liked about the event is the people. The Malaysian web/tech community is made up of many enthusiasts and interesting people from all walks of life. I am heartened by the fact that some of them just come up to me and introduce themselves. Another thing about their community is that they all shared a deep passion in what they are doing, particularly the talk by Ditesh Gathani on the Malaysian Free Software Movement.

For me, it is a very fruitful trip to really get to know a different community who shares similar interests to the groups I have worked with over the past three years here in Singapore. In fact, here are a few lessons which I thought the Singaporean community should also think about.

• Working around the lack of resources: Unlike Singapore, where we have some much wi-fi access and resources from the government, the Malaysians has to work around with the lack of resources. During the 2nd day, there is a session done by a local hacker on “Wireless Hacking” where he was talking about how to seek wi-fi access around the area, and tried to do a local demo. What is more impressive, he demonstrated how to get around the servers in the KLCC area. This would not have happened in Singapore because the hypothetical hacker in Singapore will likely to get in jail for breaking rules. While I am not advocating breaking the law, I can see that a lot of necessity innovation that arises in the Malaysian tech community.
• They have a vibrant technology developer community than us: I was telling Mohan in E27 that their developer community is far more advanced. They dabbled in open source from Drupal to Firefox extensions, and they do a lot of interesting things with these open source software. In this event, the developers provide very deep insight on the coding aspect which I don’t see that much in Singapore, except maybe the Singapore PHP User Group. The other difference is that the Singaporean developers tend to work with APIs from the more established companies: Google, Microsoft and Facebook, since all our events tend towards working with the established corporations. Almost all the technical sessions I attended require some knowledge of the programming language or the platform used, for example, the Drupal sessions done by Ahmad Najib Habeb and Joeri Poesen. It seems that our community in Barcamp Singapore should note some best practices from this event particularly on technology and developer sessions from our Malaysian friends.
• Problems in technology entrepreneurship in Malaysia are pretty similar to those faced in Singapore: While moving around and interacting with different people, I find that the problems of technology entrepreneurship are similar in many respects, except that in Malaysia, you see more entrepreneurship because of necessity. The lack of talent is cited to be one of the major issues. I actually agree with one perspective that if some of the talent can put together something and succeed is better than each one of them venturing out on their own individual project. The emphasis on ideas rather than execution is the other issue that the younger entrepreneurs need to avoid. While I reflect with Mohan and Daniel Cerventus about the state of things in Singapore and Malaysia, there is one thing which the community has not delivered: success stories. It is important at some point that each one of us in the community achieved a degree of amount of success even if we have to venture abroad. I am starting to see that the reason why Singapore and Malaysia will find it difficult to emulate the success of Silicon Valley for very good reasons. While we rejoice the stories of the successes we read from Silicon Valley, we don’t realize the failure rate in that place is far more astronomical than both Singapore and Malaysia add together. The context for fundraising in Singapore and Malaysia is totally different from Silicon Valley, and hence a lot of things don’t really work in our environments. It is up to the ground level to make some adjustments in those issues. The technology entrepreneurs in both countries need to step up and compete at that pace with those in China. I will actually talk about this more in my blog about the session on investing, valuing and funding start-ups in both countries that I facilitated during Barcamp Malaysia with Mr William from Ingenious Capital.

All in all, it has been a great event and I am sure that my fellow Singaporean friends who are there, share the same sentiments, and we look forward to more interaction, collaboration and fun in pursuing our passions in web/tech with our Malaysian friends across the causeway. Of course, this is not the end but just the beginning. So, watch this space.

Related Links:
[1] Barcamp Malaysia blog – Check out the various Malaysian technology bloggers’ entries about the event. Check out Cheryl Goh (winner of the best blog for Barcamp Malaysia), Grey Review, Khai Lee about doing what you love, Perry Loh and many others from the Barcamp Malaysia blog.
[2] My Flickr pictures for the event.
[3] BL, Barcamp Malaysia: IVF Drip III – Comparisons btw Singapore and Malaysia.

Photo 1: The Registration Booth on Barcamp Malaysia Day 2

About The Author

Bernard Leong - Co-Founder

Dr Bernard Leong is the co-founder of Chalkboard where he currently serves as the chief technology officer and is the architect behind the solution to help small and medium enterprises to market promotions. Formerly a partner at Thymos Capital where he does early stage investments, his portfolio and specialization includes online social networks, mobile-web applications and games that leads to iHipo being acquired and also Lunch Actually (Eteract) raising next round of financing. His accolades include the Young Professional of the Year Award for the Singapore Computer Society 2010 and Outstanding Young Alumni for National University of Singapore 2007. His expertise includes technology and social media. Currently, Bernard also serves as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence with INSEAD Business School and also teaches entrepreneurship in NTU.

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