After unConference Singapore 2009
May 20, 2009 by Gwendolyn Regina T
unConference Singapore 2009 saw a turn out of about 400 people, with a 85-15 male-female ratio (what else, did you think it was the other way round? I had actually thought female representation would be slightly smaller). It had certainly grown in size from last year, more than doubling its number of attendees.
With a mean attendee age of 30.7 years and median age of 29 years, unConference 2009 was a pretty young and tech-savvy crowd. The event saw an attendee profile breakdown of 65% startups, 10% corporate, 5% investors, 20% others (govt, media, students).
We also saw some of our Malaysian friends from Malaysia Entrepreneurs, MDeC and MAVCAP drive across the Causeway to attend the event (the latter two are funding sources). Singapore-based startups with Malaysian founders or operations can also see if they are eligible for the funds.
MORNING SESSIONS
The morning session was more of a traditional conference style with everyone huddled together in a big auditorium listening to the speakers on stage. While some may not have wanted this traditional style, others liked its more formal way of starting the day, giving it more structure and a common base that everyone shared.
There were certain failure points throughout the morning, with many complaining about the counter registration, slides not showing and a lack of wifi. Despite that, unConference continued the morning strong, with the speakers making up for the lack in other areas.
Market Size, Not Magic! – Scott Rafer
Scott Rafer of Lookery (sold MyBlogLog to Yahoo!) started the day with a keynote presentation on starting a business, Southeast Asia, market size and types of good businesses.
Some key takeaways:
Scott gave a few examples regarding market size and revenue per user. His previous company, MyBlogLog had 25% market share (of presumably the worldwide blogosphere) but could not make users pay. Whereas for Lookery, his current startup has a much smaller market share (projected in slides as 5%) but if say they charge users $2, this would mean that Lookery has a much bigger turnover than MyBlogLog.
Remember, anything multiplying by zero is zero.
A few other points Scott made:
For an excellent write-up on Scott’s talk, visit Andy.
These were Scott’s slides, though he didn’t get to present them as the technical system failed:
Check out E27′s interview with Scott.
Panel Discussion – Innovation in Asia and Where is it heading?
Moderator for the session was Benjamin Joffe (Plus8Star), with panelists: Dr Gang Lu (OpenWeb Asia), Dr Lai Kok Fung (BuzzCity), Wong Hoong An (HungryGoWhere) and Scott Rafer (Lookery).
Some key takeaways from the panel discussion:
In General…
On China…
tencent the company has estimated 600-700m of revenue from virtual items out of its 1billion a year.
On Raising Money…
The panel discussion veered off-tangent and discussed more about business in general, instead of “Innovation in Asia”. While we had hoped for more concrete points and examples about innovation in Asia, this was only briefly touched upon by the panelists.
Before lunch, MDA also gave a presentation on the Interactive Digital Media programme office.
AFTERNOON SESSIONS
The afternoon part of unConference was more like an ‘unconference’, with breakout rooms and more movement of audience in and out of rooms.
How A Singapore Startup Went Global – R. Chandrasekhar
The CEO of Fusion Garage, the local company who developed the software on CrunchPad, talked about bringing the product global. Though some of key points mentioned were useful, we felt that the session focused too much on a product (CrunchPad) going global, rather than a startup going global.
Key takeaways:
Asian Innovation: Building relevant local companies & having a shot at building a global one! – Benjamin Joffe
Some key takeaways from Benjamin’s session:
Something that doesn’t really work in a market can be a big success in another market. For example, Feiyue shoes (picture above). Made in China, they are considered unfashionable in China and sell for $5. But in France, they are in the ‘in’ thing and are very fashionable. They sell for 50 euros there.
In building a regional or global champion, a (regional or) global idea is needed. It is also important to leverage resources globally. These days, it is almost irrelevant to talk about a company being of a certain ‘citizenship’.
Benjamin Joffe’s slides:
Check out E27′s interview with Benjamin.
Startups Pitching Session
eJamming
eJamming has a patented technology that solves the latency (lag) issue over the internet. Their live demo with a singer here in Singapore and an assortment of drums and guitar over the internet jamming live together was nothing short of amazing.
Of course, it would have been better if we could have watched the ‘band’ play live from their various parts of the world.
eJamming doing a live demo.
Human Network Labs
Watch Yiping present at unConference 2009.
iTwin
If you’re looking for another solution to access your hard drive remotely or simply transfer files between two computers, check out iTwin. It consists of a pair of small USB devices that is plugged into each computer and allows you to access the computer remotely. No software downloaded is needed.
Watch iTwin present at unConference.
So what if you lose one of the devices? You can remotely shut the other down.
iTwin
Genkii
Ken Brandy of Genkii presented Sparkle, the first 3D virtual world on the iPhone/iPod. Watch one of their first products, the Sparkle Instant Messenger here:
Watch Ken Brady present Genkii at unConference and read an interview with him.
Frenzoo
An online 3D avatar-based fashion-oriented community, Frenzoo was founded by an Australian, Simon Newstead, and is now based out of Hong Kong. Simon pitched at unConference.
Frenzoo is targeted at teenage females and so while it didn’t seem to excited the crowd as much, their target audience weren’t sitting in the audience. There were also a few tweets on the ‘avatars looking weird’. But say what you want, all that matters is for Frenzoo’s audience to love their product.
We also interviewed Simon prior to unConference.
Also read our interview with Thorben Linneberg of Orsiso, Jonathan Chua of Klout and Nguyen Tran of mobizCOM.
For a few 30secs elevator pitches of some of the startups who had a booth and/or pitched (iAlif, FolioHouse, Human Network Labs, MOBIZcom, CountSpin and Ffffoundtape), visit SocialPR.
Much Ado About Social Networks – Bernard Leong
Apart from SGEntrepreneurs, Bernard also spends his time at Thymos Capital (where I also am at) and SENATUS, a private professional and social network ‘with offline relevancy’. He is a foremost expert on social networks and gave a talk at unConference on his pet subject.
To watch Bernard in action, check out this video.
Content Management System with Django – Kenny Shen
This was more of an idiot’s starter guide to Plone and Django, alternatives to WordPress and the like if you’re thinking of CMSes. Kenny gave a good presentation outlining various aspects of the systems and compared and contrasted them as well.
He also gave some examples of sites using Plone and Django. This part I found particularly interesting because it shows the end results of what we can do with the respective systems! For example, did you know that CIA, FBI, NASA and Akamai use Plone? And Washington Post and Toronto Life use Django?
End of the Day
Some of us adjourned to Hannibal restaurant at Robertson Quay, only to have our orders messed up (though we had a really long table of people) such that some of us had to break away to another restaurant to eat (we were all starving!).
The conversations continued long after unConference Singapore 2009 ended. A fitting end to a great day! It was a great event which saw many participants from around the region and elsewhere. Kudos to the team at E27!
Additional Links
[1] Photos from SGE
[2] After event reviews from: TechGoondu, Armchair Theorist and Mr Steel.
About The Author
Gwendolyn Regina T - Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief
Apart from SGE, Gwen is also a Partner at Thymos Capital, where she focuses on early stage investments in technology firms. She has had two exits out of her investments via the firm, one of which is iHipo. A frequent judge for business competitions both locally and overseas, she graduated from the National University of Singapore. Gwen also spent some time in Silicon Valley and studied in Stanford University under the NUS Overseas College programme. Gwen is a mentor at Spanish incubator Tetuan Valley, Polish incubator Gamma Rebels, the Singapore Ambassador for the Sandbox network and the Singapore curator for StartupDigest. She enjoys languages, travelling, dance and adventure sports. Gwen can be found on LinkedIn and Twitter.
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