BarcampSG7 will be happening on this Saturday, September 10. The event is a collaborative effort of Singapore’s technology, startup and education community. There will be presentations, discussion and demos on technology, mobile and social web, design, UX, startups, travel, science and many more.

I set off to Subang Jaya for Barcamp Kuala Lumpur (KL) on Friday morning. I reached a day earlier to meet up with some internet specialists and organizers of Barcamp KL. The last Barcamp KL was held in the KLCC area (where the Petronas Towers are). This event was held over the weekend (4 and 5 April 2009) in Inti College, Subang Jaya. The trip turned out to be a good one because it grew to become Barcamp Southeast Asia, with other organizers from Bangkok, Singapore, Tokyo & Cambodia. This time round, we have wi-fi available, and the other thing I liked about the location is that the Inti College is located besides the Asia Cafe and also a Starbucks Cafe where I can grab a cup of grande vanilla latte.

Like the last barcamp, this is a two days event with different topics from different speakers. There are significant differences about this trip as compared to the last trip. There are seven to eight rooms available for speakers to get into the frame and spread their thoughts and ideas. Other than technology (mainly in the Internet space), we have topics ranging from social & youth entrepreneurship, corporate brands with social media, bloggers, to even salsa dancing. I did one presentation (which I will talk in another post) on Saturday (so that it will be cosy and fun for me on Sunday) and took part in lightning talks this time round with the ever enthusiastic host Fadil to get all of us rolling. Of course, I picked up a couple of interesting thoughts and facts on entrepreneurship which I will not find elsewhere other in the barcamp:

• Entrepreneurship, Wealth and Innovation: Meng Weng, one of the SG angel investors created an interesting about entrepreneurship and wealth with a U-curve, with the x-axis being the wealth an individual have and the y-axis being the necessity of entrepreneurship. In his model, there are basically a couple of conditions which are of interest: if you are poor and hungry i.e. low wealth and high necessity of entrepreneurship, there is a need to be an entrepreneur to keep yourself alive. Hence you end up starting enterprises (from chicken rice stall to basic goods trading). If you are rich and you are an entrepreneur, you will also end up on the other extreme end of the U-curve, and you will focus on setting up enterprises with competitive advantage and innovation. Hence everything in between falls in the dip of the U-curve, which means the middle class. That may be an explanation to why there is a shortage of entrepreneurs in Singapore. Most of the citizens are in the middle class where they earned enough wealth and there is a lack of necessity to start new companies. The inertia is that you will prefer to work for a big company due to parental and peer pressures. People who are into setting up new companies have to deal with different realities that most people do not face. We also have a long discussion about innovation which I think that I will soon write a post about sometime in the future.
• Youth Entrepreneurship: There is the panel entitled “Perils to Youth Entrepreneurship” with my counterpart, Daniel Cerventus (MY Entrepreneurs), Aidan A Chew, Michael Teoh, Jason & Melvin moderated by Hakim Albasrawy. Most of the discussion centered around whether there is a need to spread awareness of entrepreneurship, and dispel the myths of entrepreneurs do not need to stick to a 9 to 5 schedule. However, one interesting issue that popped up during the discussion is that Singapore has the same problem with Malaysia on dealing with the problem of MLM marketers, traders and dodgy Ponzi scheme players running around with the false flag of entrepreneurship. If there is a good take-home lesson, all the panelists with the audience agreed that entrepreneurship is a very difficult endeavour and packed with suffering. While I myself advocate telling the bad parts to scare away young people from it (and let them decide if it is right for them), the panelists prefer an positive approach with some warnings to the young entrepreneur. One other myth that most people dispelled is the issue of education. In fact, even the panelists concede that some of the more successful entrepreneurs in Malaysia have top class education in the UK and US. The norms and the exceptions should be played out properly. In fact, strangely, both Singapore and Malaysia have very similar support structures for entrepreneurship and yet we faced problems that are common to both countries. If there is one take away from this panel, the question for anyone who plan to be an entrepreneur is “What do you want in life and why are you doing this?” If you do have the answer for this, you should reconsider.
• Colin Charles talk on Advertising & PR, Bloggers & Integrity: A talk that grew from a small number to full house was Colin Charles (aka bytebot) about blogger, PR and integrity. In his talk, he discussed the differences between a blogger and journalist, the issues with blogging advertising networks and how media buyers are directly engaging the bloggers without them. He advocated an interesting policy about Google on social media. Apparently, if you do not have public disclosure on writing a review about a product and get paid by the agency to do it, Google can penalize your Google page rank if they found out about it through their automated analytical tools.

Lastly, when I was in barcamp KL, some friends believed our April joke and told us that they thought that SGE and MYE are planning to merge. I just smiled and say, “Why not if the conditions are right?” Indeed it has been a great event and brought together barcamp participants & organizers from Thailand, Cambodia, Japan and Singapore. We should have more and not less barcamps. :)

Photos for the event:

[1] The event stands on Pre-Barcamp Night

If you have any other links pertaining to this event, let us know!

Our friends at Tech65 start their weekly podcast on the following issues that dominated the tech landscape last week: [1] News from MWC: (a) Nokia, (b) Samsung, (c) HTC : Touch Pro2; Touch Diamond; Magic, (d) Windows Mobile 6.5 – And why it can’t make it and (e) Android, [2] Singtel Dream Launched in Singapore – Tech65’s Live Blog, [3]Singapore’s the most Wired nation in the world, [4] Cisco’s Telepresence System – Hisham’s Video of the Demo & BL’s review, [5] Barcamp Singapore 3 and [6] NextBus – Bus Arrival Info in Singapore. Do click and check out their podcast.

Since the last barcamp gathering in Kuala Lumpur, July 2008, both the Singapore and Malaysia teams have decided to bring together people across both causeways together. The result is Barcamp Johor 2008, where it is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees. The event will be held on 6-7 Dec 2008 over a weekend. The event will be held in Menara MSC Cyberport, Level 29, Menara MSC Cyberport, No. 5, Jalan Bukit Meldrum, 80300 Johor Bahr. This is a good time between the developers, investors and entrepreneurs to share their ideas in such challenging times of the financial crisis. For those who are interested to turn up or sign up as a speaker to this event, please register here and also check out the sessions. If you are interested to follow this event, check out their blog and also their twitter feed for the latest news.

Singapore, 22nd May 2008 – After much anticipation, local startup, Widgeous finally launched during yesterday’s Barcamp Singapore unconference session. Widgeous is a web-based startup focusing on creating a universal cross-medium communications platform.

Inspired to solve the problem of having too many communication choices, the locally funded company aims to provide a central Active Programming Interface(API) for application developers to plug into and achieve immediate support for a wide range of communication channels. Applications and senders would then be able to transmit messages to their intended recipients without the hassle of having to decide which communication channel would be best for delivery. Through Widgeous, the message receivers would be able to decide where they would like to receive their messages, based on several criteria.

Widgeous presently support Twitter, MSN, email and an in-house command line interface called the “Widgeous Device”. Widgeous plans to increase support for more channels in the coming weeks and is presently still under closed-beta. Invitations to participate in their beta program will be released on a periodic basis.

Featuring a series of in-house applications yesterday, the team showcased an application, FloatingRoom, which demonstrated their platform’s ability to operate seamlessly across multiple communication channels. Despite struggling to define themselves to the public, the demonstrations provided a clearer picture of what they are able to do.
Founded by 2 young individuals – Ridzuan Ashim and U-Zyn Chua – both are not new in the web scene. Ridzuan , 24, an undergraduate majoring in Computer Engineering(NTU) and has been involved in web development since he was 15. U-Zyn, 25, a local freelance web developer and a graduate from National University of Singapore, is also the founder and sole developer of the renowned local blog community aggregator Ping.sg. Also in the team are local developer Teng Kah Wee and designer Aen Tan.

For more information, please visit:
http://widgeo.us
http://blog.widgeo.us

# # #
For enquiries, contact:
Ridzuan Ashim
Chief Executive Officer
Tel : +65 97968124
Email: ridzuan.ashim(at)widgeo.us

The Maps and Mobile Unconference will be happening on 21 May 2008 in NUS Extension, Park Mall (Opposite Dhoby Ghaut MRT station) from 6.30 to 10 pm. The event is organized by Barcamp, Singapore PHP User Group, Entrepreneur27 (Garag3), and it is the first developer community event sponsored by Google Singapore. In this event, our focus will be on how start-ups and big companies focus on how to create value with the use of Maps API (from Google) and also looking at applications which are delivering interesting mobile services to the customers. If you are interested to turn up, either go to the Barcamp wiki or facebook event to RSVP your name and designation. Here are more details for the event.

• Date/Time: 21 May 2008 (Wednesday), 6.30 pm – Registration starts
• Venue: NUS Extension, Park Mall, Opposite Dhoby Ghaut
• Theme: To bring in professionals and enthusiasts who are working on map applications in the Internet and mobile applications. A time of sharing among local hacker communities, developers, industry players and Google engineers.
• Organizers: Barcamp Singapore, Singapore PHP User Group and Entrepreneur27 (Garag3)

Here is an outline for the program:

• 6.30 – 7.30 pm Registration & Networking
• 7.30 – 8.10 pm Introduction and followed by 2 keynotes
  1. Keynote 1: Overview of Google Maps API – Derek Callow (Head of Marketing) and Andrew McGlinchey (Geo Product Manager for SE Asia) from Google Singapore)
  2. Keynote 2: Secured Mobility – Gerard Lim, Chief Technology Officer, Bak2u
• 8.10 – 10 pm Breakout sessions (Maximum 4 start-ups/projects demo)
  1. Breakout Session 1: Maps – in the main room chaired by Jon Petersen (SinGeo) and we have 10 minutes demos by several companies utilizing Google Maps API – SinGeo, Shoplette, Lilihood and Homespace and finally, Nokia Map APIs by Gary Chan (Business Development Manager, Nokia).
  2. Breakout Session 2: Mobile Applications with 10 minutes demos by several companies in Mobile – Cinepura – iPhone app, TenCube, Widgeous and Mobile Sorcery
• 10 pm – Supper Time!

Registration is closed for demos. But do bring your demo along and talk to the developers around the unconference.

Food and Drinks will be provided. We are planning to cater for 100-120. If there are more people turning up, we will step it up. :)

Sponsor: Google Singapore
 

Organizers:

Supported by:

Related Links:
[1] E27, Barcamp Singapore II: Maps and Mobile!
[2] Barcamp Singapore, Event Wiki