SGEntrepreneurs » Django

APAC PyCon 2010 Singapore

SGEntrepreneurs — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 06:58:42 +0000

PyCon Asia Pacific 2010 represents a conference dedicated to the Python programming language in Asia-Pacific and hosted for the first time in Singapore. The event will be held on 9 to 11 June 2010 at Ngee Ann Kongsi Auditorium, Singapore Management University (SMU), where the first day will be tutorials on python and django moving to next two days of conference. If you are interested to attend this event, you can check out the event here. For registration (if you want to get the early bird discounts), you can check it out here.

6th Python User Group Meeting

SGEntrepreneurs — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 00:30:40 +0000

The Singapore Python Group is organizing the 6th Singapore Python User Group Meeting. The meeting will be held on Thursday, Jan 14, 2010, from 7:30pm – 9:30pm in Room 2.2, SMU, SIS (School of Information Systems). Here are the topics which will be discussed in the coming meeting:

Topic : Web2Py – Python Web Development Framework
Speaker : Anand Vaidya
Synopsis : Web2Py is described as a free and open source full-stack enterprise framework for agile development of fast, secure and portable database-driven web-based applications. Obviously, it is written and programmable in Python and Anand will be taking us on a Web2Py tour. All aboard please!

Topic : Python Scripting on the Android Phone
Speaker : George Loo
Synopsis : The Android Scripting Environment (ASE) brings scripting languages to Android by allowing one to edit and execute scripts and interactive interpreters directly on an Android device. These scripts have access to many of the APIs available to full-fledged Android applications, but with a greatly simplified interfaces. George will be sharing how the ASE Python package helps him write and run scripts directly on his Android phone.

Topic : Google App Engine + Django
Speaker : Calvin Cheng
Synopsis : By now, you should have heard of GAE or the Google App Engine as a platform for developing and hosting web applications in Google-managed data centers. You should also know Django as the high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design. Calvin will bring both of them together as he shares his experiences in running Django on the Google App Engine, having created his personal GAE + Django blog site.

Title : Lightning Talks
Speaker : Open Invitation to All
Synopsis : All (personal) projects that you have done using Python. If you’ve never given a talk before, lightning talks are a good place to start. You don’t need to make slides, but if you do, you only need to make three.

Why we need more GeekCamps in Singapore

Bernard Leong — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:55:07 +0000

Last Saturday on 22 August 2009, GeekCamp finally took place at the Yahoo! Asia office in Suntec City, Singapore. It drew between 80 to 100 people from 9 am to 7pm. It was organized by an enthusiastic community of geeks who develop for the web or engaged in some form of scientific research related to computing. While scrambling across topics on cloud computing, web and mobile development from Ruby, Python-Django, Android and iPhone, it has an almost full fledged view that it’s an event totally designed for technologists. Given that there are many developer communities in Singapore but with very few members (with no critical mass, maybe the PHP User Group or ASP developers), this is a good event to aggregate them together so that we all can share ideas. Here are some reasons why we need more of these GeekCamps in Singapore:

Lack of Amateur-based Technologists to drive incremental or disruptive innovation: Everyone complains about the problem of either finding developers, technologists or even something that sounds vaguely like innovation in Singapore. If there are, they may be “collecting dust” in the universities or government owned research institutions with so much IP restrictions placed on it. Amateur based technologists can be cultivated via the process of GeekCamps with specific themes in mind, be it web development, mobile development or hardware hacking. In fact, we don’t have very good technologists, but a bunch of good IT graduates joining banks after graduation. In fact, most geeks in Singapore are usually people who self-taught themselves from O’Reilly books.
Merging the thinking and implementation process: A lot of people are confused about the thinking and implementation process. The thinker generates the ideas, asks the engineer the feasibility and then works with the developer to implement that feasibility. In Singapore, this whole process of product development is totally missing or perhaps replicated in one way or another. In fact, very few people really played with the APIs or put something quickly up for testing. In fact, one of the talks on how to set up a Django site in 30 minutes by Kenny Shen made the point of teaching people how simple it can be to create your own site. The lighting talks were great fun as well, for example, the talk on Natural Language Processing by Francis Bond, an academic from NTU dazzled the audience with interesting algorithms and ideas.
Think GeekCamp as a hobbyist club rather than a dealflow driver for incubators or venture capital firms: I see it as a hobbyist club rather than finding potential dealflow. During the whole event, I was busy trying to set up and speak to fellow geeks on some code implementation or bugs I encounter with my own private projects. Actually, there is something more to this. Most of the VCs or angel investors are strictly financiers with no training in technology. Perhaps, it is good to get some of them to understand the technology that they are investing.
Why stop at software, bring in the hardware: I will love to see someone cracking the iPhone and show us what is inside, or produce some interesting software-hardware integration for the next GeekCamp. In fact, since there are all geeks in the event, finding access to the Internet ranged from wireless to tethering from iPhones becomes an interesting sight to watch. Even augmented reality might be something for people to explore using the mobile phone as a form of a communication device trigger some functions around his vicinity or someone giving a breakdown how the voice controls or recognition system in the present smart phones work.

So why talk about the need for more geekcamps in Singapore? We need to have more people trained in technology and innovation or enjoy the process of innovating like the people in Homebrew Computer Club before really thinking about commercialization. That’s how entrepreneurship begins.

Check out the twitter feed and feedback for the GeekCamp. I have to say this, “Great job on the #geekcampsg event @jasonong, @patrickhaller, @sausheong, @mhisham and all other volunteers together with speakers and audience who are involved in the event.”

After unConference Singapore 2009

Gwendolyn Regina T — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:24:22 +0000

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:

In the past, it was difficult to start a company unless you were in Silicon Valley. But the world economy has now changed and Southeast Asia has the mass to pull the liquidity and finance all into one place.

There are huge opportunities here but be sure to have a big market. For any market that a company goes into, the average market penetration rate is about 2-5%.

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:

There are no new ideas. Only really good execution.

Kind of business that can make good money are simple ones.

And there are two ways to be simple: late or boring. late and compete on price

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:

E27 Unconference 2009 Rafer

View more presentations from rafer.

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…

One thing about being an entrepreneur is that one has to decide where to focus one’s energy on.

Violating copyright and privacy always work in getting users.

On China…

Only about 3% of copycats in China do well.

The first internet experience for the Chinese is always the instant messenger, QQ.

tencent the company has estimated 600-700m of revenue from virtual items out of its 1billion a year.

Some US companies prefer to go to Japan first rather than China as Japan has paying customers.

On Raising Money…

Some people want to do their company on a shoestring budget, but that wastes time. if take funding, can grow faster.

Now with cloud computing, a company can be successful first then raise money later. This is because they don’t need to spend so much on servers at the beginning as compared to the past where a company will need to pay for and buy enough servers to ensure that their site doesn’t crash.

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:

Going for overseas conferences is important if you want to think about going global. This is where you can showcase your product and get fans internationally.

If you deliver a kickass product, people will be willing to pay for it.

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:

Globalizing Startups – Lessons from Asia

View more presentations from Benjamin Joffe.

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.

Much Ado About Social Networks in Asia

View more presentations from Bernard Leong.

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.

2nd Singapore Python User Group Meeting

SGEntrepreneurs — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:32:30 +0000

The Singapore Python Group is organizing the 2nd Singapore Python User Group Meeting. The event will be held on 8 Jan 2009, Thursday, from 7:00pm – 9:00pm in SMU, SIS (School of Information System) NSR 2.1. In this meeting, there will be a demo of (i) an Ajax Django App with Revision Control Features using Myer’s Algorithm, (ii) Python in a Blender, (iii) PyCon 2010 Update, (iv) Lightning Talks – Open Invitation and (v) networking with snacks and tea. For more details, you can check them out through this Facebook event.