The Singapore PHP User Group will be holding their July 2010 meetup on 14 July in Microsoft Singapore. The topic will be on Bing Maps, PHP & Cloud Computing and Social API with PHP. You can RSVP the event here.

Meetup in July Details:

• Date: Wednesday, July 14, 2010
• Time: 7:30pm – 9:30pm
• Location: Microsoft Singapore
• Street: 21 Floor, NTUC Centre
• City/Town: Singapore, Singapore

Topics:
- Bing Maps with PHP
- PHP & Cloud Computing
- Consuming Social API with PHP

Agenda:
7:30-8pm – Networking & Refreshments
8pm-8:30pm – Bing Maps with PHP
8:30-9pm – PHP & Cloud Computing
9pm – 9:30 – Consuming Social API with PHP

Venue Sponsor: Microsoft Singapore
Refreshment Sponsor: Ranosys Technologies

Date: Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Time: 7:30pm – 9:30pm
Location: Oracle Singapore
Address: 6, Temasek Boulevard, Suntec Tower 4, #18-01
City/Town: Singapore, Singapore

7:30 – 8:00pm – Registration & Networking
8:00 – 8:30pm – Briefing: The Future of MySQL with Oracle
8:30 – 9:00pm – Taking PHP to the Next Level
9:00 – 9:30pm – The Use of PHP, Drupal and other Open-Source Applications in the SME Business Environment

Speakers Line-Up
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1) Briefing: The Future of MySQL with Oracle
Speaker: Mr Blair Layton, Senior Manager – Developer Program, Oracle

2) Taking the next level of PHP
Speaker: Dhenu Wiarsandi, Rynet Singapore Pte Ltd
(Zend Technologies Representative)

At first, your simple PHP apps will run smoothly with your “cowboy code” style coding..But when it gets into a higher lever of PHP productions. Is your team and your PHP application ready enough to face it?

Find out about enhancing the operational maturity of PHP applications.

3) The Use of PHP, Drupal and other Open-Source Applications in the SME Business Environment
Speaker: Yoong Koon Mun, CEO, OrangeJive
Profile of Yoong Koon Mun:
Koon Mun graduated from the National University of Singapore in 1994 with a degree in Business Administration (Finance). Unlike many of his peers who joined the financial sector, he chose to plunge headlong into the IT industry instead.

He went on to invest more than 13 years building up a career in the IT industry, having the opportunity to work in organizations like Singapore Computer Systems & IBM. During his time there, he was involved in the sales management, customer management & project management aspects of multimillion dollar system integration projects.

After more than 13 years in the corporate IT sector, the entrepreneurial bug bit him – coupled with the urge to find new challenges – and he made the “big mistake” of starting-up OrangeJive Pte Ltd in 2008.
With a team of professionals who have experience in a wide range of activities in the IT value chain, including applications development, the managing of complex systems, business process re-engineering and solution sales, OrangeJive Pte Ltd is focused primarily on providing provide cost-effective business solutions for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), especially those in the food & beverage and private education space.

Sponsors (Food & Venue): Oracle Singapore

The Singapore PHP User Group will be holding their April 2010 meetup this 27th April. Topics include the Windows Azure Platform and the Alternative PHP Cache.

1) Building PHP Applications using Windows Azure Platform

Presenter: Jonathan Wong
Technology Evangelist from the Microsoft Innovation Centre in Singapore.

He works with partners, customers and developers to help them innovate and build cool things with Microsoft technologies. Currently, his technology focus is on Windows Azure and the Microsoft Cloud.

The Windows Azure platform has been built from the ground up with interoperability in mind, supporting multiples languages and development tools to build applications which run on Windows Azure and/or integrate with other cloud platforms or on-premises components. Come learn how to run your PHP and MySQL applications on Windows Azure using open source tools & SDKs while taking advantage of new Windows Azure features.

2) Intro to the Alternative PHP Cache (APC)

Presenter: Tang Chin Yong- A web engineer at Alexa 2000 company.

Chin Yong had worked in a startup and managed a local news site previously. While PHP remains his chief tool, he believes in learning about other language and has been dabbling with Python. Catch him on Twitter and over at ThinkingNectar.

The Alternative PHP Cache (APC) is a free and open opcode cache for PHP. Its goal is to provide a free, open, and robust framework for caching and optimizing PHP intermediate code.

Ranosys Technologies Pte Ltd (Refreshment)
Microsoft Singapore (Venue)

Date: Tuesday, 27th April 2010
Time: 7:30pm – 10:30pm
Where: Microsoft Singapore Auditorium, Level 21, One Marina Boulevard, NTUC Centre

RSVP here (Facebook).

The Philosophy in Programming Society (Ph.P Society) presents certification courses and workshops in PHP programming for you to keep yourself up to date.

Programming Foundation Courses and Certification:

• PHP Zend Certification Course
• Introduction to Python and Django
• Introduction to Ruby and Ruby on Rails

Workshops for March 2009:

2-March – Introduction to PHP Content Management System
6-March – PHP Frameworks: A Primer
9-March – Advanced CMS: Drupal Module Development
13-March – Advanced CMS: WordPress Plugins Development
16/17-March – Web 2.0 Mastery: Foundation Course
20-March – How to Start Your Own Blog Shop!
23-March – Building Rich Internet Applications: Javascript Frameworks
27-March – Advanced CMS: Joomla Extension Development

View the March schedule.

Use the coupon code sge1 when you check out to enjoy the following discounts:

1) PHP Certification Course
- $200 off the list price ($1,888 $1,688)
- Sign up for the courses here.

2) Programming Workshops
- $100 off the original list price (SGE readers get the early bird price!)
- Sign up for workshops here.

A few days back, Gwen and Weichang notified me that our blog is finally reaching our third birthday and our official birthday is 18 July (the day which we registered the domain). Hence it is that time of the year to have the third state of our blog. Believe it or not, our blog has already made it to the third year and we are still growing. Instead of really talking about things which we did this year or not, I like to use this third state of the blog to open up how SGE has maintained its position over the years with her partners, and the many more things which we hope to do within the two years or more.

In the last year, SGE has more or less transitioned from a start-up blog to a normal group blog that services the community. We have streamlined our focus towards the technology entrepreneurship and remains committed to market the events organized by different communities, from our partners: E27 (Garag3), The Digital Movement, Singapore PHP User Group (which will transition to an official society soon), and many others that helped to service Singapore like the Start-Up@Singapore competition. With the rising tides of social media, we are beginning to bring Tech65, the Geek Goddess Show and E-Conversations to bring the elements of audio and video which gives a different feel for our audience. Our Facebook group has already surpassed the other groups on user numbers now at 1000+, and we have passed a quarter of a million unique visitors and half a million page views over the course of the year. We do hope that we will hit the tipping point sometime in the future and reach a million unique visitors within the next two years. Yes, we have made an April Fool’s day joke out of TechCrunch and organized an event with one of TechCrunch editors last month too.

Yet, deep in our hearts, we still think that we are far away from where we really want to go. Let me tell you a few things that people have often asked during community meetings. Why do SGE not have their own events? The answer is that most entrepreneurs (including ourselves) have too much things to do, and we thought that it is better that we can help with the content and bring the awareness of events online organized by our partners. After all, if we are not good as practitioners, then what we say on this site would not be so credible. Speaking of which, one of the co-founders Weichang was recently featured in Zaobao for graduating with his honours in physics, overcoming his cancer illness and have started three businesses successfully on his own.

We consolidated our core competency that we are committed to content and not the rest. We have started publishing press releases for innovative tech companies and venture capital because we are filling a gap that traditional media (like Business Times) do not want to go. We are not against simple businesses by removing their comments because they are often spamming the blog with their advertisements. Sincerely, we want this to be a forum to discuss business issues and not an advertising platform. Other than committed to quality of content, we also want to ensure that the quality of comments and the way how the rest of community view the blog: credible and professional. We believe that this strategic focus is right, otherwise, the government bodies (ACE, SPRING) will not have added us to their resources links. That’s what separates us from the “me-too” sites who failed to replicate what we do.

We don’t want to rest on our laurels and continue to believe in a win-win approach. We work with our partners and groups in Singapore, particularly in helping people to be aware of events and bringing together mainly on the entrepreneurship in the tech sector and service those who happens to be in the niche business of entrepreneurship.

When we first started, no one believed that a business blog like this can create impact and value for the community. In fact, I was ridiculed by some in NUS and government officials that starting a blog like this is the dumbest idea possible. Today, we see people like Prof Wong Poh Kam, director of NUS Entrepreneurship Centre, have followed our lead to start blogging about issues in entrepreneurship and the government websites have acknowledged our presence here.

That is what entrepreneurship is all about: the determination and passion to start something against what others think and in the process convince the detractors that your ideas are correct. So, we have succeeded in a way as a small enterprise (thankfully to a group of contributors and partners who some of them have made it on their own as entrepreneurs) and remained the pioneers of the journey even if the rest who followed after do not acknowledge what we have done.

So what will we like to see in the next two years? In fact, we do have some thoughts and ideas about how we should move forward.

• - A new theme design for the site: Yes, we know that our present theme has been stuck here for almost one year two months. We like to have more features for the site to allow more interaction among readers.
• - Working with groups beyond the shores of Singapore: In fact, we are slowly reaching out to the other Asian countries around us, particularly our neighbour across the causeway. So, watch this space.
• - More content on how to start a business: We really hope to have professionals and practitioners writing for us and see the need to help young entrepreneurs to grow. We have seen all the nominees for Asian young entrepreneurs in Business Week all have done their interviews in SGE, and we hope to see more out there.
• - A possible gathering?: Actually, the founders (Gwen, Weichang and I) hope that we can amass the resources someday to hire an event management group to do an event someday. We thought about it but we usually end up not moving forward because maintenance work for the site is too much to do. In case you do not know, Weichang has spent time to do the backend maintenance like upgrading the site and ensure that our bills to the hosting server are paid while Gwen is busy with her editorial work behind the scenes.

Personally for me, I hope to pass to on the baton of my current role within the next two years and be a chief evangelist for the site, where new people can come and move this blog or site to the next frontier.

We thank all our friends and partners, and many out there for their growing support to our site, and we wish everyone well. As entrepreneurs, we want to remain optimistic and hope that something will grow in the future here in this little red dot.

Yours sincerely,
BL
on behalf of the founders of SG Entrepreneurs

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