Category: Events

Echelon!

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

I have been so busy I have not had a time to re-cap my experience at Echelon. First off let me say thanks to Mohan and the team at E27 – nice work – awesome event! I wrote up something for the YDN blog and our slides are also there.

By any measurement the event was a smash. Great attendance, almost 700, good vibe, lots of locals, lots of non-locals, some heavy hitters and a sense that the region is happening with Singapore being a big part of it. I personally met so many new people and got to meet in person the people I have chatted with, admired or wished I knew. My personal network got a huge bump at the event.

This week in asia also did another live show which went over real well. That podcast is starting to take off and I am honored to be involved.

The world is slowly waking up to Asia and to Southeast Asia – it will be interesting to see how things go the rest of the year but I suspect more activity and lots of interesting startups.

see u at openWEBasia!

peace…

ps. also wanted to give a shout out to my buddy terence p – u da man:

Insync was one of the participating startups that exhibited at the recent Echelon 2010 web technology event in Singapore. Michael Smith of Yahoo!, better known as Smitty, had introduced him to the e27 folks, the organizers of Echelon 2010, and got him interested in the event. Terence says he met many ’smart and interesting folks’ there, and got plenty of feedback for Insync. Other participating startups had many good things to say about Insync. Serkan Toto of U.S.-based technology blog TechCrunch, who was at Echelon 2010, even called the Philippines-based startup as one of those who stood out from the crowd.

Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Singapore and now Kuala Lumpur

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Been a roving madman lately. Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, back to Singapore and now in KL.

Some events and stuff to be aware of. Today and tomorrow is BarCamp KL – http://barcamp.my/blog/

In Vietnam we were on a MSFT .Net tour showing Yahoo! integration.

See some of that here (Go Jimmi):

http://www.slideshare.net/kembaren/openidoauth-and-yql-with-net

http://yqldemo.codeplex.com/

Next big thing I am working on is Yahoo’s! presence at Echelon – http://echelon2010.com/

Should be an awesome event for the region – I suggest if you are in the area to come.

At BarCamp KL we are also doing TWIA live – should be fun. Stay tuned!

Food for thought: http://gigaom.com/2010/04/23/why-we-need-an-open-like-standard/ – more on that later.

cya

Crazy busy folks!

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Not an excuse but working on one of my biggest events for the year! Indonesia Open Hack Day – Jakarta! Promises to be a record crowd and there is a lot left to do! Somewhat of a return to normality next week as I hit Vietnam and Manila to get things cranked up. Stay tuned for that.

Lots of stuff going on in Singapore this weekend – first off is BarCamp4.

Right after that is the Hackerspace party!

That’s it for now. Maybe I will see you all in Indonesia, Vietnam or the Philippines?

happy hacking!

Mobile Monday Recap

~ michael_msft ~ 2 Comments

mm1Dropped in from the skies, got into my Silver Bird merc and headed through the sick traffic to the Amigos Restaurant at the Bellagio Mall. It was Mobile Monday time!

I have heard about this before but have never attended one in person. Must have been close to 150+ plus in attendance. The format is simple. Sponsors speak, for too long, and then people who have apps to show off get to speak for 5 mins or so. I think they should give everyone 10 and sponsors 5 mins but that is just my opinion.

All in all a great event run by Andy Zain and folks. Nice work.

I was there in my Yahoo capacity but I think there was some interesting startup activity to mention.

The team over at Seatech showed off capripromo:

Caripromo is an information portal for merchant discounts and promotions (refer to promotions).
As a user, not only you can find lots of promotions here, but also you can contribute by sharing (make a review), posting photos, giving your concern, and asking about the merchants experiences you/others had.

Caripromo is an information portal for merchant discounts and promotions (refer to promotions)

As a user, not only you can find lots of promotions here, but also you can contribute by sharing (make a review), posting photos, giving your concern, and asking about the merchants experiences you/others had.

The app is very focused on searching for deals and optimized for mobile interfaces. Pretty clean stuff and seems to have a niche here in Indonesia.

The other app I liked was foyage – nice name too. It is like Yelp but more based on where you are and who is around you. I think they should add some gaming element to it like foursquare to make it sticky. Hope to sync up with them again.

Then there was buzzcity – read the blog for more on them.

Then domikado – interesting stuff. Basically a mobile trading application but they added everything but the kitchen sink so that people could use their trading application for more things than just trading. Not sure if this works outside of Indonesia but apparently the biz model is paying for their growth and content deals seems to encourage more customers to trade. Nice.

That’s it for now.

ps. for those who don’t know – outside of the US and Canada Indonesia is the largest blackberry country. Indonesia was also the biggest consumer of the old Nokia communicator so not sure what that says about the BB. 🙂

One presenter actually presented from their BB – that was a trip.

Looking to hack?

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Yes – this is a Yahoo! sponsored event but in this context I think it matters not. There – you have been disclosed.

In my opinion there are not enough free form technical events for coders and people of the technical bent to get together in order to learn, share and hack. Enter Open Hack Days.

If you live in Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam or the Philippines then check this out:

http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/openhackday09

Register and you might be chosen as the winner from your country to be flown to Jakarta – free.

If you live in Indonesia just sign up for the event directly:

http://icanhaz.com/openhacksea/

If you don’t live in Indonesia but want to pay your own way to get there – sign on up.

happy hacking!