Goodies for you guys!

Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thedigitalmovement/sets/72157610646953472/

Video/audio links to the event:
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/kevinwalsh1.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/kevinwalsh2.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/session_1.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/session_2.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/session_3.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/session_4.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/session_5.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/session_6.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/session_7.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/session_8.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/session_9.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/session_10.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/session_11.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/session_12.wmv

Chat Rooms:
* Main Discussion Room: http://www.chatzy.com/855575542660
* Room 1 (opens after keynote 1): http://www.chatzy.com/943003929798
* Room 2 (opens after keynote 1): http://www.chatzy.com/502132181517
* Room 3 (opens after keynote 1): http://www.chatzy.com/943297183044
* Room 4 (opens after keynote 2): http://www.chatzy.com/369936322338
* Room 5 (opens after keynote 2): http://www.chatzy.com/665407637852
* Room 6 (opens after keynote 2): http://www.chatzy.com/754735026892

Seesmic video conversations: http://seesmic.com/video/k0m7BmeUoW

Presentation Slides:
* http://www.slideshare.net/plus8star/stories-of-entrepreneurship-from-asia-presentation/
* http://www.thedigitalmovement.org/gew/docs/GEW_Slides.zip

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Dear Friends,

TDM invites all to an exciting speednetworking event where we in Singapore connect with like-minded entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley and Stockholm.

Speednetwork the Globe is the first of the two global signature activities for the Week. It helps turn enterprising ideas into reality by building worthwhile connections between people all over the world. Rather than your typical speednetworking session, this event will be conducted online via chats and video conferencing to connect people in various parts of the world. The excitement will accumulate to the climax on 22nd Nov with keynote discussions covering from Singapore to Silicon Valley to Stockholm and others. Topics discussed are close at heart to entrepreneurs allowing them to exchange views, ideas and information. Supporting the online connections will also include some of the notable technologies from start-ups.

Date: 22 November 2008
Venue: Republic Polytechnic (Block W1, Level 4) | How to get there…
Time: 0900 till 1800 (GMT+8)

Sign up today to confirm your seat.

We have also set up a Seesmic channel where you can start the conversation right away! So if you have any questions or ideas to share, start replying to the video below…

Bring your laptop with you to the event for maximum satisfaction. *Public WIFI available

Sign up today to confirm your seat.
For more information, please visit: http://www.thedigitalmovement.org/gew/

Besides interesting talks happening here, an announcement was made here, this morning by Michael Yap, Executive Director of the IDM Research and Development Programme Office (IDMPO).

The Singapore infocomm Technology Federation (SiTF) is partnering the IDM Research and Development Programme Office (IDMPO) on a mentorship programme to cultivate and develop Interactive Digital Media (IDM) ideas and projects towards commercialisation.

Here’s the press release for it:

…………………………………………………….

Singapore, 31 October 2008 – Singapore’s Interactive Digital Media (IDM) industry receives a boost with the Singapore infocomm Technology Federation (SiTF) – and its vast network of industry members - partnering the multi-agency1 IDM Research and Development Programme Office (IDMPO) hosted by the Media Development Authority on a mentorship programme to cultivate and develop IDM ideas and projects towards commercialisation.

Targeted at individuals and young start-ups, the mentorship programme takes a two-phase approach. Firstly, SiTF members will shortlist and select innovative IDM projects for grants of S$50,000 from IDMPO’s Microfunding scheme. With the grant, individuals and young start-ups will be able to advance their ideas to the ‘proof of concept’ stage, with a clear focus on technical or business merit and feasibility. At the same time, SiTF members will offer mentoring in the form of technological and business expertise.

In the second phase, SiTF will cultivate these ideas further into the project stage with the ultimate goal for commercialisation by establishing funding mechanisms through close collaboration with government bodies and the industry. The selected projects will also have the opportunity to be matched with SiTF’s vast network of members for further investment. Lead SiTF members like MediaCorp Pte Ltd, Microsoft, SingTel and ST Electronics (Training & Simulation Systems) have already expressed their interest in project domains such as interactive media, mobile digital media, broadcast, IPTV and open source development etc. SiTF will continue to market this program to gain greater interest from more corporations who see opportunity to partner with start ups. Through support from the industry, the mentorship programme hopes to make available up to $10m worth of project funding and support over a period of five years.

On the partnership with SiTF, Mr Michael Yap, Executive Director of IDMPO said: “We welcome the joining of SiTF in our effort to fuel innovation in the IDM space. We believe SiTF’s wide network of industry members would add to the vibrancy of our IDM ecosystem.  We are exploring with companies such as MediaCorp Pte Ltd and ST Electronics to conduct joint calls for proposals.”

With SiTF, the IDMPO now has a network of 10 incubators to create support structures for the start-ups, including the platforms for regular pitching sessions and finding industry partners. Collectively, the incubators will nurture some 450 start-ups over the next few years. The existing incubators have facilitated the funding of some 90 projects to date, out of which 15 were completed. Thirty per cent of the completed projects have successfully received private investment.

“These are exciting times for players in the interactive digital media industry. Through the joint mentorship programme, SiTF aims to catalyse growth in the industry by enabling ideas to gain access to the right connections, guidance from industry experts and veterans, and obtain the necessary funding in order to ultimately develop into innovative products and services and bring them to market,” said Mr Ng Chong Khim, Chairman of SiTF’s Digitial Media Chapter.

To find out more about the joint Mentorship Programme, please contact Jacquie Khoo at Jacquie.khoo@sitf.org.sg.

…………………………………………………….

Organized by Global Brand Forum and NUS Enterprise with support of IDA, E27 and The Digital Movement, I have spent an interesting afternoon in Ritz Carlton, Millenia here in Singapore to listen to a talk by Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. Perhaps, the picture on the left speaks a thousand words about how the evening transpired, since the discussion revolves around censorship, creative commons and free software movement. The event began from Jimmy talking about the lessons he learned as a social entrepreneur, the trials and tribulations of Wikipedia, his take about his competitors and also shares what the next steps for the non-profit encyclopedia in the Internet will be making in the coming months.   Here are some interesting lessons which I got from the occasion:

• Taking from a failed model to a successful one: In his talk, he talked about the initial work he did with Larry Sanger about Nupedia and how it did not scale the way which he wanted. In fact, there is a short discussion about when is the time an entrepreneur should give up on pursuing an idea. In fact, the success of the wikipedia stemmed from taking away an initial assumption he had on the free encyclopedia which is to allow everyone to be able to contribute to the free encyclopedia instead of only relying on the experts.
• When management kicks in: I thought the most interesting anecdote in the whole event is about how he transferred the running of Wikipedia to the current CEO. He also made a point on how he has to transition from a founder to an evangelist and the importance of not sidestepping his CEO to ensure that the whole organization runs on its own. In fact, a lot of times, it is difficult for founders to transition to a different role because of the passion and effort they put in an organization.
• Finding the right model for Wikipedia: Clearly, there are challenges to find a model to sustain Wikipedia. In the end, he has to create a company to sell the wiki platform and also not divert Wikipedia’s original mission to provide free access to knowledge for everyone out there.
• Editorial Judgment vs Censorship: Clearly, to Jimmy Wales, there is a clear distinction to these terms. It is the heart of the freedom of speech issue. He made the point that the editors should have the right to make the call to stop spammers or vandals in Wikipedia, and that action should not construed as censorship. To him, corporations and government institutions have greater propensity to censorship, which he defines as blocking users access from information. I was heartened that Wikipedia is currently testing a function that moves towards a liberal and open approach in dealing with differences on a certain subject among contributors.
• On Competitors: I asked him the question on what he thinks about the competition from Citizenium, Knol and other wikipedia clones. His response is that he did not bother about them but rather to think about how to make Wikipedia better. He felt that in every market, there should be competition so to encourage innovation and ideas to make the technology better.

In any case, I thought that it was an event that is well worth my time, and a time to meet and catch up with old friends, given that I have been busy lately.

The Digital Movement (TDM) and The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) invites you to join us for a global technology event at the brand new science and technology hub, Fusionopolis. On the evening of 22 October 2008, TDM & A*STAR will be hosting an exclusive experts forum with the finalists of A*STAR’s global multimedia search technology competition, The Star Challenge 2008, who will be in Singapore to compete in the grand finals.

Hot off the press from A*STAR, the five finalists (in alphabetical order) are teams:

1. LIG from Laboratoire d’Informatique de Grenoble, France
2. LMS CTS from National University of Singapore
3. NII-KAORI from National Institute of Informatics, Japan
4. SHRC from China (includes members from Peking University)
5. UIUC-YX from University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC)
Join us for an exciting evening of discussion and demonstrations with the world’s visionaries in multimedia search. Admission to the event is FREE so bring your friends along for a brilliant time! A networking session with free food and beverage will be made available after the event.

Event Details:
Date: 6:30pm, Wednesday, 22 October 2008
Venue: Level 13, 1 Fusionopolis Way, Singapore 138632

Seats are limited to so sign-up today!

Registration has been closed due to overwhelming response.
For inquiries please contact TDM at audience@thedigitalmovement.org

Our friends at Microsoft is organizing a 24-hour “Mash-It-Up Competition” which promises to be one of the most unique and collaborative competition ever. Utilizing PopFly technology, the team with the most compelling mash-up of their blocks and their competitors’ blocks stands a chance to fly to Microsoft in Redmond, Washington and win a 3-month internship with Microsoft Innovation Center (Singapore).

Here are some details in short:

Date : 20 - 21 September 2008

Venue : Singapore Management University

Time : 10AM - 10AM

For more details and registration, click here

MS Mash It Up Competition

Mr Tan Chade Meng, the jolly good fellow of Google and Singapore’s first googler, shared his personal philosophy, experiences as well as anecdotes on working with the multi-billion dollar company. He began with Google’s history, culture and mission - to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful; before sharing with us what life is like at Google. From food and trips, the 100 feet rule, 70-20-10 rule, 20% time rule to fun stuff, Chade Meng did not fail to inspire and draw laughter from the crowd.

There is certainly much for us to learn from Chade Meng and his aspirations, especially with regards to his positive belief in every individual. One of the key take away messages from the 107th employee of Google for Singaporeans was that anyone can change the world. There are many ways to realise our full potential and it’s important to strive to serve the greater good. In addition, to him, failure is not an end in itself but the key to innovation.

In retrospect, the event was a success with about 200 attendees who turned up at DXO that night,
and were treated to food and free flow of non-alcoholic drinks at the bar. We now look forward to
the next Infocomm Live! Series!

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Live blog:-

Good evening! Thank you for dropping by as we are preparing to meet the jolly good fellow of Google - Chade-Meng, who is also the first Singapore to be employed by Google. This evening’s event is organised by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) and The Digital Movement (TDM). Meng will be sharing his personal philosophy, experiences as well as anecdotes on working with multi-billion dollar company Google.

If you are somewhere in town and you happen to stumble upon this, do join us at DXO, Colours by the Bay, 8 Raffles Avenue, #01-13, Esplanade Mall. I’m sure we would be able to make some space for you.=)

If you are already at DXO, you would be pleased to know that non-alcoholic drinks are on the house today, kindly sponsored by IDA. Nice little glow sticks are also available at the registration counter if you have not gotten yours.

The preparation started really early, and I was welcomed by lots of “mic tests” which thankfully stopped before the first guests came in. You can tell that this is not a particularly “techie” event by looking at the crowd - which comprises of the young, old, serious-looking and those seemingly waiting for the party to start. Yes, a helluva time is what you are going to get today as Meng shares with us his experience at Google; and if you don’t know by now, his official post in Google… is “Jolly Good Fellow”. Cool company, isn’t it?

6:57pm: I managed to find a hidden corner to do this live blogging. It’s probably the only corner where there is a power point for me to plug my laptop in. Well, we certainly don’t want the live blogging to suddenly go… er… dead, do we? =) Today, it’s our honour to have Rear-Admiral (NS) Ronnie Tay, CEO  of IDA to grace the event. This is the first of many Infocomm LIVE! Speaker Series to come and we will have Meng share with us on living and innovating at Google. This event is brought to you by IDA in partnership with The Digital Movement (TDM).

7:05pm: While we are waiting for the event to start, let’s have some small talk on getting into Google. Now, I am definitely no jolly good fellow, but I am lucky enough to know, personally, someone who went through the entire interview and is now a fellow jolly good fellow at Google. He apparently applied for a job and was shortlisted. After some short telephone interview (I can’t remember about this bit), he was flown down to Google HQ where he was almost served like the prince. The food, I heard, is wonderful and tastes authentic. In fact, it was something he really seemed to enjoy. To cut a long story short, he was finally employed by Google and have to move to California (speaking of which, my friend does seem to resemble Meng a little). Apparently, the lifestyle in there is so great, that they can just take time off to get their own stuffs done or to just take the dog out for a walk.

For such flexibility given by Google, it’s little wonder that the employees - or jolly good fellows, would work equally hard for the company. Now, let us all try to think of some companies in Singapore that adopts the same culture… =)

7:35pm: The event has started. The emcee of the evening is Estee Teo who started the event off with cheers from the crowd. Reiterating her, food is served at the back and non-alcoholic drinks are free-flow for the night. Today, we are also going to welcome 2 guests today - Rear Admiral (NS) Ronnie Tay - CEO of IDA, and Mr Chade-Meng, who is the first Singaporean employed by Google.

The crowd is just beginning to warm up as we welcome on stage, Rear Admiral (NS) Ronnie Tay.

7:38pm: RA (NS) Ronnie takes the mic and thinks that he is a little out of place with most of the crowd coming in casual shirts and jeans. Come on, we all know that it’s not true. Unknown to me, there is apparently only enough space for 200 guests to register for this event and according to RA (NS) Ronnie Tay, invitations for this event is sent out in the most usual way - not just via email, but through online portals.

Today, we have Chade-Meng to join us on the 1st of the LIVE! Speaker Series by IDA. He’s the 107th employee, to be exact, of Google. At this moment, he is working on a lecture series - Seach inside yourself, which is just a little of what he is doing. He is here today with his wife and child and it’s definitely our pleasure to have him with us. Agreeing with RA (NS) Ronnie, it’s going to be an interesting night with Chade-Meng as he hands the mic over to him.

7:45pm: Seated on the cushion, Meng introduces himself. He is an early Google employee and is the first Singapore Googler. He is hired as an engineer and now working with Google University. He worked on Mobile search, search quality, chinese search and all. HE developed emotional intelligence training program in Google. He is also the ambassador for Google.org - which is the official philantrophic part of Google. He graduated from NTU and worked in NUS. He considers himself bi-partisan. He also wants to save the world when he grows up. Go ahead - ask him about that and he will give you the entire flow.

He has a photo of Lao Zi on the screen and he thinks Lao Zi is a very rich fellow because people keep saying “Lao Zi You Qian” (^_^)”‘

Meng has a wall of pictures whom he boasts of - that, yes, he builds great walls. He has met many famous people - Colin Powell, Robin Williams, Condoleezza Rice - just to name a few. He’s also met President Nathan, President Mikhail and President Bill Clinton - yes - they decorate his wall!

Meng’s New Job is in Google University’s School of Personal Growth - to bring ou the best in Google and Googlers, which he will talk about later.

Today’s agenda started with Google History and Culture - which is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. This is the mission statement since Day 1 - and it does not mention anything about creating a search engine - which is really huge. However, this is not just a mission statement, but rather, the way they run the business. Google is started by Sergey Brin and Larry Page and the CEO is Eric Schmidt. Google is started in Stanford University in 1995 and started off as a project for backlane analysis. If you look at any web page, it’s easy to tell which pages a page links to but it’s not easy to know which pages link to it. This gave rise to the crawling idea. Like all great companies in the Valley, Google was started from a garage - Google - World Headquarters.

Meng now gives a story of the company. Google is worth 150 billion dollars today while it could be bought for 1 million dollars. The first cheque was actually addressed to Google Inc. - but there was not Google Inc. then, and hence, the company was formed. The front page of Google is the same as when it started, except that the “!” is now missing from the word. Subsequently, they had Google Doodles - where they broke the golden rule of not touching the company logo. Subsequently, they start having April Fool’s joke, where the first joke was on PigeonRank (do a google on this).

So, how is life in Google? Life is fun! They play frosball, hockey, food (see! I told you!) and massage. In Google, meals are served 3 times a day and all are organic. Their beef and tuna are good stuff and the least meal of the day is sushi. (!!!!). There is a 100 feet rule in Google where nobody in Google should be more than 100 feet away from good. However, they didn’t tell you which direction the 100 feet is towards. =P

Dogs are allowed in the office but cats are not (ohhh……) and once a year, the entire company goes for a ski trip, except for 2008 when they went to Disney Land because the number of employees “out numbers” the mountain.

So, how do you create a 150 million dollar company? The first is to know about the 20% time rule - where Google allows Googlers to spent up to 20% of their time to do anything they want. From here, some good products came out of it - one of which is Google News. The others were Google Scholar, orkut and basically much of Google labs. Gmail was also created out of this - product of Paul. The other rule is the 70-20-10 rule, where 70% of the money/time goes to things that are core of Google, 20% goes to anything related, e.g. Blogger, and the 10% goes to anything in the world.

The structure in Google is extremely flat - where it only takes… er… 2 promotions to be the founder. =)

8:16pm: Meng has a burning question - can someone turn up the aircon? Anyway, what is “promoting innovation”? It is pretty much like growing flowers - and while we can’t force flowers to grow, we can create the conditions for the flower to grow. Of course, the next question is on how we actually create the condition? Well, we can create the climate - and Google does that by working on small projects and hire people that are really, really smart. Everyone at Google are able to access information such as the amount Google earns, amongst others, and every Googler believes that they can change the world. They also let engineers find their passion by working on things they want.

In Google, failure is the key to innovation. Soichiro Honda “Success is 99% failure”, and Thomas Watson are just amongst the few who tasted failure. The other key, is to feel stupid. Apparently, you have to be confused, upset and think you are stupid.

8:23pm: Fun stuffs - of course there are fun stuffs. Firstly, Google has one of the best translator and they get to see many funny translations from other online translators. If they analyse search data, they can see interesting patterns - “full moon”, “earthquakes” and they also found out that there are 800 ways to spell “Britney Spears”. Heh. Apparently, there’s also a book flipper machine when they embarked on a project to make every book searchable! Incredible!

Lastly, there’s a quote from Larry Page “The ultimate search engine would… ” (oops! I didn’t catch that). Oh well…

If there is one thing that Meng wants us to bring back today - it’s that anyone can change the world.  There are many ways to realise our full potential and it’s important to strive to serve the greater good. With this, Meng (Chade-Meng Tan, meng@google.com) ends the session and starts the Q&A session.

8:30pm: Q&A session starts. Ground rules for the night is to identify yourself and to stick to learning questions. First question by Ishel, he applied to Google, went through 4 rounds and got rejected… Anyway, he is asking about some power-app that is started by ex-Googlers. To this, Meng thinks that Google concentrates more on the users rather than competitors because this naturally brings in the moola.

The next question comes on the issue of retention - to this, Meng, thinks that the easiest way is actually to make things fun for the employees. Next, Andy from the floor asks about the flat organization and how it is managed. The answer is that Google is “on the brink of chaos” and the people there are very motivated - so things get done anyway even though they are not “managed”.

Next, the moderator asked on how it is decided that a product from the “20%” becomes a product. Ideas become products when it gets the thumbs up from the management and get killed based on statistics on usage. Next up, we have Bernie who asked how culture was built when it was started up. Meng’s observation is that a start-up is built on the vision of the founders; and to nurture by example. So even when an idea may be revenue generating, but if it does not benefit anyone, the product will not get the go-ahead.

Following up, someone asked Meng how he made the switch - to this, Meng said that he wanted to widen his horizon. When he reached the west, he felt that it was “Ru Yu De Shui” - like fish in water, and that he felt that when he was in the West, he thought that he founded a place to grow. Next question from Jeff, he wanted to know what stops Google from turning evil. To this, it started from a list of things that HR noted down which could simply be summed up as “Not be evil” by a fellow Googler. Next, Jeff also wanted to know if we should all be afraid of Google; to this, the answer was an obvious no. Simply because Google will work for the betterment of man else it will be dumped like dirt (of course, that’s in my own words).

So, what are some of the things that someone should do if he or she wants to change the world. To this, Meng thinks that the person should talk a lot about it - preferably to people who will believe in it - and to get the idea to grow with people and to get it to serve the greater good.

Someone next asked what the biggest problem for Google is. The answer? Scale. Google apparently has some problems with scale as they grow and even though they give people the 20% time, it is not known if this works until few years later. John from the audience next asked about the principle of censorship and what Google is doing about China’s policies on censorship. To this, Google will notify the user that some results are being censored while complying with China’s laws.

8:55pm: The next question from the audience is essentially on how they keep their engineers passionate - and the simple answer is to get them to believe that what they do can really change the world. Following up, someone asked about how a flat organization is being managed and not punishing failure. To this, objectives should be set up around methods as opposed to results - so when something is done, that the objective is met.

Next, someone asked how decisions are being made if there are conflicts - to which Meng answers that it’s through consensus.

Following, a lady asked what’s the most significant thing that happened in Google that changed Meng’s perspective. To this, Meng has a story to tell - the story of “Amid”. He decided one day that he wanted the CEO’s office and Eric had a tiny office. To this, Eric offered his office space to Amid as he was being nice. Amid was told to ask Wayne - the VP, to whom Wayne had no issues with it. Of course, Eric was being nice but well, his niceness backfired. Essentially, Eric went out of his office everytime there’s an important phone call. This tells a lot on Google’s culture… and insubordination. Heh.

9:05pm: Marcus from the floor asked about Meng’s vision to change the world. To this, Meng feels that he wants to make mental/emotional training (meditation) a field of science - to make it useful. If this is successful, this essentially brings about World Peace! This is because mental and emotional development brings about happiness, inner peace and compassion. A critical mass of happy, peaceful and compassionate people creates condition for world peace. This is a new approach to world peace - cultivating world peace from inside out, rather than imposing peace from outside in.

Someone then asked how does what Meng does make World Peace. Moment-to-moment, no-judging awareness is the answer, which is about bringing on self-awareness. Basically on emotional intelligence, which is… beyond what this poor live blogger can understand (oops!). However, what’s heart warming is that Meng remains passionate on bringing about World Peace.

9:10pm: Now, we would like to invite RA (NS) Ronnie to present Meng a token of appreciation, as well as Howie from TDM to present him… Ah Meng, as a token of appreciation from TDM. The event is now closed, but do feel free to mingle around. Have a good evening!

What do Gwyneth Paltrow, Bill Clinton, SR Nathan and His Holiness the Dalai Lama have in common? They’re all on Meng’s wall!!

Want to know what it’s like to work and PLAY in Google? Want to find out more about how Google promotes innovation? Come meet Chade-Meng (Meng), Google’s Jolly Good Fellow.

A Little Something about Meng
Meng’s unusual job title started as a joke, but eventually became real. He was one of Google’s earliest engineers, and also the FIRST Singaporean to be hired by Google. Among many other things, he helped build Google’ first mobile search service, and headed the team that evaluated and kept a vigilant eye of Google’s search quality. After a successful eight year stint in Engineering, he now serves with Google University, where he works to promote both Google culture and personal growth. His main project is Search Inside Yourrself - a Mindfulness-based Emotional Intelligence course, which he hopes will eventually contribute to world peace in a meaningful way.

Organised by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) and The Digital Movement (TDM), Meng will share his personal philosophy, experiences as well as anecdotes on working with multi-billion dollar company Google.

Date: 30th July 2008
Time: Registration starts at 6:30 pm
Venue: DXO, Colours by the Bay, 8 Raffles Avenue, #01-13, Esplanade Mall

Join us for an evening with Meng and hear about these and other Google stories from an overseas Singaporean who watched Google grow up first-hand.

As we have limited spaces for this event, please REGISTER EARLY with the form at the end of this post.

Finger food will be provided. You are encouraged to bring a laptop along to join us in the LIVE chat room during the event! For any blog posts and photos uploaded post-event, do add an “InfocommLIVE” tag to it!!

E-flyer: (Click on image to enlarge)

Come meet Google

The Digital Movement, together with Google and IDA, brings to you an exclusive evening with the VP of Engineering and Chief Internet Evangelist of Google, Vinton G. Cerf. Come down on the evening of 23 May 2008 to discover Vint’s perspective of the up and coming trends of the Internet and find out what great stuff he is doing in Google! Vint will be covering on the topic of “Tracking the Internet into the 21st Century” before engaging the audience in any discussion and questions that you might have!

As a “father of the Internet”, Vinton Cerf will share his perspective on the future trends of the Internet in the 21st century. The Internet has been constantly evolving and Web 2.0 has driven enormous changes in recent days. Along with the rapid economic development in Asia, the largest Internet user population is also found in this region. How will the Internet shift in the future, and how will our lifestyles change with the shift? Vint will share what it takes to meet a bright new future of the Internet.

Date: 23rd May 2008 (Friday)
Time: Registration starts at 6.30 pm
Venue: Suntec Convention Centre, Level 3, Room 325

Biodata
Vinton G. Cerf is vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google. He is responsible for identifying new enabling technologies and applications on the Internet and other platforms for the company. More…

Tracking the Internet into the 21st Century with Vint Cerf

PopOut! is an important platform to engage the community, students, entre/technopreneurs, venture capitalist and startups interested in the Web 2.0 services or for the matter of fact any web services & products that is worth taking note of. It is a place where open sharing is encourage and aim to be the most sought after platform by aspiring and existing entre/technoprenuers to showcase their services/products as well as a place for all to learn, share and interact…

PopOut! is the new name for Geekout, an event we put together as a pre-Nexus event early 2007.

Date: 4 October 2007 (Thursday)
Time: 6.45 to 9.30pm
Venue:          Suntec Singapore International Convention & Exhibition Centre, Ballroom 1, Level 2
Number of attendees: More than 180

Program:

6.30pm: Registration

7.00pm: Start of Event

7.10pm: Sharing Session with Ross from Bezurk

7.30pm: Demo by Quaffs and followed by ZopIM

8.00pm: Break

8.10pm: Demo by BookJetty and followed by Recruit.net

8.40pm: Short Speech by Gen Kanai of Mozilla

9.00pm: Chill-Out with the Peeps!

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Live blog:

A warm welcome to everyone who is present, and ahem, absent from Popout’07 - the event of the year to engage the community, students, technopreneur, venture capitalist and startups interested in the web 2.0 services. Today, we will have a sharing session with Ross from Bezurk, as well as demos by Quaffs, ZopIM, BookJetty and Recruit.net. This event is also graced by the presence of Gen Kenai of Mozilla, who just landed in Singapore not too long ago.

And behind me are Huiwen and DK who are happily enjoying their cake behind me. Mmm… the cake tastes nices. Oops!

There is a slight glitch now as Estee’s trying to get the crowd to come together for the start of the event, which is immediately being attended to by the AV team. This event is made possible by IDA, Suntec and Recruit.net. This event is attended by 2 groups of people, according to the now broken microphone - geeks and their guests! Erm…

Anyway, do nudge and say hi to your neighbours if you happen to be here for the event. :)

Bernard Leong from SG Entrepreneurs has also live blogged a portion of the event here. Do check it out.

720pm A little about TDM is that it is a young organization and we are trying to get people who are interested in Web 2.0 to come together. A previous high profile that was known is Nexus and Conference iX. Estee is currently introducing Howie, who is taking care of the Popout event. He is a UI designer in Creative in real life, and takes care of the arrangement of features in the MP3 players that are sold off the shelfs. And for the information by Estee, he’s engaged already…. *ohhhhhh*

Howie’s idea of Popout came because… the idea just “popped out” from his mind. This event is a small step to getting people together and interacting together with their ideas. To Estee, Howie’s just sold his life to TDM. Good for him. :)

For today, there is going to be 5 demos on stage and 4 on the floor; and our special guests for the evening are Gen Kanai from Modzilla Asia, and Shin from Mitsunishi. It’s really great to have their presence here today, and for those who are present, there are some goodies from Gen at the registration counters. There is also going to be a lucky draw at the end of the event. So do stay tuned.

The official opening of Popout is going to commence with party poppers! Pop!!!!!!!!!!! Wow! Everyone is definitely in a party mood today! :)

728pm Now, we are going to have Ross to give us a short intro to Bezurk.com and the things that he knew when he was starting up. The travel vertical demanded a new way to search - taking into account the dynamic variables of travel pricing. Bezurk’s eliminates the time-consuming task of searching individually through multiple websites to find the best deal - which includes going through airline and hotel portals. So what they have done is to do these tasks for the users. The search results are displayed on the fly as information is gathered and sorted from multiple travel partners, and where the pricing is concerned, users are able to convert to whichever currency they like. This is just one of the many functionalities that users are able to make use of.

The revenue model is based through referrals to their travel partners for booking - generally a cost-per-click (CPC) arrangement. Once users have found the best deal that matches, they click onto that and it goes into the system. Bezurk hasalso established partnerships with travel suppliers and online travel portals. They also have distribution partnerships with Yahoo! SEA, News.com.au, Lonely Planet and other major websites across the region.

Bezurk has also bee named one of the World’s Hottest Startups outside the US.

From the technology point of view, they would want to keep it as siple as possible. They started off in Java, particularly in Ruby, which has helped them simplify their codebase a lot. Caching is also important because they integerate many things, external or internal - particularly to prevent bottlenecks. Bezurk is also an expert in integrating external services - you name it, they’ve done it.

Key tech skill sets include rails, ruby, java and JSm which are their core languages. They are possibly the first company in Asia using AJA. They also have a Web Standards Nazi, and behavior driven development keeps them sane while maintaining a growing codebase.  They now have 17 staff: 9 nationalities and 10 languages and there is no IT headcount because they use 3rd party web apps wherever possible! Google apps, basecamp - and they are still hiring!

800pm Next, we have Eric from Quaffs, who is really quite a personality! He started by getting the crowd to put up their right hands…. come on, you too! Put up your right hand and put it on the shoulder of the person on your right and ask him to off his mobile phone! =)

Quaffs.com is a social network that rewards members for building the community and SHOPPING! But, what’s so interesting about Quaffs? It’s OOD - objects of desire - like ipod nanos, jeans, bmw, yatch and all; and Quaff’s mission to realise the vision of fulfilling your OOD. This is through a unique rewards program through the use of Q.Dollars. By getting members into Quaffs, the introducer will gain some Q.Dollars, these Q.Dollars can help the introducers and their members get closer to their OoDs. Till date, there are 13,249 absolutely unique members without the use of advertisements.

Quaffs boasts themselves to be one of the hippest social networking websites around because they embrace black which is basically cool. In the new revamp, there is a brand new engine called wazzup. They do find that there are a lof of blogging engines out there that are not really easy to use - and they want to make it even simpler. So, wazzup enables people to use text, photos and videos easily for their blogs. Even for embed tags that are not really that easy to use, Quaffs make it simple by provide a simple UI for their users to include external media.

Even for this, Quaffs takes simplicity to a higher level! Because not everyone blogs, they introduce wazzup on quaffs. which provides a toolbar on your internet browser for your to just click and capture whatever that is interesting on your browser! Easy as that!

Next is Qool Factor - which is a simple favourite counter that acts like a rating system - this is used as opposed to stars because a lot of people do not know what do stars mean.

Quaffs is currently in beta and will be opening in November, so if you have friends who are in Quaffs, you can get them to get you in quickly for a glance of Quaffs and take a faster step to fulfilling your objects of desires!

Eric is showing a negative demonstration of Quaffs now. His occupation is not being saved online. Perhaps it’s just the Internet connection. ;)

820pm Next up, we have ZopIM - Zopify your website. ZopIM is a 4 person team - Royston, Wenxiang, YB and Julian, who aspires to empower users to have better interactions with their customers by allowing integration of their tool into your websites so that you can chat with web visitors, rank visitors as well as send messages.

Julian is now doing a demonstration on the use of ZopIM - to show how easy it is to integrate their tools into your website. However, due to bad Internet connections, a better, more detailed demonstration is available on the floor later.

Some of the cool stuffs that they are developing includes page persistency, customer profiling, and CRM tools. They are currently in private beta, and they look forward to simplifying tool integrations for users.

835pm Recruit.net, who is also one of the sponsors for today’s event, told us that “job search sucks!”, at least from their first slide of presentation. The motivation behind recruit.net is to gear towards job seekers - and not having them spend a lot of time moving from site to site.

So, where do you search for jobs? Corporate websites? Job search engines? Then perhaps it’s time to relook into how you look for jobs. Asia is still behind teh USA in transitioning from offline to online classifieds - but the gap is closing fast and more are going towards the online trend. So, come recruit.net, which aspires to provide a quick and simple solution to job search. They believe that people just want 1 place where they can quickly and simple search and track all the jobs that match their interests. What Google does for search, recruit.net does for job search. Push button technology is what recruit.net provides for job seekers.

And because recruit.net serves across different continents, they make use of GeoIPs to drop the users to their respective regional websites so that language barrier will not be an issue and users get to interact with a localized experience. There are also many tools that allows, for e.g. users to look at job and skill trends, or to get job suggestions that the users might be interested in based on their requirements. Users are also able to track the job arket via email alerts of RSS feeds. Most importantly, job seekers are able to find out the most current average salary based on their job options. Recruit.net also partners with regional sites such as CNet to provide better channels and avenues of job searches.

So, how do they get their revenue? They use a results-based advertising method, which is more commonly known as a pay-per-click network advertising. This is sutiable for promoting all types of online services, is measurable and is performance based. Advertisers are able to log in to a centralised console to track how their adverts are performing.

All in all, recruit.net is a cool platform for both job seekers as well as people who are interested to advertise with them. Importantly, choose a job you love and you’d never work a day in your life.

855pm BookJetty up next, which is presented by Herryanto Siatono. If you forget anything he said in the next 10 mins, you should just remember that what you will be 5 years from now depends on the people you meet and the books you read. This got Herry to keep track of what he read through a book catalog - in the form of a spreadsheet, which eventually became too troublesome to update.

So where does Herry find good books? He thinks that Amazon is a good place to start searching for them. However, reading can be an expensive hobby and at the end of the year, he feels that “oh shit, he’s spent so much!“, and this started his transition between Amazon.com and Singapore NLB, giving him the idea of bookjetty, which roofs both Amazon and NLB. A quick history of BookJetty show that they have come a long way till the integration with more than 3oo libraries worldwide using web services.

Herry - the one man team behind BookJetty, is currently providing a demo using BookJetty. The Internet connection seems good. =)

915pm We have Gen Kanai up on stage next, who is presenting Mozilla, which originated from Netscape Navigator that gave rise to Phoenix and eventually Firefox in November 2004, which saw 10 million downloads in 30 days! They now have various applications such as Firefox, Thunderbird, Songbird, Tomtom, Joost and Stumble Upon which are based on Mozilla. They now have more than 100+ million users worldwide with more than 2500 community-contributed extensions, in 43 languages and growing and 16% worldwide market share.

For those who are familiar with Firefox knows that there are a lot of customization. In addition, Mozilla responses fast to security risks, hence reducing the amount of risks that users face due to internet or codebase exploitation. 37% of the code contributed to Firefox since November 06 has come from the community, include localization codes. Offline features that are available will include the storage and access of data offline, just to name one. There is also Malware Protection, new features for better identity. And even aliens prefer firefox! (See field picture… erm, somewhere in google).

Gen is doing a demo on Songbird which is interoperable across different vendors, and provides web search facilities. Firefox 3 is also available now, and you may want to consider testing it out, though not using it as your main Internet browser.

Gen feels that the presentation that he enjoyed most came from BookJetty because Herry had an itch that he wanted to scratch and he went ahead to do it. At the same time, Gen also feels that an important issue for online startups is that of privacy - as they are consistently dealing with user data. Hence, all startups should be cautious when dealing with such data.

930pm Estee has opened the session for the audience to mingle with the presenters on the floors, and also for the lucky draw. Go for the bowl!!!

1005pm Prize presentation, starting off with tokens of appreciation to the various presenters, while awaiting for the great lucky draw prize…

1015pm And the winner is….. …. …. still waiting… … … Joseph from NTU!!!! Woot! And a speech from him is ongoing now, that popout is a very interesting event!

And now, we have come to the end of the event, and there’s a chill-out session going on now. So, have fun guys! I hope you have had as much fun as I had blogging and stuck on the table. =P

After a few months of hibernation, planning and team building, we are happy to announce our next project: PopOut: Emerging Web Startups!

For those who still have no idea what PopOut! is all about, let me give you a brief intro. PopOut! is a platform where we aim to showcase the latest emerging 2.0 startups in the local landscape, as well as give a space for constant updates by companies who have exciting projects, and would like to show it to the community. We will showcase on different types of startups for each episode, like web, mobile, etc.

Focusing on Web Startups for this episode, the companies presenting include Bezurk , recently named one of the world’s most exciting startup by Business 2.0, ZopIM, a next generation sales IM platform, and many others.

Yes, although we’re upgrading to Suntec this time, but no worries! We’ll definitely be keeping the informal conversations and fun-filled interactions that mark TDM events.

So come by on the 4th October , where you get to meet, suggest and share ideas and resources to with like minded technopreneurs, investors, and bloggers!

Date: 4 October 2007 (Thursday)
Time: 6.45 to 9.30pm
Venue: Suntec Convention & Exhibition Centre, Ballroom 1, Level 2
Admission: FREE!!!
Attire: Casual!!!
*Only light refreshments will be provided. Please have dinner before coming.

Program at a glance:
6.30pm: Registration
7.00pm: Start of Event
7.10pm: Sharing Session with Ross from Bezurk
7.30pm: Demo by Quaffs and followed by ZopIM
8.00pm: Break
8.10pm: Demo by BookJetty and followed by Recruit.net
8.40pm: Short Speech by Gen Kanai of Mozilla
9.00pm: Chill-Out with the Peeps!

As with Geekout (which was fully registered in 2 days), be sure to register early! For more details, please check out http://popout.thedigitalmovement.org.

Cheers,
Howie C.