Day 1 at BarcampMalaysia: The sessions
There were just so many concurrent events it was truly impossible to catch all of them but I really enjoyed the sessions at Barcamp Malaysia which I managed to attend.
All the morning sessions started out pretty much on time – with Google Android being understandably the most pack of all the opening sessions - geeks can never get enough of Google.
Gavin Bong spoke to a room packed to the brim – people where everywhere – on the chairs, sitting on the floor, cramped behind the door and guess what? No one complained! It was a great way to start Barcamp.
Campers were also very keen on Widgeous - a platform that allows applications and people to communicate via multiple channels like widgets, SMS and Instant Messaging.
Although Widgeous is currently more of a B2B platform, U-Zyn Chua the co-founder and CTO gave an open call to developers to hack away at their API via their Hackathon contest.
From their website:
Another fully packed session was fellow volunteer – Roni Mustapha’s “Monetizing YouTube and other on-line videos?”
Roni’s startup UREKALABS, also a sponsor for Barcamp Malaysia, demoed a prototype of their platform which dynamically allows images to be overlayed on videos. The goal is so that video publishers can overlay advertisements dynamically based on the demographics of the viewing audience-think of it as contextual advertising for videos. It’s really cool stuff and I wished I took videos instead of photos 
The next session I walked into was the paneled style - Entrepreneurs Going Global which was moderated by Daniel. Panelist included Vishen Lakhiani of Mindvalley, Ganesh Kumar Bangah of MOL.com, Roslan Bakri Zakaria from MDEc and Siva who mentors budding entrepreneurs.
Out of all the sessions this was the one I could relate to the most. Probably because the questions asked by the floor was very relevant to where I am at this point in this. The four of them shared their experiences, and gave the audience some advice on entrepreneurship - I have some of it down on video which I may upload when I get up tomorrow morning, - yes I do want a Nokia that bad…;p ‘
I really liked Vishen’s philosophy which is – “It’s seldom about the idea, it’s about the execution”.
I also liked what Roslan said about commercializing ideas – “Your product does not need to be 100% perfect to be ready for market…Microsoft products never are”
There were a lot of things which Siva said which rang a bell - like how there was no sure fire away to find the right partner and that it was always important to have a mailing list when promoting your product.
Ganesh, who is also my CEO at MOL said a lot of cool stuff like how it was important to keep evolving the company’s business model to survive, sustain and ultimately grow.
Curiosity got the better of me as I joined Khailee, Arzumy and Kris Khaira on their gang bang crusade and enjoyed the passion and energy these guys have and how they wanna make this region the next Hollywood by encouraging the free flow of talent, ideas and money through lighthouse.my and webwatch.com.
Finally I stepped into the Blogging in Malaysia session – there were a couple of pro bloggers in the house like Liew CF and Mr Advertlets himself- Josh Lim. Quality blogging takes a lot of effort and passion and I think that what separates top notch bloggers from people like the inconsistent me.
I had a blast at the sessions today and look forward to tomorrow.
July 27th, 2008 at 8:55 am
[...] Day 1 at BarcampMalaysia: The sessions [...]
July 27th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Loved the GangbanG session..LOL..just hiliarious from time to time e.g. when Arzumy’s turn came to present his piece and i quote him “i thought he’d (khailee) never end or quit talking” coz Khailee was just so fired-up with so much energy bouncing around, yea! that Energizer Bunny, (Khailee)!
July 28th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
[...] idea. Cheryl Goh (lucky her, she won the Nokia Communicator on day 2) wrote a bit about his session here. Right after that I managed to hear the last 10 minutes of Kris Khaira’s ‘Design for [...]