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unConference 2009: 29 Startups, 10 Countries, 1 Event! May 16th 2009
posted by bjornlee on Wednesday, April 29, 2009 at 12:19pm Categories: BlogApr29
The 6th in the series, unConference 2009 is back with a vengeance on May 16th in Singapore! For the uninitiated, unConference is a one-day event for showcasing and discovering innovative web startups and technologies of Asia. For a full day, Asian startups unite to show and tell, perhaps more.. Entrepreneurs, developers and professionals of all ilks are welcome.|
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Attend the only Techcrunch50-style event this part of the world: We will be bold here and stake a claim that unConference 2009 is the MOST pan-Asian event for web startups in this part of the world. There, we said it! :D
Click here for event website or simply buy your ticket now!
For those of you who were with us in 2008, 2009’s unConference will be like a fresh breath of morning air, literally! Not only are we starting at the early hour of 9am instead of 11am, we are “importing” our startup brethren from almost every corner of Asia. Startups from the various countries will be represented:
Southeast Asia (SEA):
Rest of the World:
What’s in it for you?
Startup Founders:Unlike Silicon Valley, Asia-based entrepreneurs do not have a vibrant support ecosystem concentrated within a clustered region like the San Francisco Bay Area. Add cultural, linguistic and geographic barriers and its no wonder why Asia’s startups suffer from scaling problems and cross-market learning. This unConference, startup founders can:
- Network & Socialize, SERIOUSLY – with fellow startup founders who wondered if there were equally passionate folks like them in Asia who are just a Skype call away during an urgent need for help
- Innovate through “vuja de” – Tom Kelley of innovation hothouse IDEO has a nice twist on deja vu — “vuja de”, which is a familiar experience but one you’re looking at it in a fresh way. Similarly, Asian entrepreneurs can benefit from an “extrospective” compare-and-contrast exercise with startups based in other countries that had evolved different development models. Lets not make the “Asian market fragmentation” a weakness but a strength on which to build innovation upon. Creative dissonance, baby!
- Find investors, Duh. The good news first: there are at least 10 attendees, from companies like Google, Yahoo and assorted VC firms, at this point of sales who have indicated that they belong to M&A departments. Moving on, the problem with the Asian startup scene is never the lack of money, but the lack of good ideas and teams. Conversely, founders have complained that good and web-market-savvy investors are few in Asia. Well, to each his own, all we can tell you is that quite a number of investors with proven track record have signed up for the event. Keep your eyes peeled..
- Get Publicity — Do you know that we have hired a PR agency for this event? Or that past startups who have demo-ed at our event have gone on to nominations by BusinessWeek for Asia’s Top 25 Young Entrepreneurs for past 2 years running (2007, 2008)? How about learning from startups like Genkii (of Japan) who have effortlessly gotten onto Techcrunch for their iphone virtual world app? Yup, we have succumbed to common sense (in Asia) to blend in mainstream media with our online efforts to drum up greater publicity not just for our event, but you startup folks too! Comment here or drop us a private message if you wish to know more about press opportunities.
Developers
The real hands that built the web. The Babel stones of the digital age. Where would we be if these fine translators of machine-based code did not exist to bring us wonderful products like Skype, Google, Digg, Wordpress, Facebook and more? Who else could make terms like “hacking” and “geek” this cool?
- Benchmark yourselves — The unConference has assembled a bunch of the most promising startups around Asia. Find out what the region has to offer and if you think u can do a better job, you know what to do.. ;)
- Build REAL products, stop serving — Way too many development talent in Asia disappear inside the big corporates as salarymen or as freelancers providing development services for clueless business people. Developers deserve better – Kevin Rose, Matt Mullenweg, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates are not merely idols out of reach, but icons to inspire you.
- Find your “fans”. Or: find people who truly appreciate your development talents. In Asia, developers are like diamonds, few, hard to find and highly prized. The social web boom is truly upon us and with it a thousand ideas by all the business types. You have the final say on which horse to bet your talents on.
- Do you know? Just some quick trivia to share, we are witnessing some surprising good takeup rates among developers working in corporate companies, like Aussino (bedding retailer) and financial firms like Great Eastern Life (insurance) among others.. interesting..
Startup RockstarsThe juice within the fruit. You are the engine that keeps great startups running. This is for all faithful lieutenants at startups who believe in the dreams of their founders. Whether you are an aspiring entrepreneur or simply a startup professional, you cannot miss the chance to:
- Share your knowledge — startup employees, compared to founders and professionals, have the unique position of relative job security and unbridled job satisfaction. You have the objective bird’s eye view of a startup’s development model and path and being in an operational role, how you actually manipulate meagre resources to achieve maximum results. We expect you to tell us more about user metrics, performance analytics, technical hacks, server outages, cost overruns or simply how-not-to-panic-when-u-have-no-cash..
ProfessionalsWelcome to our side of the world. Times are bad and we have to be creative and resourceful, where else do you find the most creative forces in the economy but in the new struggling businesses trying to survive on low cash, low resources and only oodles of passion? At unConference, here’s what you can do:
- Orientate yourselves — our event is not a formal business-tie-suit event. An unconference is often described as messy and unstructured. You might be glad to know our event is structured in the 1st half to minimize culture shock for first-time attendees in Asia but you should find the 2nd half of the day very spontaneous, authentic and hopefully enriching for you. More on unconferences here.
- Find a new job — Okay, just kidding.. ;)
- Startup finally — The time is right, running a web business today is incredibly cheap. Moreover, opportunity cost is low if your company is laying off folks anyway. Just do it if you are single and have no crushing debts. You will have way more job satisfaction doing what you love rather than what your bosses love to see you doing now.
We will be posting interviews with speakers and founders of the startups selected for the exhibition soon here. Subscribe to our RSS feed and if you have not bought your ticket, grab it before advanced sales end! Click on the shiny orange button to go to ticketing site.
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18 Responses to “unConference 2009: 29 Startups, 10 Countries, 1 Event! May 16th 2009”
e27 unConference 2009: Discounts with linuxNUS | linuxNUS said :
[...] Why should you go for it ? By attending the unConference, you’ll get a chance to rub shoulders with many a startup founder, many an entrepreneur, and probably even possible future collaborators for your own startup. Remember, networking (not the RJ45 kind) may very well open doors for you in the future! Get inspired by Scott Rafer , CEO of MyBlogLog (now part of Yahoo! ), who will be a keynote speaker at the unConference. Learn from the community by taking part in the breakou t sessions , courtesy of the generous people willing to share their knowledge (as it stands, breakout topics include: Django , Adobe Flex , Online Social Networks, Robotics, and developer performance tips). Discover what the hottest startups in Singapore and the region are working on, with the startup pitching session, where they’ll showcase their products. [...]
Cedric Chee said :
The must not miss event for entrepreneurs, developers and professionals of the year. I am looking forward to attend this event. Anyone wants to join me? Direct Message to my twitter @cedric_chee with the message "unconf09". Cheers!
This comment was originally posted on FriendFeed
Qing Ru said :
Very well said!
Arul Prasad said :
Nice chat, that one.
Btw – “fusion Garage is a true example, but they had their roots way back in 2002. ”
I beg to disagree. Fusiongarage was born in Feb 2008 – After about a month or so of discussions at McDonalds and BurgerKings. The founder might have worked on another startup back in 2002, but we also had an architect, who had been in the industry for 25 or so years. Does that mean we had our roots in the 80’s ?
Most probably am gonna be there as well. Will c ya there!
This comment was originally posted on Armchair Theorist
Neng Giin said :
One-up for the Team!
This comment was originally posted on Armchair Theorist
Jon said :
Thanks for dropping by, Arul! It’s been a while since RIAction.
See you at unConference!
This comment was originally posted on Armchair Theorist
Mohan said :
Nice one there!
@Arul: I had a nice chat with Chandra some time back on Fusion Garage etc. When I said “they had their roots way back in 2002″, I was referring to Chandra’s passion in OS and mobile. He had been tinkering with the idea of a “browser without an OS” way before Fusion Garage, in the early days of Radixs. It’s through iterations of ideas, testing and failing etc. that finally brought him to Fusion Garage (which kinda happened by accident too.. hehe) and how all this started way back in the Radixs days..
This comment was originally posted on Armchair Theorist
Abi said :
Nice interview.
Honestly, why does it matter if gothere.sg (which is definitely the best startup in Singapore, IMO, for many different definitions of best) cannot scale to other countries? It doesn’t matter. As DHH from 37 Signals points out in this wonderful talk[1], you don’t have to sell for a billion dollars to be successful or more importantly, happy. You can be just as happy with a million dollars a year and no VCs forcing you to have an exit strategy. Singapore alone is big enough to sustain one really good player in the “mapping market”. And I think gothere.sg can definitely scale to other countries (albeit with a lot of data collection and other work) but obviously, they don’t see the need to yet. Mapping is an exciting field and even big companies like Google or Microsoft haven’t figured out a half-decent interface yet.
[1] http://www.omnisio.com/startupschool08/david-heinemeier-hansson-at-startup-school-08
This comment was originally posted on Armchair Theorist
Jon said :
@Abi, I think then the central question really is, “Can Singapore alone really be big enough to sustain one really good player in the mapping/online directory market?”
While you may think so, I think many like myself and Mohan will feel otherwise. (Of course, none of us are actually in the mapping industry, so we are all talking out of our ass )
But seriously, remember the days before gothere.sg ? Streetdirectory.com was the de facto online directory for Singapore with practically zero competion. And while their product may not be as elegant as what we see gothere.sg is today, it was pretty decent and very usable.
Even then, they saw an immediate need to diversify into a bunch of other stuff like real estate listings, classified listings, and expanded overseas into Malaysia and Indonesia.
The point is, we may be overestimating how much money is there to be made in online mapping – I mean, this is an area where not even Google nor Microsoft is able to fully monetize yet. And these are international players with a presence in every country.
Much less if you restrict yourself to a market of 4.6 million people covering only a land area of 700 square kilometers.
This comment was originally posted on Armchair Theorist
eJAMMING AUDiiO - Collaborative Network For Musicians : Singapore Entrepreneurs said :
[...] is made from paid subscriptions for usage of the platform. Benjamin Scherrey shared at the recent unConference Singapore 2009 that the company was having a healthy subscription rate against free trial [...]
Marshall said :
Sounds really cool, would love to hear more about how they get around latency. I would think if both parties experience latency then you would try and drop back to match the rhythm and so would the other party so you keep slowing down.
Would you have to get used to playing out of sync if you are on the other side of the world?
This comment was originally posted on Singapore Entrepreneurs
iantimothy said :
Hello Marshall, from what I gather, they time-stamp each packet of information leaving their desktop application and have found a way to join these packets of information quite neatly to provide the seamless experience. I think what the musician needs to get used to is the lag between, for example, him strumming the guitar and him hearing it on his headphones. From what I understand, the team behind eJAMMING has also managed to reduce this lag time.
This comment was originally posted on Singapore Entrepreneurs
Ben Scherrey said :
Thanx for the writeup! :-)
While maybe driving around Singapore with equipment might not be too bad (I’m glad I’m not a drummer), what if the cat you wanna jam with is in California (as we demo’d at unConference 2009). That commute gets a little expensive.
It is eJamming’s plan to provide *everything* that the practicing musician needs to jam with friends – including the fans & ways to make money doing it! That said, we are a collaborative network and will be working with other services to help make this effort as seamless as possible while dramatically increasing the options available to both musicians and fans.
Marshall, indeed our protocol time syncs packets on each peer so everyone hears what is played as if they were in the same room. Understand that a large stage is going to have 20ms latency right there which is why orchestras have conductors. We’re typically seeing 10ms to 60ms mostly hanging around the 15-25ms mark so it’s pretty easy to adjust to right away. We also have a VRS (virtual recording studio) mode for those with ping latencies too high for real-time jamming so you can literally collaborate with musicians in the most remote places. That said, I’ve witnessed jam sessions with live players from Japan, Brazil, and UK all at the same time. It’s a wild scene.
This comment was originally posted on Singapore Entrepreneurs
Weiliang said :
Hmm but how does it help musicians monetize their recordings or make it easier to share with their fans? I suppose most musician that would use this service would be independent artist or amateurs. Great idea thou!
This comment was originally posted on Singapore Entrepreneurs
Sean Seah said :
they can sell at kompoz or minimumnoise.
this reminds me of using voip during the early days. As its cheap, i bought the calling card and find the latency is too much stop using.
now, i am using skype everyday. bandwidth has improved. So I do not see an issue with such services in the long run.
Actually, just add a plugin into skype and this service will be available right?
This comment was originally posted on Singapore Entrepreneurs
Gibson Tang said :
When I used to book a studio to jam with my band. 1 problem that I had was finding the right musicians to jam the type of songs and genre that I wanted. I have not seen eJamming in action yet, but does it have a lobby system or a pre-jamming system where I can look up the musicians I want to jam with and schedule a time for that?
This comment was originally posted on Singapore Entrepreneurs
Just sharing my thoughts… | Ridz.sg said :
[...] couple of weeks ago, at unConference 2009, MDA’s presentation was given some relatively bad press. It’s not the first time that [...]
Joshua said :
Like this kind of support.