Southeast Asian Developer Groups: The Directory

You’re never alone on the internet. This article introduces you to various groups of developers in the SEA region with expertise on different platforms. Live in the Philippines and want to hold discussions with fellow Pinoys on PHP? Or are you Indonesian looking for fellow Perl enthusiasts in Indonesia? Look no further;  this is the article for you.

Singapore

1. Singapore Ruby Brigade

Meeting Details:

Meetings are held on the first Wednesay of each month from 7pm to 8:30pm, barring holidays. Meetings are structured around presentations and talks led by members. Meetups are held at the Hackerspace @ 70A Bussorah Street, Singapore 199483

Website:

http://groups.google.com/group/singapore-rb

http://singaporerubybrigade.pbworks.com/

Verdict: Active group! Last meeting on 6^th Jan 2010

2. Philosophy in Programming Society (Ph.P Society)

Meeting Details:

Meetings are organized individually, with the last meet up being on the 3^rd Nov 2009. So far they have had 29 meet ups, with no additional upcoming meet ups scheduled. It is written on the site that there are “regular monthly meet ups without fail for the last November 2007, each with  an average turnout of 50 members.”

Website:

http://www.meetup.com/sgphpug/

http://www.php.org.sg/about/

No. of members: 500+ members and growing

Verdict: Very active. Many sponsors and endorsements

3. SINGAPORE Python Group

Meeting Details:

No known details on any upcoming meetings, however the 6th Python User Group Meeting was just held on Thursday, 14^th January 2010, 19:30 – 21:30 at the SMU School of Information Systems Seminar Room 2.2

Website: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=20088734289

No. of members: 168

Verdict: Active. They are currently embarking on their 6^th meeting. There are 13 topics in discussion board, the latest being on 19^th December

4. Code Android Singapore

Meeting Details: No upcoming events. Their last informal get together was on the 26^th Dec 2009.

Website: http://sg.codeandroid.org/

Verdict: Active. They have had 6 meetings so far with regular tweets on their Twitter page. Last forum post 17^th Dec 2009. Google group: latest discussion on 7^th Jan.

No. of members: 678

5. Singapore Perl Mongers

Meeting Details: No upcoming events. Their last meet up was on Saturday, 5^th Dec 2009, from 3pm to 7pm. It is stated on the site that meetings usually happen on the first Saturday of the month, between 3pm and 7pm.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=199599228680&index=1

Website: http://singapore.pm.org/

No. of members: No known details

Activity on Singapore.pm

Verdict: Not very active. There has been a total of 3 meet ups so far. On checking their Facebook event page the last meet up shows only 1 confirmed guest. On the site it states that Singapore.pm was founded in February 1999 by Chen Shenglong Bryan. It was “resuscitated” by Gaurav Vaidya in September 2008. Apparently not a very successful resuscitation.

6. Cocoa Heads Singapore

Meeting Details: No upcoming events. Last meeting was on Thursday, February 26, 2009 19:00 at iShop – Cineleisure Level 3 on Orchard Road

Website:

http://cocoaheads.org/sg/Singapore/index.html

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=29368309964

No. of members: 134

Verdict: Rather active. Last forum post on 27^th Aug 2009

7. The Singapore Linux Meetup Group

Meeting Details: Upcoming event on Wednesday, 20^th Jan, 7 pm. 13 confirmed guests. Location of meeting is shown only to members

Website: http://www.meetup.com/sg-linux/

No. of members: 678

Verdict: Very active, with 73 meet ups from 2002. Each meet up is structured as such:

The Meetup consists of a 90 min meeting followed by an optional networking session that will encompass the following:

30 Mins – Technical presentation on a selected topic
20 Mins – Introduction of newer members
30 Mins – Group discussion & sharing of knowledge on the selected topic
10 Mins – closing comments suggestions for next meetups
Optional Last 30 Mins – Networking

8. JUG Singapore (Java User Group)

Meeting Details: Upcoming event on Thursday, 28^th Jan, 7 pm.  3 confirmed guests. Location of meeting has yet to been confirmed.

Website: http://www.meetup.com/JUG-Singapore/

No. of members: 55

Verdict: Relatively active, with 4 past monthly meet ups since its founding in August 2009. However, the admin admits to be trying to inject Singapore JUG with more activity. Also, the last posting in its discussion forums was on 28^th November 2009.

9. The Singapore mySQL Meetup Group

Meeting Details: No upcoming events. 42 past meet ups since 2004

Website: http://mysql.meetup.com/72/

No. of members: 228

Verdict: Seemingly active, with quite a number of past meet ups. However its message board is relatively inactive, with its last posting on 22^nd Jul 2009.

10. Singapore Flex Usergroup (Adobe Usergroup)

Meeting Details: No upcoming events. Its Facebook page states a total of 11 past events.

Website:

http://fug.sg/

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8689346391

No. of members: 271 (FB)

Verdict: Seemingly active, with 11 past meet ups. However its user group forum is rather inactive, with its last posting on 2^nd Fed 2009 and the last blog post on 16^th September 2009

11. WebOS Developers Group Singapore

Meeting Details: No upcoming events.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8689346391

No. of members: 61 (FB)

Verdict: No discussions on its Facebook page. A check with its listed webpage http://codewebos.com/ draws a server error.

Malaysia

1. Malaysia Ruby Brigade

Meeting Details: No known details

Website: http://groups.google.com/group/malaysia-rb

No. of members: 170

Verdict: Website does not seem to centre around discussions on Ruby programming. Some links seem to have been tampered with, with adult content and links on the site. Last post 2^nd Nov 2009

2. Python User Group Malaysia

Meeting Details: No known details

Website: http://groups.google.com/group/pythonmy

No. of members: 92

Verdict: Quite active forum, with the last post being on 9^th Jan 2010. They have a seemingly active community, and have even produced their own shirt.

3. Code Android Malaysia

Meeting Details: No known details

Website:

http://groups.google.com/group/codeandroid-malaysia

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=133530318700

http://twitter.com/CodeAndroidMY

No. of members: 18 (Google group) and 122 (FB)

Verdict: Both Facebook pages and Google groups are active, with the latest discussion on the Google group site on 9^th Jan and the latest Facebook wall post on 1^st Jan.

4. Cocoa Heads Malaysia

Meeting Details: Group meets usually on the 3rd Saturday of each month from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM. Their last meet up was on Thursday, December 18, 2008 20:00 at Center Court, new wing, 1-Utama, Bandar Utama, Petaling Jaya.

Website:

http://twitter.com/MYCocoaHeads

http://cocoaheads.org/my/KualaLumpur/index.html

No. of members: Unknown

Verdict: Active. Join their mailing lists for more information on meet ups.

5. PHP Programmer Malaysia

Meeting Details: No known details

Website: http://groups.google.com/group/php-malaysia

No. of members: 105

Verdict: Active group with many ongoing discussions. Latest post on 8^th Jan 2010.

6. Drupal Developer Groups in Malaysia

Meeting Details: No known details

Website: http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-developer-groups-malaysia

No. of members: No known details

Verdict: Active group with many ongoing discussions. Latest post on 8^th Jan 2010.

7. Joomla Community Malaysia

Meeting Details: No known details

Website: http://www.joomla-my.org/

No. of members: 3319

Verdict: Very active forum, with 35765 posts in 4138 topics. Note: forums are in Bahasa Melayu, with only one English Section for non Malay-speaking programmers.

8. Ubuntu Malaysia

Meeting Details: Last major event was a 4 day MSC Malaysia Open Source Conference 2009. No known upcoming events.

Website: http://ubuntu.com.my/

No. of members: 1744

Verdict: Very active forum, with 8816 posts in 1469 topics, and the latest post being posted on 10^th Jan 2010. However, the last blog post was on Wed, 22/04/2009.

9. Malaysia Flex User Group

Meeting Details: No known details

Website: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/myflex/

No. of members: 108

Verdict: Only members are able to access the majority of content on the website. However a check with the group’s message page shows the last message to be sent on 26^th Oct 2009.

Thailand

1. Thai Ruby/Rails User Group

Meeting Details: No known details

Website: http://groups.google.com/group/thai-ruby-rails-user-group

No. of members: 38

Verdict: Active, with the latest post on 9^th Jan 2010. There are many forum topics, however most of them are irrelevant to Ruby.

2. THAI Python Group

Codenone is Thai developers community for alternative language e.g. Python, Ruby, Smalltalk, Erlang and more.

Meeting Details: No known details

Website: http://www.codenone.com/

No. of members: Unknown

Verdict: Not very active, with the last forum post being 1 year 26 weeks ago.

3. Bangkok Pearl Mongers

The Bangkok Pearl Mongers aim to build an internet community in Thailand as a center of knowledge and technology sharing based on Perl programming language.

Meeting Details: Unknown

Website: http://bangkok.pm.org/

Verdict: Under construction

4. Thai Developer Network

Website: http://www.thaidev.com/

A useful website for Thai developers to share ideas and problems regarding different platforms such as Java, C++, mySQL and many more

5. Thai Java User Group

Meeting Details: No known details

Website: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ThaiJUG/

No. of members: Unknown

Verdict: Website is in Thai, with much of the content limited to members only. It is a mailing list, so there are limited discussions on the webpage itself.

6. Thai CodeAndroid Group

Meeting Details: No known detials

Website: http://th.codeandroid.org/

No. of members: 51

Verdict: An all encompassing, one stop site to find out any information about Android platform and its uses.

Indonesia

1. Developer Indonesia

http://www.developerindonesia.com/

No. of members: 291 members.

Verdict: Note very active, with most forums having only 1 thread/1 post. However, this is an interesting site to keep an eye on for it aims to gather developers on various platforms and engage them in discussion

2. Jakarta Ruby

Meeting Details: No upcoming meetings. Last meeting was on 17^th October 2009, at the Aldevco Octagon Building

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=109692319605#/group.php?v=app_2344061033&gid=5949203103

Website:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5949203103

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/id-ruby/

http://twitter.com/rubyindonesia

http://jakartarb.blogdetik.com/

No. of members: 170  members (FB). 918 members in their Yahoo Group.

Verdict: No active discussions on their Facebook page however their Yahoo Group is relatively active with 25 new messages within the last 7 days and the most recent message being on 8^th Jan 2010

3. ID-Perl

Description:

Diskusi Perl dalam bahasa Indonesia. Jika Anda ingin mendiskusikan MySQL, silakan mengunjungi: id-mysql.Jika Anda ingin mendiskusikan PostgreSQL, silakan mengunjungi: id-postgresql.Jika Anda ingin mendiskusikan PHP, silakan mengunjungi: id-php. Bila Anda ingin mendikusikan Perl (termasuk DBI, DBD::mysql), silakan mengunjungi id-perl. Jika ingin membahas Python, silakan mengunjungi id-python. Jika ingin membahas Ruby, silakan mengunjungi id-ruby.

Meeting Details: Unknown

Website: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/id-perl/

No. of members: 370 members

Verdict: Relatively active, with their last messages being sent on Dec 2009

4. Indonesia Google Developers

Meeting Details: Unknown

Website: http://googlejunkies.blogspot.com/

No. of members: 370 members

Verdict: Relatively active, with their last messages being sent on Dec 2009

5. Indonesian Ubuntu User Group Mailing list

Meeting Details: Unknown

Website:

http://groups.google.com/group/id-ubuntu/about

http://www.ubuntu-id.org/

No. of members: 4887 members

Verdict: Website is in Bahasa Indonesia. However it is seemingly active with many forum posts, the latest being in Jan 2010.

6. Facebook Developers Indonesia

Meeting Details: 1 past event, a Facebook Developer’s Garage on 28^th March 2009. It drew good response, with 658 confirmed guests who went. No upcoming events

Website:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=49212197490

http://facebookdevelopers.or.id/

No. of members: 777  members

Verdict: Active, with many discussions on the group’s Facebook wall. However, the latest wall post is in July 2009.

Vietnam

1. Vietnam Ruby Brigade

Meeting Details: No known details

Website: http://vruby.org/

No. of members: 22 Users, 16 active

Verdict: Low activity, with their last post being on 8^th May 2009.  There have only been 2 topics, 5 posts in the discussion forums and 1 blog article

2. Dien Dan PHP Viet Nam

Meeting Details: No known details

Website: http://diendanphp.com/

No. of members: 428 Users, 21 active

Verdict: Relatively active, with a total of 278 threads and 1008 posts. The latest posts were also written in 2010.

Philippines

1. Philippine Ruby Users Group (PRUG/PhRUG)

Meeting Details:  No known details

Website: http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-phil

No. of members: 476

Verdict: Active group, with the latest post being on 7^th Jan 2010

2. PHP User Group – Philippines

Meeting Details: PHP Developers Summit 2010

When: 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM – January 30, 2010, Saturday
Where: Hotel Rembrandt – 26 Tomas Morato Extension Quezon City, Philippines

Website: http://www.phpugph.com

No. of members: 2298 members

Verdict: Very active. This particular group has even a partnership with Microsoft Philippines in organising its upcoming conference, as well as many sponsors. There have been 84930 posts in 10324 topics as well.

3. Pinoy-Python-Users

Meeting Details: Bring-a-Friend-to-FOSS. A Pinoy Geek Party at G2VC, Innovation Center, Ortigas Center, Pasig City on Saturday, January 9, 2010 / 6:00PM

Website: http://groups.google.com/group/pinoy-python-users

No. of members: 70 members.

Verdict: A rather active group, with regular discussions relevant to programming on Python.

Disclaimer: This is by no means an exhaustive list of developer groups in the SEA region, only our best attempt at gathering and collating information of such groups into this writeup.

Know of any other developer groups in the region that have not been featured? Do drop a comment to contribute :)