[Event] Introduction to Agile & Scrum (Full-day, Free)

Agile Development has gain adoption by many companies and is still increasing. For the past few years, there are more than 100 books published, hundreds of user groups formed and many conferences held around the world related to Agile. This will probably grow over the next decade.

Why is Agile important? What kind of impact will Agile have on the organization and an individual developer? How does Agile relates to practices such as Scrum and Test-Driven Development? You will find out answers to these questions in the presentation.

There is no cost to this presentation. The registeration will be closed once the seats are filled up. Please register here.

Topics to cover

- Why would you be interested?
- Statistics about our industry
- Overview of Iterative Development
- Overview and background of Agile Development
- Overview of Scrum
- Technical practices
- Scaling Scrum

Bas Vodde is the keynote speaker for this course. Stanly Lau will also be presenting part of the topics.

Venue: SMU School of Economics & Social Sciences in Seminar Room 3.10

SG-GTUG Meet-up June 5. Theme: Google Monetization Technologies

Theme: Google’s Monetization Technologies: Boost your Business the Google Way!
Venue: Level 35, 8 Shenton Way (Temasek towers) S068811

Meet-up schedule:

12:30 – 01:00pm: Registration
01:00 – 01:10pm: Announcements by SG-GTUG
01:10 – 01:55pm: Talk 1 — Dipanjan Chaudari: Google AdWords: “Online Advertising by Google”
01:55- 02:20pm: Talk 2 — Jean Michoud:Google MobileAds: “Small Screen, Big Opportunities!”
02:20 – 02:50pm: Talk 3 — Melissa Ann Chan: Google AdSense: “Earn $$ from relevant ads on your online content”
02:50 – 03:05pm: Refreshments & Networking
03:05 – 03:30pm: Talk 4 –Rachit Dayal: Google Analytics: “Metrics to Monitor”
03:30 – 04:30pm: Talk 5 –Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar: Google Analytics: “Insight into Analytics”
04:30 – 04:45pm: Upcoming event announcements, Q & A
04:45 – 05:15pm: Refreshments & Networking & Meet up adjournment

Please proceed to the registration form to register for this meet up now.

Note 1: On site registrations will not be available if the capacity is reached through online registrations.
Note 2: You are encouraged to bring your laptop as presentation slides and other materials will be made available online.

###Talk 1

Title: Google AdWords: “Online Advertising by Google”

Create and run ads for your business quickly and simply using Google AdWords. Ads will be displayed on search results and Google network. In that way, you are sure you are advertising to an audience that is already interested in your products and the best thing is you pay only when they click on your ads!

Dipanjan Chaudari will be giving a comprehensive introduction to Google AdWords and will go through the fundamental concepts behind creating a good advertising Campaign. Learn more about effective keywords and understand the basic concepts to get you started right away advertising your business with Google AdWords.

Dipanjan is a Business Acquisition Manager focusing on the Technology, Education & Retail markets for Google’s acquisition efforts in Southeast Asia. He specializes in strategic business solutions and conducts research in the industry sector to develop strategies that capitalize on market potential. Dipanjan comes from a traditional advertising background and has driven advertising strategies for clients such as Unilever, before moving to Google in 2005. He loves to read in his spare time and is an amateur photographer.

###Talk 2

Title: Google MobileAds: “Small Screen, Big Opportunities!”

Reach your audience whenever and wherever they are looking for you by easily extending your online campaigns to mobile. The mobile wave is here so be quick to ride on it by engaging with your audiences on the go!

Jean Michoud is here to convince you, with market facts and figures, that you should be already leveraging that small screen to get you big opportunities. Target your campaigns for both the high-end phones or WAP phones and witness that boost in your business. Jean will walk you through the steps into creating MobileAds and share with you interesting Singapore-based case studies.

Jean is a Senior Campaign Strategist in Online Sales for Google Southeast Asia. Focusing on the Retail, Technology and Education markets, he advises on and executes online advertising plans for Google clients across Google’s search, display and mobile marketing products. Prior to moving to Singapore, Jean worked in Google’s Dublin office, where he was involved in Google AdWords acquisitions efforts, notably in helping roll out Google’s mobile ad offerings in Europe.

###Talk 3

Title: Google AdSense: “Earn $$ from relevant ads on your online content”

Do you create original content and post it online? Use Google AdSense to earn money from your online content with relevant advertising. Since its inception in 2003, AdSense continues to deliver innovative monetization solutions for all forms of online content – from websites, video, feeds, mobile, and search.

Mel Ann Chan will cover the latest developments and technologies from the AdSense program, and explain why AdSense is different from other ad networks. She’ll also be sharing with you tips on being a successful AdSense publisher, illustrated by local and international case studies.

Mel Ann is the JAPAC Publisher Engagement Lead with the Google AdSense Team forming communications programs and product marketing initiatives. Previously in Sydney office, Mel Ann was taking on roles to build AdSense partnerships with Australian and New Zealand online publishers, she specializes in advising clients on content monetization strategies and identifying opportunities to grow ad revenue for AdSense partners. Before Google, Mel Ann has held business management positions at the digital creative agency Tribal DDB. A true Google geek even when she’s not at work, Mel uses the Google Maps application on her Nexus One to explore Singapore and travel around the region, and is addicted to her Google Reader feeds.

###Talk 4

Title: Google Analytics: “From Metrics to Monitor”

Google Analytics is the enterprise-class web analytics solution that analyses your website traffic and tells you things which you should know to enhance your marketing effectiveness. Powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features now let you see and analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way.

Rachit Dayal will explain the importance of tracking and Web Analytics for your marketing campaigns. Navigating you through the Google Analytics interface and elaborating the essential metrics and web analytics phrases that need to be understood, you will now know your Bounce Rate to ensure your users don’t get instantly turned off by your site. He will quickly train you to read the right Google Analytics reports to seem like an instant web expert and you can go ahead apply analytics for your websites with confidence!

Rachit is a specialist in Web Analytics, SEO & Online Marketing / Conversion. He is Singapore’s first Google AdWords and Google Analytics Qualified Individual and having been a designer for 11 years and a web consultant for 6 years, Rachit has created over $5 million of sales from his websites. He runs Happy Marketer Pte Ltd and is its Principal Consultant. Happy Marketer is one of Singapore’s leading digital marketing agencies focusing on Web Analytics, Social Media Marketing, Search Marketing & Conversion Consulting. Apart from this, Rachit is also a master practitioner of NLP, Master Hypnotist & Expert Copy writer.

###Talk 5

Title: Google Analytics: “Insight into Analytics”

With deeper understanding of Google Analytics, you’re more prepared to write better targeted ads, strengthen you marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites.

Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar a.k.a Vinny will unscrew the nuts and bolts behind Google Analytics and show you how GA works. In this insightful hour, you will be exposed to GA’s asynchronous tracking code and understand event tracking with GA. Vinny will walk through GA for rich content platforms (Flash, flex, Silverlight) and non-website (iPhone, Android) and Google Website Optimizer. He will also complete the session by giving you an overview of the AdWords API.

Vinny is the Google Analytics Asia-Pacific Lead for Google’s Global Technical Services organization. Vinny’s Web 2.0 expertise comes into play when he provides strategic counsel to advertisers, agencies and partners on the use of free measurement platforms such as Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer. His objective is to help partners enhance their online presence to increase Web site traffic flow and revenue, all without spending a single cent. Prior to Google, Vinny’s entrepreneurial spirit led him to work at startups in Australia as a web applications developer and he is highly knowledgeable on PHP, HTML, CSS, AJAX, and Python. In his spare time you can catch him tweeting about online measurement (of course!) and what’s new and innovative on the web.

Socialwok Shares Their Google IO Experience

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Ming Yong from Socialwok, where they share their recent experiences at the Google IO 2010 developer conference.

Google IO 2010 is Google’s largest annual 2 days developer conference participated by over 5000 people attending over 90 technical sessions covering every aspect of technology from the search giant. I was attending Google IO together with my colleagues Navin Kumar and Vikram Rangnekar. Our company Voiceroute Pte Ltd was invited to demonstrate and talk about how our online business collaboration service Socialwok (http://socialwok.com) uses Google technology.

This was our first Google IO event and we were very excited about the cool new technologies that Google might unveil at the event. In addition, Google was also giving out a free Nexus One mobile phone for every conference participant.

On both days of Google IO, we would start the day with the keynote address. During the first day, Vic Gundotra (Vice President of engineering at Google) got on stage and talked about how Google envisions that the web will evolve to support rich web based applications. Google announced that it was making available free to everyone a new high-quality and open standards based video format called WebM (http://www.webmproject.org/). Google also announced the new Google Chrome store (https://chrome.google.com/webstore) that will allow millions of web users using the Chrome web browser to find and purchase any type of web applications.

On the day two keynote, Google unveiled the much anticipated Google TV project. Google is now bringing the web surfing and web search experience to the TV. Users can now browse the web, search for TV and youtube content using their television sets. Eric Schmit (CEO of Google) held a round-table discussion with partners like Sony and Adobe describing how Google TV could touch the lives of millions worldwide by changing the way people use their television sets.

Google had a nice surprise for everyone when it announced that it would be giving every conference participant a second free 4G compatible mobile-phone called HTC EVO that came with a free 30 day broadband wireless package.

Google IO was definitely a great experience for a Singapore startup like Socialwok. My colleagues and I had a great time talking and demoing Socialwok to the conference attendees, Googlers and famous technology bloggers like Robert Scoble and Louis Gray. We also got lots of press attention from high traffic web sites like theNextWeb and Techcrunch who wrote articles about Socialwok at Google IO. All in all, we were definitely very happy to leave the conference with two very nice smart phones knowing how our friends in Singapore would be so envious.

[Event] Launch of SingTel Call for Proposals at i.MATCH BizMatch

SingTel is looking for interesting mobile applications to buy or license. Developers and companies are welcome to join us for this event to find out more about this CFP and generate interest for your product, even if your application is not ready for shipping. The scope of mobile applications that SingTel Idea Factory is looking at includes and not limited to:

·         Natural Speech Recognition

·         Virtual Assistant

·         Games developer for Wii-like TV games

·         Next generation user interface for mobile, tablet applications, TV, etc

·         eBooks for mobile, tablet, TV, etc

·         Image recognition

·         Cloud gaming like onlive.com

Interest participants can also request for an exclusive opportunity to pitch directly to the principal of SingTel Idea Factory, Loo Cheng Chuan.

Date: 25th May

Registration starts: 2.00pm

Venue: SingTel Auditorium, 31 Exeter Road

(Light refreshments provided)

Kindly RSVP by 23 May 2010 to alvin [at] expara [dot] com as seats are limited.

About Loo Cheng Chuan, Principal of SingTel Idea Factory

With more than a decade in the Telecommunications industry, Loo Cheng Chuan has extensive experience in SingTel where he worked on product pricing, financial modeling and business strategies for both the Consumer and Corporate Business Groups. Before his role as Principal of the SingTel Idea Factory, Loo served the organization as its Next Gen Nationwide Broadband Network (NGNBN) Strategy Director and was SingTel’s Project Lead for its winning NetCo bid, OpenNet.

Today, he is occupied with seeking out innovative products and cutting-edge technology from around the world that will offer all SingTel customers a paradigm-changing experience. When he is not working, Loo enjoys spending time with his family and is heavily involved in his church. Food is his other great love and Loo is well known for hunting for excellent food across Singapore.

About i.MATCH BizMatch

i.MATCH BizMatch is an innovative platform that facilitates collaboration opportunities between Media Content and Interactive and Digital Media (IDM) companies by introducing them to leading industry partners.

[Event] APPrenticeship & Partnership with Singtel Idea Factory

Singtel Idea Factory in collaboration with Garag3 and NUS is organizing an exclusive event for startups and students. If you’re looking at working on applications in the mobile space, learn from industry veterans and get a real shot at working on some of the coolest applications to come out on your iPhones or Androids, then look no further.

Singtel Idea Factory is looking for developers who are passionate in this space to brainstorm with great ideas and bring their idea to fruition. Find out more about this event here