e27 was in Jakarta last week to check out how the local IT startup industry was benefiting from Boost. e27′s Gabriel Yang managed to grab a quick interview with Andy Zain and Ryu Kawano Suliawan of the Boost organizing team to find out how this non-profit event is looking to add value to the local ecosystem.

How Boost kicked off

The initial idea for Boost took seed when Ryu met up with Ari Awan, another of the Boost organizing member, last year. ” We were just talking about the Internet today in Indonesia and I was interested to learn more about it. And we were talking about what was missing in Indonesia and Ari was saying there was not enough conferences or not enough get-togethers, this was back in April,” said Ryu.

Ryu was also spurred on by a friend in Japan telling him how the IT conference he was running in Japan was helping to bring up the local ecosystem. After much discussion with Ari, Boost was born. The idea for Boost received a lot of support from the key individuals in the Indonesian community, such as Andy Zain and Antonny Liem.

According to Ryu, Boost has three objectives:

• Boosting the possibilities of younger startups through mentorship
• Profiling Indonesia as the next big digital market
• Increase collaborations between the various players within the industry

The value of Boost in the Indonesian IT startup community

According to Andy, existing local conferences targeting the same community are too passive, with little interaction between the attendees. “We want interaction. Startups want something to be part of, they want to interact with someone who has been successful and learn from them. So, when Ryu came in with this concept of bringing in veterans from Silicon Valley and Japan, the ones who have being doing it and have been successful, and pair them with a smaller group of Indonesians, that is what we need for this industry,” said Andy.

As such Boost 50 is a group of selected startups for the event that will be paired with promising names in the industry in order to help in the knowledge transfer. “If you look at the very successful IT ecosystems in The Valley and Japan, the reason why they are so successful is not just because they have money but because they have all these mentors that help the younger startups. In Indonesia, unfortunately, there is not enough successful IT veterans to mentor the younger startups. And therefore the idea was to, on a temporary basis, import IT veterans from overseas to Indonesia,” said Ryu. The startups will stand to gain valuable knowledge from experienced entrepreneurs in the same industry such as on topics of hiring and funding. The rest would be up to them to apply this knowledge into the context of the local market.

However, Ryu and the Boost team also understands the value of making sure that the Indonesian IT startup ecosystem is self-sustainable. “A healthy ecosystem should be able to sustain itself within the local community, with Indonesian entrepreneurs. If next year, we don’t do BOOST, that’s a good thing for us. That would mean that there are Indonesia mentors already mentoring the younger startups and there’s no need for that [BOOST],” said Ryu.

Follow up actions from Boost would be to see how the team can collaborate with Mobile Monday, through Andy Zain, and SparxUp, through Antonny Liem, to take these startups to greater heights.

Indonesia’s IT startups on track for greater things in 2012

According to Andy Zain, the initial birth of the IT startup ecosystem in Indonesia was started with the acquisition and rapid growth of local companies such as Koprol and Kaskus. Back then, about two year ago, these activities spurred a flurry of Indonesia startups which were based a lot on cloning existing ideas in other markets. These were ventures by entrepreneurs who wanted to get in on the action but did not necessarily have the right tools.

Fast forward to the last couple of months, with strong infrastructures set in place after the initial boom, local incubators and accelerator programs such as Merah Putih Incubator are beginning to graduate their first batch of startups. These are the new breed of IT startups that have received the proper guidance and mentorship to allow them to gain a strong understanding of what they are trying to achieve. According to Andy, this is when exciting things will happen.

When I first heard of the SG Geek Girls initiative, I was excited to know that there’s finally a women’s group for tech (besides Girls in Tech) and roped in a few of my ‘techy’ friends to attend their first event.

The first Singapore Geek Girls meetup was held on 7 January, 2012 at Group Therapy Cafe. It was a good turnout with more than 30 women and a few curious men that came over with their ladies. For once, a tech event where girls make up the majority.

What took place at the meetup

The first meetup was more of a get-to-know each other session where the attendees mingled around and chat. The attendees come from diverse backgrounds. There are those that are working in or have their own startups and also who wants to know more about the tech scene.  The group is still in the stage of planning and getting feedbacks on the kind of activities the girls would like to have. But, do expect more meetups, workshops, talks, tech bootcamps etc.

Here are some of  the pictures at SG Geek Girls’ first meetup:

Photo: SG Geek Girls

SG Geek Girls going full-swing.

Photo: SG Geek Girls

e27 writer Joanna with SG Geek Girls founder, Mingfei

Photo: SG Geek Girls

The final turnout! Check out the thorns among the roses.

About Singapore Geek Girls

SG Geek Girls is a local initiative that serves as a platform for women who are working, using or are just interested in technology to connect, share, contribute, mentor and learn from each other.

The community is founded by two ‘techy’ girls, Joyce Huang, a mobile consultant with 2359 Media and Mingfei, a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft.

To stay updated to the latest activities and happenings in the group, do visit SG Geek Girl’s Facebook page.

An initiative from the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), GGJ was first held in 2009 with 53 sites accross 23 countries. Last year 169 sites, 44 countries and around 6500 participants were involved across the globe including new members in Amman, Bangkok, Prague, Shanghai and Zürich. A staggering 1500 games were made during the two day period.

In 2012, Republic Polytechnic will be hosting GGJ 2012 in Singapore which will be the third year the institution has hosted the event. Commencing at 17:00 January 27 (Friday) through to 18:00 January 29 (Sunday) the event is sure be an intense, adrenaline-fueled way to spend the weekend.

Open to participants over 16 years, you can get involved as either a jammer (tertiary students and professionals) or mentor. There is no cost just bring along your own design materials (paper, pens, laptops, hardware, software, prototyping materials etc) and a healthy sense of collaboration. Details on how to get involved can be found on their information page. Check out the neat trailer below and game on!

Global Game Jam 2012 Trailer

Global Game Jam 2012 Trailer from Adam Barenblat on Vimeo.

For readers outside Singapore, there is sure to be a GGJ site near you. Participating jam sites are listed on the GGJ website.

Natalie is co-founder of Hummingbird Interactive, a Singapore-based gamification design consultancy. She blogs at www.recognitionpattern.com

Below are some of the upcoming tech events in the Philippines from January to February 2012.

Nokia Developer App Workshop (Java & Windows Phone)
When: January 16 – 18, 8:00am – 5:00pm
Where: iAcademy Building, Ayala Makati,

This will be held on Jan 16 to 17 for the Java Workshop, and Jan 18 for the Windows Phone Workshop. Both workshop will take place at iAcademy Building in Ayala Avenue.

Pre-Game Jam Seminar 2012
When: January 20, 12:30pm – 5:00pm
Where: De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde

The topics will include refreshers of the foundations of game design, art, and programming, along with essential advice for producing games under strict time and resource conditions.

Unity Training Seminar
When: January 24, 1:00pm – 6:00pm
Where: De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde

This is an official event with Unity Evangelist Carl Callewaert doing the seminar. Some of the stuff to be tackled are a quick beginner course as well as advance concepts and Unity 3.5 features.

Private Beta Testing of WebGeekPH App (for Android & iOS Users)
When: January 23 – 30
Where: Online (for more details)

Beta testing involves using the new WebGeek community forum, mobile apps, facebook app, topic starters and reporting any problems, quirks, bugs, etc.

Manila Game Jam 2012
When: January 27-29, 9:00am
Where: UP ITTC & DLS-CSB

Be part of a worldwide experiment in computer game creation. Over 100 locations around the world will be hosting participants as they develop games over a span of 48 hours

GTUG Philippines Show-and-tell meetup
When: January 31, 7:00pm – 10:00pm
Where: Orange and Bronze office (Penthouse, CJV Building, 108 Aguirre St., Legaspi Village, Makati City)

Google Technology User Group: Show-and-tell meetup of apps built using Google technologies.

1st PinoyBBDev App Challenge (Contest)
When: January 31 (Deadline)
Where: Online Contest (Submission)

Inspired by the objective of promoting and showcasing Filipino talents in developing BlackBerry Applications

Roofcamp
When: February 10, 6:00pm
Where: TBA (Manila Area)

Roofcamp is a venue for future looking, maverick,and fearless individuals sharing and distilling ideas from concept to reality.

Junior <form> function() & .class Philippine Web Design Student Conference
When: February 11, 8:00am – 5:00pm
Where: University of Santo Tomas

The first web design conference for students in the Philippines.

WebGeek Relaunch
When: February 18, 5:00pm – 9:00pm
Where: TBA (Manila Area)

WebGeek Community Relaunch with short talks about Productivity, Creativity and Community Driven Projects for Geeks.

DrupalCamp Manila 2012
When: February 25, 8:00am – 6:00pm
Where: Marine Science Institute, UP Diliman

DrupalCamp Manila is an annual conference for Drupal users in Philippines. Learn more.

If you know of any events I missed or upcoming events you’d like me to include? Post a your comments here!

This post was written by John Arce and originally posted on WebGeek Philippines & StartupDigest Philippines

Richard Harshman on AWS Cloud and Mobility Solutions

After holding a Founders Drinks Jakarta last February, e27 has once again brought the Founders Drinks series to Jakarta last week, on December 8, at AtAmerica, Pacific Place Mall. The event was held in partnership with StartupLokal to combine the Founders Drinks with their last meet up for the year, the 20^th StartupLokal Meetup. The joint event was aptly called e27 Founders Drinks + StartupLokal Meetup and graciously sponsored by Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Registration had to be closed a day early as we had over double the expected turnout registered. The actual day saw about 250 people at the event.

The event started at 7.15PM, fifteen minutes behind schedule to accommodate more participants to enter the event venue. Mohan Belani, e27′s co-founder and director and  Event Manager, Gabriel Yang, together with Natali Ardianto from StartupLokal, opened the event by delivering the welcome speech. Kreshna Bayu Aji was the MC for the night and Ilman was assigned to moderate the panel, both were also from StartupLokal. Since the venue couldn’t accommodate all attendants, few of them were watching it through live streaming provided by AtAmerica. All registered attendees were entitled to USD25 worth of free AWS Credits and had a chance to win a Kindle as a giveaway.

The panel discussion: “Outlook 2012? was presented by Rama Mamuaya, CEO & Founder at DailySocial.Net who shared this year’s recapitulation & next year’s startup scene and outlook in Indonesia from a journalist’s perspective. The second panelist, Danny Oei Wirianto, Chairman at Merah Putih Incubator, presented his thoughts from an investor’s point of view.

Scene of the panel discussion: “Outlook 2012"

At around 8PM, Amazon Web Services, represented by their Regional Sales Manager for Asia, Richard Harshman who is in-charged of Enterprise Sales and Business Development in Asia Pacific as well as a well-known public speaker at multiple AWS events, talked about their cloud and mobility solutions.

Andi Boediman, Satya Witoelar, Denny Santoso, Remco Lupker and William Henley were several “rock stars” seen amongst the crowd and some of them joined us at the Networking and Drinks at Aksara Bookstore after the main event.

Like all events held at AtAmerica, there is a recording of the event distributed by AtAmerica for free. For anyone who didn’t have any chance to attend, do check out the video here.

Within this post, we would like to take this opportunity to thank all the parties involved who helped made this a great success. To  StartupLokal, especially Nuniek, Natali and other volunteers (You guys are really fantastic!), Amazon Web Services team, Rama and Danny for the insights and obviously, the enthusiastic crowd that really rocked the night. e27 looks forward to having more of such events in Indonesia and, hopefully, the rest of the region next year.

The Singapore Chapter of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) is holding their annual Christmas Party on December 14, 2011. With free admission for members of the Singapore game development community, the event is a great way to meet other professionals in the industry. This year the event will be sponsored by the Info-communications Development Authority of Singapore (IDA). RSVP via their Facebook page here.

With a background in UX and game design, Joel Chua Kar Meng, founder of GamificationSG, explained that his interest in gamification lies in the notion that ”games reward but reality doesn’t.” Beyond the current hype surrounding gamification, Joel firmly believes that there are many opportunities to create real social change and positive experiences for users.

However he does warn that ”gamification is not just plug and play,” and that what works for one company or website may not necessarily work for another. This comes down to understanding the user and how game mechanics fit within the whole user experience and not the other way round. Referencing a local example from the National University of Singapore, Joel discussed how JFDI Academy, a meta game designed for a programming module, used game mechanics (achievements, unlocks and leader boards) to encourage students to produce consistent work as well as provide a platform for friendly competition between students.

Ridzuan Ashim, CEO of startup of Senseless Labs and Streetgy, explored the relatively new phenomenon of location-based gaming which uses game mechanics to incentivize people to move to and between specific places. A key lesson from geo-caching, one of the earliest forms of location-based gaming, was that players’ motivations can be very different even when they are completing the same activity. Moreover, people can be motivated to complete very difficult tasks if they care about the reward enough.

An interesting example demonstrating the importance of intrinsic reward was the Hackerspace SG passport. Hackerspace members can obtain a passport which is “stamped” whenever that member visits any other Hackerspace location around the world. The stamps act as a type of achievement badge that has a value and meaning pertinent only to its own members while simultaneously creating a sense of global community. Another example was the recently launched Bedisloyal, a Singapore based loyalty program that (ironically) encourages patrons to visit other cafes that are part of the same promotion. It is a clever use of the discovery game mechanic, encouraging users to explore and check out new locations.

But a key concept that is overlooked by many location-based games is that online elements need to be aligned with an understanding of the off-line environment. Developers need to recognize that users are at a specific location “to interact with friends, not play with their phone, so don’t disrupt the main activity.” He also warned that there is a real danger that after the initial novelty, badges can become meaningless. Consequently it is more important to understand the motivation behind badge acquisition and build alternative mechanics around those elements.

Keith Ng, co-founder of Socialico, explored the subject of activity based gamification. Socialico have developed Game Maki, a social discovery application that allows users to suggest and complete real challenges to claim points and tangible rewards. Keith discussed his experience in developing the application and the importance of understanding user behaviour.

Driven by the idea that “life is a game” and that “who you are is based on what you do” he noted that Facebook and Twitter are not necessarily the best places to find new things to do in your area or with friends. Game Maki also utilizes the discovery game mechanic when enticing users to try new activities or visit new places but Keith noted that the real challenge for designers is how to make actions more fun for users. He also stressed that developers need to be aware of how people may “game” the system that they have designed.

Although GamificationSG has only just been established, there is a lot of enthusiasm for developing Singapore’s role within the region as a leader in the area, capitalizing on the wealth of expertise available in social media/game development/infocomm and perhaps even positioning itself as a gateway between East and West approaches.

Gamification SG’s website is currently under development but in the meanwhile you can join their Facebook group page here.

Natalie is a freelance game writer and designer. She is also co-founder of Hummingbird Interactive, a Singapore-based gamification design agency. She blogs at www.recognitionpattern.com

More than 50 ideas pitched from 110 attendees, 150 votes and more than 15 teams formed to create prototypes to be presented at the end of the program. All these happened within 54-hours at the first-ever Startup Weekend in Gurgaon, New Delhi last week.

Mahesh Murthy and Avinasha Shastry were the event speakers while Rajesh Razdan, Alok Mittal, Amit Grover, Sanjay Gupta were present as the mentors. The speakers who doubled as mentors for the program were Rabi Gupta, Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Aakrit Vaish.

“It’s absolutely wonderful to see such budding entrepreneurs, there are about 100 of them who have been working for 54 hours over the weekend, nights on end, guys who were having great fun, and really crystallizing a whole lot of ideas into serious business propositions.  This is the kind of entrepreneurial spirit that we need in this country and it’s absolutely amazing to see this.” K. Srinivas, President-Consumer Business at Bharti Airtel Limited commented on the event which took place at the Airtel Center.

Edgar Hardless, Managing Director of Investments at SingTel Innov8, said, “From my perspective it was fantastic, I thought we had a fantastic turnout, the level and polish of the pitches at the end I thought were very very good.  Overall, I had a fantastic time and I think everyone around here also had a fantastic time.”

Both Srinivas and Edgar were present as members of the judging panel together with Abhishek Mitra Gupta, Nishant Verman and Meng Weng Wong.

Hugh Mason, CEO of Joyful Frog Digital Incubator (JFDI), a seed accelerator of techpreneurs in 100 days, stated that they had some excellent ideas presented, along with some particularly insightful talks that he was able to relate directly to the teams he mentored. One of the presentations focused on the difference between building a product and a business,which might evolve a stream of products over time. That seemed particularly relevant to businesses that were trying to work out how they might stay competitive mid-long term.

“It was great to see one of the businesses getting hundreds of sign-ups within hours of going live – an amazing result in just 54 hours. It was very encouraging to see some teams coming up with applications and services that grow directly out of reality on the ground, for example the winning team, Jobs Bolega, is a voice based social network aimed at blue-collar workers in India, not all of whom are literate.” Hugh added delightedly.

There have been successful Startup Weekends held previously in Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad. One winner from every Startup Weekend will be joining JFDI-Innov8 2012 bootcamp in Singapore to receive $15,000 in seed funding for turning their idea into a product or service. Jakarta will be the city to host the next startup weekend, Telkomsel Bootcamp on November 18 – 20.

During the event, one of the speakers, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, stressed the importance of user experience more than the technology and design. Get that right and users will love us. His mantra is “Your interface is the product for the customer!”

This November, a group of undergraduates from the National University of Singapore (NUS) are running a fund-raising campaign called “Grow-a-Mo 2011: The Mo the Merrier” in collaboration with GIVE.sg, a social enterprise that offers individuals seeking to organize fund raising campaigns an online platform to connect with charity organisations.

The main purpose of the project is to encourage men to grow a moustache for the month of November and raise funds as well as awareness for cancer among men. In particular Prostate Cancer, which is one of the Top 3 killer diseases in men in Singapore. This year’s beneficiaries are SingHealth Foundation – Prostate Cancer Research Fund and Singapore Cancer Society.

e27 managed an interview with Emily, one of the group members behind Grow-a-Mo and Aseem, the Co-founder of GIVE.sg.

What gave you the idea to run this fund raising campaign?

[Emily] We’re working on this campaign as our final year consulting practicum. We chose to do this campaign over other projects because we want to do something meaningful and impactful. This campaign gives us the chance to transform a simple school project requirement into something that can bring real benefits to people in need.

Why did your team choose to raise funds to raise awareness for prostate cancer amongst other?

[Emily] Prostate cancer is amongst the Top 3 cancer killers in Singapore. It is becoming an area that needs to be looked into and the masses need to realize it’s impact and take prevention measures.

I see quite a few organizations/ people who are joining in to raise funds for your ‘Grow a Mo to help a Bro’ project. Some of them have done quite a pretty good job fund raising. Was it hard to get individuals / organisations to participate as a fund raiser for your project?

[Emily] Growing a mo is an idea that grabs people’s attention and is fun to participate in. However some of the organizations we approached had already pre-planned CSR commitments. We have learned the lesson that we need to start engaging companies a lot sooner next time around.

I understand that there’s a global Movember movement with campaigns running in several countries to get men to grow a moustache every year in the month of November. I suppose your team got the idea from Movember? Any plans to bring the Movember movement to Singapore or continue your Grow a Mo campaign next year?

[Emily] Yes, this is an idea adapted from Movember. This campaign actually started last year with Grow-a-Mo to Help a Bro and the team last year was able to successfully generate about S$ 25,000 for Singapore Cancer Society. This year we are working to make the campaign even more successful and visible. GIVE.sg has committed to make this a yearly campaign which companies and individuals can participate in to have fun while doing good.

What do you think of students’ initiatives like Grow a Mo?

[Aseem] I think Grow a Mo is a testimony to the fact that there are lots of creative ideas within students. All they are looking for is a channel to bring their ideas to reality. We are glad that GIVE.sg can be a platform where students can organize their creative fundraising campaigns and make a big social impact.

Any advice for people who would like to start a fund raising campaign?

[Aseem] My advice for people who like to start a fundraising campaign would be to start with an idea that grabs attention and to always have a clear goal for your campaign. There is a lot they can learn from a fundraising group called Charity Bike n Blade, who raised over half a million dollars for St Luke’s Hospital and the Salvation Army Peacehaven this year. Their idea was to cycle over 300 kilometers in two days which grabs attention and they had a clear target to raise S$ 300,000 when they started. You can check out their campaign here.

About GIVE.sg

GIVE.sg is a local startup founded in by a group of friends, Aseem, Zwee, Zhiheng and Gary. It is an online platform that bridges local charities with the generous community by offering:

• An online portal for potential fundraisers to find and connect with possible beneficiaries
• An online space to run fund raising campaigns as well as to help fundraisers create an online presence to increase awareness

To date, GIVE.sg has raised over S$ 1,000,000 from 1000 fundraisers. Visit GIVE.sg to support Grow-a-mo and other fundraising campaigns or start your very own fundraising project.

The event will take place at the Ritz Carlton Pacific Place, Jakarta from November 14 to 15 for the Indonesian leg. Meanwhile, the Thai edition will be held on November 17 – 18 at the Crown Plaza Hotel Bangkok Lumpini Park, Bangkok. RIM’s hackathons will take place in a total of 8 cities across the globe before it ending in London in November. The Indonesian and Thai hackathons are fifth and sixth in line respectively.

Prior to the workshops, there will be a contest where developers can submit their apps’ ideas, apps’ category & APIs, essays on how social platform can add value to their mobile apps and developer profiles including previous developed apps (samples and links). For Jakarta, the contest has already began on November 1 and will end on November 10, 2011. The contest period for Bangkok starts on the same date as Jakarta but ends on November 14. Complete detail of contest rule can be found here.

Those accepted entries will be assessed and judged with the weighted judging criteria as follows –  30 percent for App Idea, App Category & APIs, 20 percent for the essay’s quality and creativity, and  50 percent to Developer Profile. Potential winners will be notified by phone and email, on November 12 (Jakarta) and November 15 (Bangkok). RIM will be selecting the panel of judges and targeting 20 winners to attend the two-day exclusive workshop where each winner will have access to a one-on-one session with RIM’s experts to discuss and develop their apps and also have the chance to win OS 7 BlackBerry device.

Winners will just need to bring their laptops with the BlackBerry development software and of course, their coding skills. They will learn different techniques and methodologies to integrate viral/social aspects into their apps. A great number of APIs can be utilized to access BBM contact lists, user profiles, thus makes users are able to chat and share files (pictures, videos, music and voice notes).

By utilizing Social Platform, BlackBerry developers can tap onto the exposure of more than 45 million subscribers worldwide and over 70% of BBM’s daily users. With two million new users joining the community and over 100 billion messages sent each month, this makes BBM one of the largest mobile-centric communities in the industry.

Some videos featuring stories of developers from recently held BBM Apps Hackathons around the world have been posted up by RIM on their YouTube channel.

This concept is being brought to Indonesia. Starting with a three-day workshop in Jakarta, it is targeted to have 100 selected participants with a variety of experiences and expertise to create a startup business plan. This event aims to bring developers, designers, marketers and startup enthusiasts, students, employee, professionals and small enterprises together. Named Telkomsel Startup Bootcamp, the winning team will be provided with the opportunity to participate in the JFDI-Innov8 2012 Startup Bootcamp which will be held in Singapore for 100 days, from January until April next year.

The regional exposure has made the bootcamp, intended to support Indonesian creative innovators as well as young entrepreneurs, told by Ririn Widaryani (Telkomsel Deputy VP Product Life Cycle Management), is the first time held in Indonesia. It’s a collaborative effort between Telkomsel, SingTel Innov8 and The Joyful Frog Digital Incubator (JFDI.Asia). It accommodates not only new ideas, but also established ideas where participant already launch their product/service in Alpha stage but should be less than 3 years of age, less than 20 employees and less than 1 billion IDR of annual revenue.

The workshop will be held on November 18th to 20th at The Only One Club FX Lifestyle X`nter F5 (5th floor) Senayan. Wong Meng Weng, Denny Santoso, Michael Tampi, Natali Ardianto, Danny Wirianto, Antonny Liem, David Wayne, Megain Widjaja and Kevin Mintaraga are the pool of mentors that will help participants enhance their products or services and developed key company aspects such as finance, marketing, investment plan, and organizational structure. Prominent figures which will participate as judges and speakers are David Burke, Andy Zain, Hugh Mason, Betti Alisjahbana, Rizky Muhammad and Andy Sjarif.

The winner will receive S$30,000 in seed funding to support, implement, and “concretize” their business proposal into working prototype. At the end of the bootcamp, 15 teams from various countries will be given the chance to pitch it to hundreds of international investors around the world and gather international recognition.

Registration is now open until November 11. Sign up is free but selected registrants are required to pay IDR 200,000 as an entrance fee. Participants are expected to bring along any needed devices during the event while wi-fi, food and drink are provided (without any charge). For those who want to register, you can do so here at www.telkomsel.com/startupbootcamp

In their mini-conference this time round, the conference will look at how the seed funding landscape has evolved over the last two years, with the entrance of super angels, such as AngelList, as well as incubators and accelerators backed by venture funds. Differences and benefits of these various sources of early stage funding will be examined and there will be discussions on what entrepreneurs should consider when making their decision.

To add more content and excitement to the conference, the conference will also discuss what kind of term sheets work best at such an early stage for a startup, and when young companies should raise money in their product life cycle. Common mistakes that entrepreneurs make when fund-raising will also be reviewed and the various panelist will share a few valuable pointers on how to avoid them.

So who are the panelists you ask? The event will feature Frank Chen (Andreessen Horowtiz), Sharon Vosmek (Astia), Manu Kumar (K9 Ventures), Pascal Finette (WebFWD Mozilla) and Josh Elman (Greylock Partners) who will be sharing live from Silicon Valley, while the local panel will feature James Chan (Neoteny Labs), Jeffery Paine (Founder Institute), Hian (Asian Food Channel) and Zhou Wenhan (2359 Media), which are some of the familiar names in the local startup scene.

Event details:

Date:  12 November, Saturday

Time: 9.30am – 1.30pm

Venue: University Hall Auditorium, NUS

With the strong panelist line up, the event is definitely going to value add to any startup who is looking at raising funds. And the best part, it’s free! You will also get to mingle with like minded people at the event proper. The event will be on a Saturday, so sign up now at http://rainmakers3sg.eventbrite.com (50 more seats left) and say hi to me there!

To celebrate this milestone, Philippines’ first-ever shopping party at White Space Pasong Tamo Extension in Makati was held, where celebrities, bloggers, fashionistas, shoppers and merchants brought together and were entertained to a one-of-a-kind virtual shopping experience. This is a tribute to all of its merchants, showing how thankful Multiply to all of them who have made them who they were. The country’s top fashion bloggers, Laureen Uy and Camille, art blogger Rob Cham, food blogger Anton Diaz, lifestyle blogger Saab Magalona were seen in this by-invitation-only event.

From our earlier post last month, Multiply Philippines has gathered 5,000 additional registered merchants and added Smart Money as another method of payment. It works on the Philippines’ widest network using mobile phone or MasterCard by connecting to 9,000 BancNet and Megalink ATMs, over 4,000 Money In and Money Out Centers, 15 Partner Banks nationwide, 95,000 partner agents worldwide and 47 million subscribers.

Shoppers that attended the event – co-presented by Sun Cellular and supported by Banco De Oro – were able to browse 90 featured stores showcasing products across 16 categories such as fashion, accessories and gadgets. The event was not only intended for Multiply sellers but other brands and early-stage technopreneurs as well that want to have exposure to Multiply’s network of merchants and shoppers.

All guests were given special cards to share items and shops that catch their fancy during the event to their Facebook friends. Once they found those items and shops they like, they were able to “Like” them by tapping these cards at the terminals where the items were showcased using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology.

The fun and fashion night was hosted by Multiply user and model, Bianca Valerio and marked by a fashion show that showcased pieces from Multiply shops. All night long music was played by Techy Romantics and DJ Mars Miranda.

“Since August of last year, Filipinos regularly account for one of the highest view counts in the Asia Pacific region.”

Google launched YouTube in Philippines on October 18, making it the first in Southeast Asia and the 34^th country globally. At the same time, Google announced two premium local YouTube Channels: Radio TV Malacanang and Official Gazette. These presidential channels will provide an online library of audio and video coverage on government activities. This will make Philippines’ government more accessible for the society.

Several YouTube partners such as broadcasting firm ABS-CBN Corp, GMA Network, Inc, TV5, recording labels Viva Records, Vicor Records, Star Records, FILSCAP, Pinoytuner and Procter & Gamble attended the event.

Its localized version will aggregate and customize Philippine-based content on YouTube by categorizing browse pages and featured videos. This will deliver greater customer experiences for Filipinos and anyone who is interested in content related to the country. All videos related to and from the Philippines, recommended videos and popular videos will be easier to find by those who live in the Philippines and the YouTube partnership with Pinoytuner will expose independent music communities, along with the musicians and artists, to the users and members of the world’s largest online video community.

Monetization of the video views will be done via YouTube local partners with ad placements for the localized service as mentioned by Gautam Anand, Google’s Director of Content Partnerships for Asia Pacific. “Content providers have always been able to monetize views but with the localized service launched we could start monetizing views originating from the Philippines,” he said.

The statistics shows that 27 million home-based and 10 million foreign-based Filipinos are responsible for tens of millions of video views a day on YouTube. With these viewers spending over one million hours to watch YouTube videos every day shows how popular YouTube is and the main reason behind Google’s investment in this localized edition. Smith stated at the press conference how over three billion videos are viewed globally in a day and around 48 hours of videos are uploaded every minute.

In terms of growth, according to Julian Persaud, Google’s Managing Director for Southeast Asia, the Filipino online population is growing rapidly compared to the rest of Southeast Asia and the West: “North America growing just three per cent, and Europe eight per cent, the Philippines is growing at a remarkable 16 per cent according to ComScore.”

Other than Persaud and Smith, Lito Nadal, RTVM Director and Ramon A. Carandang, Philippines’ Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Secretary, that replaced the absence of His Excellency Benigno S. Aquino III, joined the event held at McKinley Hill Village, Fort Bonifacio, Taguig City.

“It’s my hope that this localized version of YouTube and that these two government channels will become instrumental in spurring the Filipino people to become more involved in governance, starting with familiarizing themselves with the issues”, is the major expectation in President Acquino’s message as read by Secretary Carandang.

On November 4, “NoyNoy” Aquino will be the first Asian Head of State to participate in YouTube’s WorldView series, a live interview set up where he will be answering selected questions from people all over the world. US President Barack Obama, UK Prime Minister David Cameron, and Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero were some of previous WorldView interviewees. For those who want to participate in this event, you may submit your questions at www.youtube.com/worldview and vote for questions to be posed to the President starting on October 21.

I was very honoured to have attended the press conference with Ethan Beard, Director of Platform Partnerships, Alexander Kleinberg, Head of Platform Partnerships for Asia-Pacific/Japan, Douglas Purdy, Director of Developer Relations and Kumiko Hidaka, Manager of Global Communications.

Opening up the press conference was the question of whether F8 Singapore would become an annual event. The Facebook team replied that the purpose of F8 was to show the capabilities of Facebook to the developers as well as to connect with the developer community in order to understand what they need. The Facebook team also mentioned that they hope to be able to bring F8 to the rest of the world and stressed that F8 Singapore would not be an annual event, rather it would probably coincide with product launches or whenever they have something of note to share with the community.

The Facebook team also acknowledged the question of why they took so long to come to Asia. Their reply was unapologetic while stressing that Facebook is a relatively young company that has been around for only 5 years. This time, they have made stops in Asia besides Singapore to Seoul, Korea and Tokyo, Japan. This move to reach out to Asia came because they recognise the potential in the developer community in Asia. When asked about Indonesia and whether they have plans to actively reach out to the developer community there, Alexander Kleinberg spoke up and said that it is within his plans because he knows that the developer spirit there is strong. He also mentioned that while Facebook has a branch in Singapore which is currently dealing with advertising and sales, there are plans underway to expand the functions. Alexander also stressed that while the office is based in Singapore, it is very much providing support for Asia as a whole.

Moving on to their agenda for this first F8 Singapore. It can be gleaned that Facebook is looking to attract developers to Facebook with factors such as a huge user base of 800 million people (with Singapore having the highest number of engaged users in terms of hours spent on Facebook), easy to use tools such as one-line APIs and the presence of a developer community with information and help readily made available. With the launch of the ticker and the timeline profile view, Facebook is rolling out a Open Graph API for developers to insert into their code, enabling updates to be posted simultaneously on all 3 platforms– the ticker, the timeline and the news feed. For more information, please visit the Facebook developer’s page.

In the press conference, there was mention about Facebook mobile and the building of apps for the mobile platform. As there are so many distinct platforms and models on the market, Facebook finds that it is hard to standardize the presentation. Their stand is that people choose different phones for their uniqueness and they want to honour that choice of the consumers so there are no plans to standardize Facebook mobile thus there will definitely be differences in user experience across platforms and models.

When asked about the compatibility of the web to mobile platform, Facebook is leaving it up to the app developers whether they want a mobile version of their app. Facebook wants to act as a catalyst, bringing the social component to the apps and helping it grow by placing people at the center of information. Facebook is not going to dictate the language that developers are coding in so expect that there will still be a disconnect between the web and the mobile experience. With 350 million mobile users, the onus lies on the developers if they wish to capitalise on the Facebook mobile platform. Having said that, Facebook is looking into html 5 and is set to embrace it for development. There are also various APIs made available for developers developing for the iOS and Android platform. Unfortunately, while Facebook recognise mobile being a platform for many users, there is no mention yet of support for developers looking to develop for the Windows Phone 7.

As for those interested in Facebook in China, the team is still reserving their comments. We will just have to wait and see if they would succeed where Google has failed.