Barcamp Malaysia – Nicely Done! (Day 1)

July 28, 2008

Yesterday evening marked the conclusion of the two day Barcamp Malaysia ‘unconference‘ which I personally thought was a roaring success! The presenters were awesome, and the participants were amazing and fun to be around. The energy in the place was off the hook!

I arrived late on opening day, Saturday, on account of working on some stuff with Roni of Ureka Labs the night prior. Actually it was more on account of flipping thru Facebook after that.

“I gotta go catch some z’s. Tomorrow gotta wake up early”, said Mr. Time Management and proceeded to pointlessly page through his friends’ profiles on Facebook until 4 a.m.

Plus, I was supposed to have manned the registration counter in the morning. So much for that. Sorry dudes! But being an unconference and very flexible, somebody else volunteered (I would assume) to cover for me. Aah, the spirit of community!

I missed the ‘GSoC’ and Drupal sessions in the morning, but got there just in time for Roni’s presentation on ‘Monetizing Youtube’. I, for one, think he’s definitely got something going with his 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 Developers’. Talented guy that Kris.

After lunch and some mingling, I decided to see the session on ‘Aggressive Web Development’. I can’t say I agree with everything MikkoK from GettingPersonal had to say, but I definitely think his thoughts on self confidence and positive vibes rang true.

The end of day 1 saw a sizeable group attend Arzumy, Kris khaira and Khailee Ng‘s passionately energetic presentation, ‘Entrepreneur+Developer Gangbang‘. Kris’s portion of the presentation about co-working spaces especially interested me.

Some of the participants slept over at the venue, most blacking out part-way through a movie we played on projector, while I braved the night alone watching ‘The Big Bang Theory’, a sitcom about a couple of geeks whose new neighbour happens to be a hot albeit slightly airheaded babe. The nerds go over to introduce themselves, geeky hilarity ensues! Thanks to Ching (I think that’s how you spell her name, Daniel’s counterpart in any case) for introducing that series.

Filed under: Jomcode, Observations | Comments (3)