First up was accelerate day at TechVenture2011. I attended the full conference at TV2010 and was even at some of the VIP events but this year I was too late getting back from the states so was only able to make the accelerate part of the event.

The main thrust of accelerate besides the speakers is the pitches from various startups in the region looking for cash.

You can check twitter #techventure and #accel2011 for the stream. Some good info in there…

I can’t say I saw something drop dead cool or must have but there was a number of solid offerings. In general though you can see how Singapore keeps evolving and is becoming quite the hotbed of startup and venture activity for Asia. I still feel that apart from China and India – Singapore and SEA is the other main place in the APAC to get it going  on.

Probably my highlight for the day was getting to hear Tim Draper of dfj.com speak twice. Once during the day at accelerate and once at night during FoundersDrinks. I was very impressed with his down to earth style, his poignant examples of business, and his gracious openness with the crowds. He answered a lot of questions and stuck around to talk to pretty much anyone who wanted to chat with him. It was not what I was expecting and I was pleasantly surprised. He shared a few Steve Jobs stories which was very cool. He made some interesting points about how powerful Steve was about changing the world and how is passing will leave a big hole to be filled within the industry.

I must say I was totally shocked during the evening event when Tim performed a song he had written about the venture industry.

I happened to record it with my iPhone – you can catch it here on Vimeo. I have not seen someone this famous from the tech industry belt out in song like that. Props.

Tim had some great points about how this is the best time ever to get started building something – he adamantly encouraged folks to ignore the downturn, the pessimism and to launch full in into building things and changing the world. It was welcome advice given the state of the world these days.

Thanks Tim for coming to Singapore and imparting your wisdom, positive attitude and your song on us!

Tim shared some book suggestions – one was “the startup game” – I would link to it from amazon but I can’t get logged in.

Tomorrow I hope to check Startup Weekend Singapore and JFDI.

laterz

Then the news hit – one building would house another, yes we need more, LV shop and the other would house two world famous clubs. I could care less about the LV shop but was mildly interested in a real international club hitting the Singapore scene. God knows the city needs it.

So when @groovemonkey mentioned that the Chemical Brothers were coming to town to play the new venue – we decided it was time to properly check out http://avalon.sg/

Could it be too much?

Far more than giving people what they want we want to be delivering what they will want, I hope to hear people say “I first heard that at Avalon”.

Reading a snippet like that from an interview with Steve Adelman one can assume that experiencing Avalon could be well – nothing short of amazing. So let me answer the interview question for Steve – yes it is too much. Too much pomp, circumstance, attitude, lousy service, smoke, and arrogance to probably last me a life time. Hell – if I get re-incarted I might just find that it is even too much for my second life as well.

So before I dig in, let me start with the good stuff.

• The venue is amazing. I think the external part of the venue was designed without Avalon in mind but I will give this one to the Avalon crew cause they need every bit of positive news they can get at this point.
• The internal design is super cool too but given the over abundance of cheap Thai smoke machines – it is hard to totally grok how amazing the place looks.  I suggest they run daytime tours with the lights on in hopes of maximizing the chances of making money.
• The sound system sounds stunningly good but since all I heard was an iPod running some genius techo playlist it was tough for me to fully appreciate the capabilities of it.
• The hiring of many international servers, female, wearing hot outfits is definitely different that most places in Singapore but it might be helpful if they were taught to smile, fake a slight bit of politeness and pull the stick out of their ass prior to coming to work.
• The view looking out from the club is also amazing and the internal design clearly shows this off but once again the internal haze made it mostly mute after about an hour of the club being open.

Enough of the good. Let’s get to the not so good.

• When one buys VIP tickets once expects some sort of treatment that the minions buying general tickets would not get. Maybe a special line, a free drink or at the very least a sticker that says VIP with a powerful enough glow to be seen through the internal micro-climate that produces pollution thicker than the haze on a bad day in Beijing. The door people/glorious ticket checkers also could not explain what the VIP tickets were for either. Nice.
• Upon entering the club, pre-haze, we found out that the VIP tickets offered us access to a top floor balcony with good views and seating. Wait – the seating could only be used if one bought about 2000 SGD worth of booze. Okay. Can we stand here then, seats with a small drink rail, and order some booze? Sure. But once people come who buy bottles we have to move you cause you have not bought a bottle. Great. So the VIP tickets don’t really offer us anything more than standing in the hallowed area while those buying bottles get better service. Awesome.
• We head to the bar to go singles on the booze and the bartender, nicest guy working in the place, offers us some F1 bottle specials. Perfect. Of course then he is interrupted by the manager wench, the one with the biggest stick, who informs him that one can only order a bottle if one is sitting in the areas that accommodate a bottle and to sit in those area one has to order a big huge bottle that cost an enormous amount of money. So in other words the specials don’t mean anything at all. Precisely.
• Enough of the deplorable drinking issues – by the way when we ordered our three singles drinks, 65 SGD, I had to go through yet another hazing because I had the gall to pay with my credit card. Yes – we locals like to use credits cards and most places take every credit ever invented, but the upper bar in Avalon was setup for cash – my bad again. So I hard to endure dirty looks and the service guy having to go somewhere else to run the card. I felt bad for putting them out having to pay for my overpriced drinks with my AMEX.
• Let’s get to the show stuff. The event used to be listed here – and this was the only place showing anything remotely looking like a schedule. It actually said the show was 9pm-2am. Given that the F1 was not over till after 9 and that linkin park was playing in the field – we figured the show wouldn’t get going to 11 or later. We decided to get there before 11 just in case seating/standing was a pain. The bar boy told us that some opening act wast around 12 and that the Chemical Brother was around 1:30am. Late but what can you do. Let’s just say that by 2am the club was so full of the fake smoke that even if you were standing on the DJ platform you still couldn’t see the DJ’s. There were no announcements, no lighting changes and zero visual cues as to who was spinning. For all we know there was no one spinning – just some music playing, some smoke smoking and the lights lighting.
• By 2:30am we decided to give it up. Pack our VIP tickets, our booze card (oh wait they dont have booze cards and are somewhat confused as to how to explain the process for coming back to get your booze) and our inhaled smoked and head home.

Disappointed? Just slightly. Appalled? More than a little bit.

Avalon needs their over payed developers/management to get actually show up to the office and fix the place before the word of mouth kills it.

One could buy some booze at the 7, hang on the clarke quay bridge and have a similar experience but for a lot less money and attitude.

Anyone know if the chemical brothers actually played last night?

Sure there were glitches, hiccups and plenty of chaos but that is also the part that makes it all that much better when the end result turns out to be so awesome. I think there were over 600 attendees, 100 plus hacks submitted, 100′s of helpers, mountains of food, open bar, swag and lots of smiles all around.

Some flickr photos…

more on Twitter… in fact the topic trended for a few days. Some will say due to the issues but I think it was due to how busy the place was and all the chatter in and outside of the event.

All I know is I met a lot of good people there and talked to a lot of them who told me many times how much fun they had.

General list of hacks here

Congrats to the winners, some flying to NY, and a huge thanks to all the people who helped at the event.

laterz!

Staying at the lalit ashok Bangalore which is near the BGP party headquarters. Last night there was a chief minister here supposedly resigning from politics. Total mob scene. I had to get through the line and almost got trampled by a cop but was saved by the huge hotel dude in the red turban.

Fun times!

On top of that been super busy at work, traveling like a mad man and working on lots of little interesting projects. All good – just slammed.

Koprol team been rocking – check the blog.

Been on a string of speaking gigs lately – The Mobile Marketing Conference. Also been lucky to get some nice quotes – Abs-Cbn Article. Hats off to all the hard working yahoo! folks who make it possible for me to enjoy the limelight.

Have another trip to the USA coming and some more speaking gigs – work is just a super fun place right now. Feeling amazingly fortunate.

Just a side note – why does it take me longer to enter America as a US Citizen then it takes to me enter Singapore where all I possess is a lowly employment pass? America needs some help but I feel totally at a loss to decide in which ways I can assist. Singapore might feel small and boring at times but I am stunned by how progressive the place is with the net connectivity, the ease of dealing with taxes and the growth – stunning.

I picked up an iPad in sing just after the iPad 2 was released. My gf is using it like mad now since my bro, @groovemonkey, picked up an iPad 2 for me in SXSW. I hardly used the iPad 1 but I can’t get enough of the iPad 2. Writing this column on it now using iA writer. Love this freaking app. I am also on a plane, in economy, drinking a Jim beam black and ginger ale (sing air rocks for having this booze), but I feel comfortable flipping open my smart cover and banging away on the fake keyboard. I never opened my laptop in economy since it is just too much a pain in the ass.

I have tried the galaxy tab, the xoom (doomed), and some of the clones. Nice if you want the notion of what a cheap pc clone was in the 90′s but just not that elegant. I can’t get emotionally invested.

Apple set the bar high – good luck to the others trying to beat it. Competition is amazing but it stuns me how msft has no play in tablets. Poor Balmer.

And yes – I used to have a newton.

I thought it was amazing.

Peace

Awesome.

Thanks Sarah!

If you want to see more about SparxUp – go here: http://www.sparxup.com/

More on Indonesia scene: http://dailysocial.net/

My slides from SparxUp: http://www.slideshare.net/dreampipe/sparxup

Podcast on Asia : http://thisweekinasia.net/2010/11/this-week-in-asia-episode-74-the-indonesia-internet-juggernaut/

long live Koprol!

Been at the Sparxup event which has been awesome. Just check out Sarah Lacy over at TechCrunch for all the latest coverage.

I presented during the morning session and if you are interested my deck can be found here.

Monday we have a minty launch event and a blogger meet up at night at Loewy. All great stuff.

The volcano action has been a bummer and I hope it clears up soon and the area returns to normal. Lots of people are in a bad sort over this and I feel for them.

I always get asked about Indonesia, since I spend a lot of time here, and people wonder what the biggest issue might be for Indo’s long term success. I have one word for you but as always a picture is worth a thousand words:

I have been coming here for about 10 years and regularly for the last 18 months or so and the traffic is getting worse and worse.

It is not uncommon to waste an hour or more getting from one part of town to another. Even on the weekends now the traffic is getting bad – for sure the whole snarl has to be a drain on business.

It will take years to fix it but there is not even any signs of anyone doing anything about it. Everyone cuts corners. There are carpool lanes but you can rent someone along the way to make it look like you have a carpool. There are bus lanes with cars in them. There are pillars that were once erected for tollways or overpasses but they were never completed. There is no work being done on a subway or an above ground train.

Jakarta will suffer if something is not done soon but I fear the government will not be able to tackle it and corruption will force more failed attempts. I think immediately they should instigate some sort of central congestion based pricing cause we all know money will be the only way to impede the issue even a slight bit.

I love Indonesia but the traffic is starting to grind on me the wrong way.

more soon!

I first wrote about Sing here – Musings on Singapore… Most of what I said there still applies I think.

Sure – the economy is cooking and sing dollar is almost as nutty as the Baht but I would have way more confidence in the Sing dollar long term.

When it comes to the startup scene though I think there is a chance things change but so far it is tough to tell. I think Sarah Lacy is also picking up on some this with her article here:

There’s also another problem: One employer has optimized the system to find and make lucrative offers to the smartest kids in the system– that’s right, the Government. People who could have made the country’s top entrepreneurs instead make comfortable salaries trying to craft policy to encourage people to be entrepreneurs.

That comment is so telling and I also feel like you see a lot of zombie like easy startups but it is early days and Sarah also says she thinks people should to pay attention to Singapore. I agree but I tend to think the real action will be regional but possibly based out of Singapore.

Of course throw in some web celeb spotting at the Butter Factory to help the hype machine continue unabated.

Will be speaking here next and then over to Indo to speak at SparxUp.

cya

We should have another one this week with some special guests from Indonesia!

This week in Indo and then off to Bkk for Barcamp. This is one of the biggest in the region!

After Barcamp back to Singers and then maybe KL, Indo and possibly China.

So much going on but still having fun.

cya at barcamp!

ps. just back from India – more on that later. Some photos here.

I can’t speak for all genres but when it comes to consumer internet products/sites I can speak pretty assuredly since this is my space. Not many things from Asia are used by folks outside their own region. Take Agoda, started in Asia and becoming a world-wide product but is part of Priceline. Alibaba and its auction/buyers site is starting to make it WW since it is for global buyers/sellers but it is not really a consumer thing.

There are examples of Asian companies, Indonesia’s Koprol, getting bought by Yahoo! with ambitions to grow their product past the shores of Indonesia. Recent article about that here.

Still though you don’t many stand alone consumer web plays being born from Asia and getting global love. So one of my theories has been that the Asian money will just start buying their way to global domination. In Japan that is exactly what is happening with the DeNa deal. There Plus+ platform play also looks pretty interesting as well.

So stay tuned – Asia is starting to come your way – whether you happen to be in Asia or not.