During the recent visit to Taipei, I visited the famed National Palace Museum. The Qian Long Chao new media art exhibition featured this Trees of colors interactive installation powered by Kinect. The installation detect the visitors dress color and decorates the Qianlong vase accordingly. You can view the video on Youtube.
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Sunday, 8 December 2013
Wednesday, 10 July 2013
Summer sun shines on the green meadow full of dandelions and the huge Djangocon circus tent. The fantastic setting of this conference had one flaw. The roar of airplanes from the nearby airport overhead.
The ever creative conference organizers announced a photography contest dubbed 'Djangojet'. The contest required us to capture the picture of Jet planes and share it on instagram with #djangojet hashtag. My photograph bagged the prize.
I took this picture with Samsung Galaxy S2 smart phone while waiting in line for lunch. It captures the people enjoying the sunny day around the Django circus and the airplane in the bright blue sky.
You don't need fancy camera to take a good picture, your smart camera phone can do the job well. The composition and the story makes a good photograph.
Wednesday, 12 June 2013
Traveled to Johannesburg, South Africa, to attend African Network For Localization (ANLoc)'s Terminology and Localisation in Africa and Beyond Conference earlier this year. It gave me an opportunity to learn the history of African languages in cyberspace and meet the people behind various multilingual initiatives. The conference brought together language professionals, academics and open source developers to learn about terminology development and localization platforms.
Language is the key for unlocking the potential of Africa. The African Network for Localization (ANLoc) is a non-profit that supports African language technology development. The ANLoc partners were instrumental in the numeration and standardization of 100 African languages. The ANLoc partners and sub-projects developed Unicode fonts, keyboard input systems, translation tools and terminologies for African languages. They also devised training programs for building sustainable volunteer driven localization communities.
The conference featured technical talks, break-out sessions and brainstorming sessions. There were in-depth discussions on the various facets of multilingualism in cyberspace in context to African languages, the challenges of translating computing terms in African languages, the use of machine translation methods and the development of linguistics resources such language dictionaries and terminologies. The conference organizers maintained a good balance of discussions, along with practical hands-on workshops. The size of conference made interactions easier. It was good to meet Mozilla localization contributors from over 10 African languages during this event.
ANLoc's project localized widely used open source Mozilla Firefox web browser in many African languages. The ground realities of mobilizing and sustaining communities in Africa are apparent. Finding contributors is difficult. Most contributors refrain from volunteering due to economic reasons. The overall economic development and access to digital technologies is limited to few regions in Africa. The availability of Internet has improved but the cost is still prohibitively high. I shared my community building experiences from similar resource constrained environments across the world.
Participated in break-out sessions on developing style guides for localization and Mozilla localization processes.
The FirefoxOS localization sprint was organized as part of the event. The localizers worked in groups to translate Mozilla FirefoxOS mobile operating system using Pootle web translation platform.
Talked about Android Internationalization and adding African language fonts and keyboard support to Android. Android currently supports few major African languages: Swahili, Amharic, Zulu and Afrikaans, but more African language coverage is needed. Cheap Android devices are flooding the African market. Today, the first internet experience for many is not on a desktop computer but on mobile phones. Mobiles play a great role in accessing information and even transfering money.
The brainstorming sessions were very interesting. The problems discussed were both at an economic and social level. These problems are similar in nature to the countries where I have been working for the past few years.
The lack of availability of African local content on the internet was a major hurdle. The African diaspora spread across the world and few local governments and non profit organizations were involved in developing local language content. The tide seems to be turning now, with increasing availability of the Internet on mobile phones. Social media and user generated content is now bridging the gap.
This conference gave me a framework for my future activities in Africa. I'll be traveling to East Africa to participate in Tech4Africa Nairobi Tech Day and organize localization hackathons. Such events will help us work on Mozilla Firefox in some of the major languages and help build sustainable Mozilla communities in Africa.
Tuesday, 30 April 2013
Whoever said "Change is slow" hasn't been to Myanmar (also known as Burma). In seven short months, the country transformed into the something I now barely recognize. Getting Myanmar visa never been this easy, many direct flights to Yangon from all international hubs in South East Asia everyday. The Yangon airport is chocked with tourists, the prices just went through the roof. This time I didn't bring any crisp, unmarked hundred dollar notes to haggle for better exchange rate with the punters on the Yangon streets.
Walking out of the airport, I realized Myanmar has switched to driving on left side of the road. The roads are clogged with second-hand Japanese minivans, imported SUV's and decades old taxis jostling for space. For a moment, I longed for the small colorful Mandalay jeeps plying the quiet Yangon streets at sedate pace. Stuck in the traffic jam, I killed time by counting different cars with left and right steering wheels.
If you get stuck in the traffic jam, you can use the 3G mobile network to catch up with your email. Mobile SIM cards doesn't cost US$2000 anymore. Mobile SIM cards with data plan can be rented for $10 a day. If you are lucky you might even find $20 voice only tourist SIM cards. Mobile connections are still very expensive, it costs US$150-$200 for mobile connection. Perhaps it might soon change when the telecommunications market opens up in next few years.
Back in Myanmar after two years for Barcamp Yangon 2013, the biggest community organized un-conference in the world. This year over 6000 participants are expected to attend this event. Barcamps are hugely popular in this country, the event addresses the digital divide with open sharing and even help kick-start technology entrepreneurship activities.
Few years ago, young students would attend to use the free wireless internet access at Barcamp Yangon. Internet access was restricted to educational institutions and Internet Cafes. Today you can get internet connection in restaurants, cafes and even at home. It is easy to buy personal computers, smart phones and tablets locally. There will be explosive growth of internet users in Myanmar.
During Barcamp Yangon 2011 I kick-started the effort to translate Firefox web browser into Burmese. I have been mentoring the local Mozilla Myanmar community ever since. It had been a long road, we had many problems: building Mozilla community, finding volunteers for translations and deploying right web based localization tools. This trip to Myanmar would give me a chance to work with the community and resolve translation issues that are blocking Firefox Burmese release.
Barcamp Yangon 2013
Once again the barcamp organizers and volunteers efficiently organized such a large event. The event attracted significant
sponsorship this year, the talks in main rooms were marketing pitches from those sponsors. There were some interesting talks 'Make the web speak your language' and 'Women in technology' panel discussion. It was good to see many international participants at the event, they were in Myanmar on vacation and decided to attend the event. The Q&A session with the international barcampers was a good experience, it provided an opportunity for young Burmese barcampers to interact and get perspective on wide ranging subjects.
In my talk How to become a Firefox Hacker I shared how one can leverage existing web development skills to contribute to Firefox. Mozilla Myanmar localization lead contributor Zinmin shared the Firefox localization process and gave a demo of Pootle web based translation tool. The participants were encouraged to join the Mozilla Myanmar community and localization sprint after the Barcamp Yangon.
Attending Barcamp Yangon gave me a good opportunity to keep the pulse the fast changing Myanmar. It was good to reconnect with the open source communities and meet people in technology and non-profit world. Next year I hope to attend Barcamp Mandalay, it seems to have more developer focused audience.
Mozilla Myanmar Localization Sprint
After Barcamp Yangon, Zinmin organized Burmese localization sprint in Yangon. The localization sprint provides hands-on training for new localizers. After a quick introduction from Zinmin and the team started translating remaining strings Firefox Aurora. The Pootle web based tool does perform well bandwidth constrained environment such as Myanmar. Zinmin cleaned up most of the translation errors that were blocking the productization of Firefox Burmese Aurora.
During the sprint, Sajal and I spent some time testing Firefox Mobile. Firefox Mobile is important in countries like Myanmar where there is a large growing mobile web users than desktop users. However due to economic sanctions Google Playstore is not available in this country. Burmese users resort to various alternative app stores to find apps for Android devices. Another problem is network latency, for instance, tweeting pictures was really difficult. We looked in how to test Android apps network latency and performance issues.
You can read more about Mozilla L10N sprint on Zinmin's blog post in Burmese and the download the latest Firefox Burmese Aurora here.
Technology Entrepreneurship and Start ups in Myanmar
Spent some time meeting various technology entrepreneurs in Yangon. Start-up incubators like Rocket Internet and few others opened shop in Myanmar. Expats and Burmese diaspora are returning to start technology start-ups. Along with opportunities from the burgeoning economy there are challenges: People with good technical skills are hard to come by, the overhead costs are really high due to inflated prices.
I hope you'll get a chance to visit Myanmar and experience its rich culture. Perhaps you might wanna join the
Barcamp Yangon next year or spend some time working I'll help you find a co-working space in Yangon.
Monday, 4 March 2013
Somewhere over the ocean, en route to Hanoi on Cebu Pacific Air. I woke up with a parched mouth. Careful not wake the sleeping passengers, I whispered to the flight attendant for a glass of water. In the soft glow of the cabin lights, the flight attendant looked angelic. She said in a sweet voice '15 Pesos Please'. Cut to reality, crammed in the middle seat and my wallet safely stowed in the overhead compartment, I just couldn't believe the absurdity of it.
Forget the dancing flight attendants (See it on Youtube) and rock bottom ticket prices. Without basic services like a free glass of water, you can't expect any brand loyalty. Budget airlines do have to walk a tight rope in these trouble times, but they can't be this frugal.
What is your take on this? Share your experiences on budget airlines.
Wednesday, 27 February 2013
Philippines has rich linguistic diversity. Through out its history Philippines was influenced by language and traditions of those who came in search of gold and other precious minerals. Today, you can hear smattering of Sanskrit, Arabic, Chinese, English, and Spanish in Tagalog.
Tagalog is the widely used Philippine dialect. Filipino, the National Language of the Philippines is composed primarily of Tagalog words, idioms, and phrases. Urban Filipinos are fluent in English. Traveling few hours away from Metro Manila, I noticed people preferred to speak in Tagalog.
The Mozilla Tagalog localization was kick-started by Seth Bindernagel around 2010. After a hiatus, the Tagalog localization effort now gained momentum thanks to good leadership and innovative community initiatives to encourage localization (See Help Us Translate Firefox Aurora to Tagalog & Get a Mini-Shirt). We also have new localization teams for Chavacano, Bikol and Lloko languages.
The hackathon in Manila provided me an opportunity to connect with the teams and I hope to keep this momentum going. Shared few ideas and emphasized on quality and consistence of translation. Such events are good for not only attracting new translators, but also discuss the problems in translation. The event attracted students, bloggers, technology professionals and contributors from Tagalog Wikipedia.
The Firefox Tagalog localization looks very promising. Came back from the hackathon with confidence that we can start productization very soon. And don't forget to join the next Tagalog Firefox Translation Marathon on April 9, 2013
Thursday, 31 January 2013
Just across the border lies Laos. This country of fun loving gentle people had a tumultuous history. I recently visited Laos for the first time to help build Mozilla community in Laos.
Writer Thomas Wanhoff lives Vientiane. He is the organizer of Barcamp Vientiane. Mozilla participated in the previous Barcamp Vientiane. Thomas helped me understand the Lao history and culture over few bottles of dark Lao beer. Lack of infrastructure and resources hampered economic growth of Laos. Development aid that poured into this country had made very little difference. Recent efforts to develop internet entrepreneurship haven't been successful. Laos is slowly overcoming these problems. The 3G mobile network provides inexpensive internet connectivity. Large construction projects can be seen in Vientiane, new roads are replacing the pot holed dirt roads.
Visited ICT Association of Laos to talk about the Mozilla mission to promote innovation and choice on the web. Presented a demo of FirefoxOS and interacted with the team of localizers who are interested in localizing Firefox in Lao.
Also visited the ICT Center at Dang Dok Campus of University of Laos(NUoL). The university campus is connected with high-speed optic fiber network. ICT Center staff gave me tour of their new e-learning centers computer lab and digital multimedia studio and post-production facilities. The ICT center team expressed their interest to support Mozilla activities.
Now Lao web fonts are available Google web fonts (Early Access) system. This would enable Lao speakers to read localized content on computers and mobile devices that do not include Lao fonts.
The Mozilla Story with Lao Subtitles (Translated by Patthana Vilay)
Next step towards building Mozilla Lao community is get a core team organized and plan community events such as Mozilla Web Maker, Web developer events and Mozilla Lao Firefox localization sprints. Get in touch with me, if you want to get involved in Mozilla Lao community building effort.
Saturday, 15 December 2012
Last year we kick-started Mozilla Firefox Aurora Khmer localization effort at Barcamp Phnom Penh 4. Now a year later, Thanks to efforts of Mozilla Khmer L10N team and invaluable support of several people from various organizations. We have a successful release of Firefox Khmer.
Barcamp Phnom Penh is community organized two day un-conference held in the capital city of Cambodia. Walking around Barcamp Phnom Penh at University of Puthisastra in central Phnom Penh, you'll encounter young Cambodian's engaging in social media on latest smart phones and tablets everywhere. There are numerous booths advertising smart phones, right next English language schools, Media and NGO organizations.
At Barcamp Phnom Penh 5 this year there was marked improvement in quality of talks. The technology related talks were really in-depth and encouraged participation from audience. Cambodia has good English language penetration, learning English ensures better livelihood. In country where 50% of population live below the poverty line, the Cambodian youth have an insatiable thirst for learning and making a better life. This spirit attracts me to Cambodia time and again.
Firefox Khmer, FirefoxOS and Web API
On the first day of Barcamp Phnom Penh, I talked Mozilla mission and future of Web, As a platform. The demo of development version of FirefoxOS phone was well received.
The next day Vannak ENG talked about the about Mozilla localization and walked the audience through various steps of translating Firefox. It was great to see people hanging out after the talk to interact with Vannak. Such interactions help us build a good contributor community and help keep the Firefox translations update-to-date every 6 weeks
At the end of Barcamp Phnom Penh, I gave lightening talk titled '6 kick-ass things you can do with your browser'. The talk provided a whirlwind tour of Mozilla Web API and their status.
Khmer Language support in Firefox Mobile on Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean)
I met Danh Hong, the creator Khmer Web Fonts and we talked about the font rendering issues in Firefox Mobile(Bug 793474) running on Android Jelly Bean (4.x). These issues are now resolved in new HarfBuzz update (Bug 780409)
Few other issues in Khmer language support remain. Android Jelly Bean (4.1) supports Khmer rendering well, but Khmer fonts are not shipped with Android. You need to use third party app to install them.
On Desktop computers, though high quality Khmer fonts are available for various operating systems. There is lack of proper documentation about the installation process and the license are not very clear.
Upcoming Barcamps in Cambodia
The barcamp camp team deserves a pat on the back for organizing yet another fantastic event. Next year they are organizing five Barcamps all over Cambodia.
- BarCamp Angkor Siem Reap): 23-24 February 2013, www.angkor.barcampcambodia.org
- BarCamp Battambang : 25-26 May 2013, www.bb.barcampcambodia.org
- BarCamp Kampong Cham : 24-25 August 2013, www.kc.barcampcambodia.org
- BarCamp Phnom Penh : 19-20 October 2013, www.barcampphnompenh.org
- BarCamp Sihanoukville (The Beach): 7-8 December 2013 www.sv.barcampcambodia.org
Perhaps I'll try organize a hands-on workshop on web technologies at Hacker Space Phnom Penh or Small World Phnom Penh. If you are interested, get in touch with me.
Monday, 22 October 2012
Spotted this interaction Ads display in a shopping mall in Warsaw. Watch the video here
Marketed by Lemon & Orange, this Kinect powered gesture controlled interaction display shows talk bubbles with products over the heads of shoppers walking by.
It is a nice hack. No, it doesn't read minds.
Thursday, 12 July 2012
The city of Hong Kong hosted the Gnome Asia Summit this year. GNOME is a popular open source desktop environment for gnu/Linux Operating System. This annual event attracts people from diverse open source communities across Asia.
GNOME Asia Summit kicked off with the pre-event GNOME Design Workshop. The workshop helped GNOME contributors and developers understand GNOME environment design process. The workshop was intended for novice and experience UX designers, graphic artists and experienced desktop users.
The usability of the Open Source desktop environments has always left something to be desired. The keynote talks at the event delivered by GNOME Developers were very interesting. The GNOME community which was mired by conversation and dissent. Recently the developers revamping the software under the 'Every Detail Matters' initiative. Efforts to bring new UX paradigms into GNOME are also in full swing. Check out the GNOME team mock-ups here.
3D software used to create eye-popping prototypes. Don't believe me, check out this YouTube video Channel.
In the last few years, Javascript programming language had become very popular. Today applications written in Javascript are just as fast as native applications. Gnome-shell window manager is written using Javascript, thanks to GObject Introspection libraries such as Gjs and Seed. This means you can use your web development skills to enhance and extend your GNOME Desktop functionality.
The Gnome-shell add-ons is integrated closely with the Gnome Extensions service. It lets you share your extensions easily, search and enabling new features is a breeze.
The summit also featured talks related to teaching Open Hardware concepts, Gnome Accessibility, Community development and Gender equality in Open Source communities and Localization tools and GNOME predictive text input system
Sunday, 24 June 2012
Opportunities abound for those who think big in Vietnam. Recently 5Desire, a local startup accelerator organized Startup Investment hour. The event attracted a large gathering of young bright eyed entrepreneurs in Hanoi City.
After some informal social networking over a cup of coffee. The event kicked off with an interactive session on investment opportunists for startups in Vietnam. Four startups did elevator pitches and fending some real hard questions from the investor panel and the audience.
Startup culture in this booming economy is still in its infant stage. Events like do help young entrepreneurs learn more about the opportunities startups with some great ideas.
View more pictures from the event on 5Desire page
.Monday, 11 June 2012
Didn't expect it would be so hard to buy Arudino open source prototyping platform hardware in Hong Kong. On a brief stopover in Hong Kong to attend Gnome Asia 2012. It would take a lot of time to hunt for Arduino boards in Hong Kong's famed electronics markets. It would be wise to do some homework before hitting the markets.
Got a lucky break while digging through the Dimsum Labs facebook page. Found the Candy Chan's shop address in Sham Shui Po in Kawloon. The shop's website lists all the Arduino boards, shields and various electronic components. Navigating the maze of shops in Sham Shui Po is not for faint hearted. You won't have any problems finding these shops with the direction given below.
Tell How Technologies
- G37, Wonder Building, 161-175 Fuk Wa Street, Shamshuipo, Kawloon, Hong Kong
- Phone: 27427881 / 68085307 / 86-15012528870
- Email:tellhow37 (at) yahoo (dot) com (dot) hk
- Website: www.tellhow-tech.com
Take the MRT to the Sham Shui Po station, exit through Gate D2 on to Fuk Wa street. You will find yourself facing the Golden Computer Center, the Wonder building is on your right. You will find the shop on the ground floor of this building.
Stumbled upon Man Wai-Yun's shop that offered a large collection of sensors, kits from DFRobot.com. You need to wait few days for the components to be shipped in from Taiwan.
Rainbow Computer Peripherals
- LG No.60, Golden Building 146-152 Fuk Wah Street, Kawloon, Hong Kong
- Phone: 2728-1819
- Email: info (at) abcde (dot) com
- Website: www.rcpcomputer.com
The shop in the basement level of the Golden Computer Center. The best way to find the shop would be to ask the guard at security desk to guide you to the shop No. 60.
It is easy to find open hardware online but finding a shop that stocks them would be really hard. Next time I'll buy the open hardware online at DealExtreme.com .
Friday, 8 June 2012
Good news for digital nomads around the world. Hanoi now has a co-working space. 5Desire startup incubator and consulting company helped us create this co-working space. Register here and come prop yourself up on a couch for free!.
If you are feeling generous we could definitely use some money for a dedicated high-speed Internet connection and a coffee machine.
Hanoi Co-Working Space: How came to be ?
I had moved to Vietnam two years ago. Had been looking for a co-working space in Hanoi ever since. Working out of bedroom at night and coffee shops by day just works, but soon you'll start craving for some company of your own kind. Finally after a year of work the co-working space is now a reality. A big hug to all my friends in Vietnam and across the world for all the support.
Barcamper Preetam Rai once shared his vision of building a inter network of hackerspaces, co-working spaces and startups across South East Asia. These spaces could be a harbinger of innovation, exchange of ideas and foster new startups.
Leave a comment and let me know what you think?
Wednesday, 14 March 2012
Beercamp, the tech-cultural revolution that has spread across Asia is finally coming to Hanoi.
It's like Barcamp-but with more beer. And every month too. We will hold the inaugural Beercamp event this Saturday, March 17th 2012, 5:30pm at The Windmill 31 Đặng Trần Côn, Đống Đa, Hanoi.
What is a Beercamp?
Beercamp is about people and connections. There is no topic, no agenda: the focus is on meeting up and finding common interests. It’s an reason for geeks to get out and socialize. It’s a chilled-out atmosphere where we can talk shop and talk business, and a way to stay in touch with the community and what’s happening.
Seriously: it's a great way to chill out, talk about what matters and meet other geeks in a fun, beery environment.
Beercamp Hanoi Event Details
- Date: Saturday, March 17, 2012
- Time: 5:30 PM till 7:30 PM
- Cost: Free Event (Buy your own drink, better get me to buy you one :)
- Venue: The Windmill, 31 Đặng Trần Côn, Đống Đa, Hanoi Phone: +84 4 38233774
- Google Map: http://g.co/maps/6nn7b
- Directions: Heading West on Cát Linh turn left immediately after Tôn Đức Thắng
- About the Venue: Czech-style brewery restaurant built around a large courtyard. The home brew beer costs around 28,000VND. You also have food and non-alcoholic beverages available on the menu. We'll be sitting outside so dress warmly.
- Contact: Arky (@playingwithsid)
- Email: HITMANARKY (AT) GMAIL (DOT) COM
View Larger Map
Watch this space for updates and future beercamp announcements.
Monday, 5 March 2012
A year ago I never heard of barcamps. My ideal conference meant sitting among spiderweb of power cables and writing strings of computer code with bunch of geeks. Things changed when I moved to Vietnam. In this part of world the best conferences are barcamps. So I started attended Barcamps in Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia and in Vietnam.
At these Barcamp friends would ask me, when we will have a barcamp in Hanoi. The last barcamp in Hanoi was organized in 2009. Things soon feel into place when I met Christoph Kruppa at Barcamp Saigon (Winter) 2011. He connected me to few people in Hanoi who also wanted to another barcamp in Hanoi.
And today I am happy to tell all friends, Barcamp Hanoi is here. Don't forget to come and attend it.
Barcamp Hanoi 2012 Event Details
- Date: Sunday, 22 April 2012
- Location: FPT University 15B Tôn Thất Thuyết, Cau Giay District Hanoi, Vietnam map
- Website : http://www.barcamphanoi.org/
- Twitter: @barcamphanoi
- Twitter hashtag: #barcamphanoi
What is a barcamp ?
BarCamp is a user-generated event — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — focusing on technology as well as teaching and learning.
Saturday, 3 March 2012
FOSS@HUS is annual technology festival organized by the Hanoi University of Sciences, Hanoi. This event encourages the students of the university to learn and contribute to the Free and Open Source software. This year, the event featured talks on Fedora community, LibreOffice, Open Street Map (OSM) and Open VoIP solutions.
Mozilla Firefox Developer Tools
The Mozilla Firefox Developer tools talk introduced the features that help accelerate web development. The Mozilla Firefox design is driven by user needs. The new developers tools are good example of such focus. The talk encouraged audience to download the Nightly, Aurora builds of Mozilla Firefox and try out Web Inspector, Web Console, Scratchpad Javascript editor and Style inspector. Written in Javascript these web developers tools are great for budding Firefox hackers.
Firefox Web developer tools
View more presentations from playingwithsid
Yang helped translate the talk in Vietnamese
The FOSS@HUS organisers and speakers
Attending Barcamp Saigon gives you a glimpse of the new Vietnam. As you travel from the Ho Chi Minh city center towards the RMIT International University, the overloaded motor bikes and street hawkers in large conical hats are soon replaced by swank cars and posh apartment buildings. The Barcamp Saigon registration desk was already bustling with people when I arrived at RMIT campus. Everywhere you look, you will see fresh young faces. You can see the aspiration of the country in the faces.
Traveled from my home in Hanoi to attend Barcamp Saigon on December 11, 2011. Walking through the main hall of the Barcamp Camp, you'll see students, IT professionals, expats working in technology startups. The Barcamp Saigon itself is organized by a group of expats and local volunteers.
There are Job boards advertising new positions in startups, online book seller Tiki.vn's booth, RMIT education booth and free coffee from a new cafe outlet in the main hall. The Kindle Fire on display at Tiki.vn's booth was certainly drawing quite a lot of interest. Judging by the Barcamp talks, there seems to be a marked interest in the technology, gaming and entrepreneurship.
Event Registration Desk
Main Hall
Barcampers at the opening Session
Voting for the Talks
Electronic Arts (EA) talk
Technology Entrepreneurship, Startups, Angel Investors in Vietnam
Internet Governance in Vietnam
Skunkworks.vn Gamification talk
Javascript Libraries Talk
The Javascript talk in Vietnamese attracted a large crowd. Talking to people at the barcamp made me realize the need for Mozilla developer engagement in the region. My conversation with the Ubuntu community members, Teachers, Students expressed their interest for such engagement. Later on I meetup with Lilly Nguyen from UCLA to learn about her experiences with FLOSS communities in Vietnam.
Mozilla Engagement at Barcamp Saigon
We managed to schedule two Mozilla talks at Barcamp Saigon. Participants learnt about the story behind Mozilla project and how to contribute to Mozilla software. Vu Hung gave a talk about Mozilla Vietnamese localization project and I talked about testing the latest Firefox Mobile for Android.
The Mozilla Story
Mozilla Vietnamese Localization
Vu Hung contributes Vietnamese translations to Mozilla Firefox and other FLOSS projects such as LibreOffice. In this Vietnamese language talk he explained various aspects of Mozilla Localization; the software and the challenges of localization. Thanks to volunteer efforts Mozilla Firefox is available in Vietnamese. The talk encouraged people to join and help translate Vietnamese localization of Mozilla software.
Vu Hung Localization talk
Testing Mozilla Firefox Mobile
The talk introduced the Mozilla Mobile Test Drivers program. The program aims to attract early adopters to try out Firefox mobile nightly and report problems. The response was positive, there were very few Android devices capable of running Mobile Firefox around. However I except this to change very soon here in Vietnam.
Firefox mobile Get, Set .... Test
View more presentations from playingwithsid
We had good number of people attend the talk. Ubuntu Vietnam community was also present in the room. At the end of the session I invited Ubuntu Vietnam community to briefly present their work to the audience.
Ubuntu-VN Community Talk
Developing IT Community in Saigon
Unlike other barcamp talks, this interactive session discussed various ideas for developing an active IT community in Saigon. The participants decided to start a new community called 'Creative Saigon' to further this goal. I was really happy that my suggestion 'Creative Saigon' got the most votes. Guess the offer of 'Free Beer' also helped.
Towards the end of the discussion, I put forth a challenge to be pro-active about developing the IT community by starting right now. Would anyone join me for the first Beercamp Saigon next day?. As expected no one showed up at the Beercamp Saigon expect for my friends from Hanoi Lilly and Mieh. As of writing this post, Beercamp Saigon is a regular event in Ho Chi Minh City.
Wrapping Up The Barcamp
The highlight of the evening was not announcing results for the best barcamp talk, but blowing up the digital projectors light bulb in the main auditorium. The MC decided to play the Korean Girl Band 'Bring the boy out' video while waiting for the results. That was one *hot* video indeed.
Taking the feedback from the barcampers was important part of the evening. We heard people share the best and worst thing about the Barcamp Saigon. The Barcamps regular fixture Preetam Rai encouraged everyone to participate in the upcoming Barcamps in Cambodia. Someone asked 'What about Barcamp Hanoi?' Well, we are going to have one in the next few months.
Let us hear some feedback
Barcamp's changed my life
I didn't get my Barcamp Saigon T-shirt
Preetam Rai at Barcamp Saigon
Come join us at Barcamps in Cambodia
Friday, 25 November 2011
Mozcamp Asia 2011 was held in
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 18-20 November 2011. The two day event was packed with interactive presentations, discussions on new products, engagement opportunities, and community building.
Mozilla communities from various Asian countries participated in this event. You view more information about various communities and their activities on the Mozilla Asia Community Quilt.
The event theme was "Many Voices, One Mozilla", and had three broad tracks of engineering, training and regionalization, the content for this MozCamp is now available online here
Friday, 18 November 2011
Sunday, 6 November 2011
Barcamp Phnom Penh 4 event is mentioned on this weeks Mozilla Contributor Engagement Video. You can find photos and presentation from Barcamp Phnom Penh 4 in this blog post.
You can view this video on Youtube. Don't forget to subscribe to Mozillians Youtube channel.
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