FB post #2 - Have you been working diligently but other people just don’t see your hard work? Perhaps your performance is not yet good enough to attract their attention? Perhaps you need some “selling skills” to make them notice you? Or perhaps you are not exposed enough that they don’t even know your existence?

FB post #3 - Sometimes what we want to do conflicts with what other important people in our life expect us to do. Maybe we haven’t learned enough of their needs. Maybe we don’t know enough of our own ability. Or maybe we haven’t communicated enough with them on what we can do for them.

How do you respond to these posts and questions? I’m in brainstorming stage to prepare for an upcoming talk on personal branding. Your comments are welcome.

I was in the workshop to learn about how to generate and evaluates new business ideas.  Actually I already have some ideas myself,  some even few years old!  I want to know how to choose the best idea to work on, or as the speaker said, which idea to sell my house on!

At the end of session, we were told to submit a one-page summary of our business idea by next week in order to apply to MDeC’s (the organization behind MSC Malaysia) pre-seed fund for up to RM150,000 in order to further develop.  Never did I notice that the workshop was aimed for the fund applicants.

But now I’m seriously considering applying for the fund.  It’s a grant, free money!  The money will help in bootstrapping the new business and shorten the time to market.  Also, I will go through some process and learn things that I never learned.  In fact, I will be paid to learn!

Perhaps most importantly, this will instill discipline in me to act on my business idea now, rather than letting it collect dust for another few years.  Since it is a conditional grant, I must achieve certain project milestones and develop a prototype within certain time period, failing which I will need to pay back!

So now, which idea should I submit?  Well, this is not play play and I think I will submit the best one.  Wish me luck

Thanks to Exabytes who treated business partners, suppliers and customers to watch Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa in Cathay Cineplex, free of charge!

As we could see, the cinema hall was packed with people.  As we walked around the cineplex and The Curve shopping mall nearby, many people were carrying the free bags given by Exabytes.

From a humble beginning of a few staff members just a few years ago, Exabytes have grown into the most successful, interesting, admirable, enviable and happening hosting provider in Malaysia!

Not to mention many awards they have  won over the years, including the prestigious Golden Bull Award given to the best SMEs in Malaysia, not one time, but two years in a row – last year and this year again!

Years ago I already thought of using their services, but was bogged down by my hesitation to switch provider.  I also considered their lack of their own data centre, and lack of 24-hour phone support as their down sides when compared to another I was using.

But as their boss Chan told me, even if they had the money for a data centre, why use it for a data centre while it could be used for other better purposes?

We know the web hosting industry in Malaysia is a typical red ocean.  But Exabytes seem to have adopted the four action framework (Eliminate, Reduce, Raise, Create) in the blue ocean strategy, among other things they have done.

Unlike some other providers, they eliminated the need for their own data centre.  They reduced their phone support to the minimum.  These two alone are very costly yet not very productive for a hosting provider.

But they raised the quality, variety and innovation of their products by catering to the niche markets such as students, bloggers and resellers.  And most importantly, (to the customers ) they created the FUN in hosting with them with their regular freebies, prizes, giveaways, PR events such as this movie day.  Hosting service is very much a functional product, but Exabytes are not just providing the functionality, but appealing to our emotions as well.  I believe they are also among the most interesting companies to work in!

The thrust of a blue ocean strategy lies in the value innovation, the innovation of values offered to customers yet at a lower cost.  They save much money and do away many headaches by eliminating and reducing unproductive things, but use it to raise and create something very interesting and impactful.  Money well spent!

So Exabytes, congratulations on your success.  I believe you will not sit on your laurels, but grow from strength to strength to become not just a good company but a great one!  Syabas!

I’m not sure the difference between BarCamp and StartupCamp (can the organizer explain?) but I’m very sure it will be both fun and useful.  The article below is copied from their “blog kit” upon the organizer’s request.  Can you spot me in the BarCamp photo below? If you have missed the BarCamp, come join me this time!

Startup Camp KL 08 is going to be the largest unconference for entrepreneurs and startups in Malaysia. Over 300 entrepreneurs from all walks of life and sectors are expected to congregate in two full days of ideas exchange and making connections. Startup Camp is held in conjunction with the Global Entrepreneurship Week and it will be on the only National Level GEW event. It will be on 22nd and 23rd November.

Being an unconference, this event is organized by participants for participants. There will be no keynotes address, no special guest and no long boring lectures. It will be jam packed with new ideas and opportunities. If this is your first time attending an unconference, be prepared, for this is an ultra casual event.

For Malaysia’s very first Startup Camp. We have divided it into 3 tracks. These tracks comprises of the General Entrepreneurship, Social Entrepreneurs and Technopreneurship. We have allocated slots of 45 minutes for the participants to conduct their sessions.

The session type range from discussion to presentation to round tables to games to anything you can think of. For those participants who wish to contribute a session can book their session at our Wiki. As for the rest of the participant, we all have two crucial task.

Number 1. Participants should be actively participating in the sessions and share with others. You can share with your friends details about startup camp before the event or you can share what you learn from startup camp after attending it.

Number 2. Vote with your feet. Do remember you can vote for each sessions with your feet. If you find you cannot contribute to the sessions or you cannot add value to yourself or the rest in the session, it is polite to walk out and drop in to another session. If you do not find session that you are interested, you can always add on the board to start and impromptu session.

Details of Startup Camp KL 08
Date: 22nd and 23rd November 2008
Time: 9 am to 8pm on Saturday and Sunday.
Venue: Plug and Play Center @Level 7, The Garden, South Tower.

Register at http://www.entrepreneurs.my/start-up-camp

It all started out in a small village in war-torn Malaya.  A young man lost contact with his father and survived with his mother selling cakes.  He had a crush on a girl, only to lose her until 10 years later.  Unfortunately, when they met again and really fell in love this time, the girl was forced out of the village, after being found out she had been used by her father to cheat guys for money.

The man had since stayed single for the whole life. He kept on writing letter to the girl, but has been keeping the letters since he didn’t know where to post.  At a very old age, he managed to see his lover, now an old woman, for the first time after decades, but also for the last time.  He finally dropped dead in front of her, but not without the satisfaction that his wish finally came true.

This is a two-hour stage show called 落地生根 (“came to this country and be rooted here” in my own translation) in the Pesta Tanglung 2008 (Mid-Autumn Festival) in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM).  From a love story in the foreground, we can see in the background a history of our forefathers who came from China and took root here in Malaya.

It is not the “thereafter they lived together happily forever” kind of love story.  The story line is very original and quite unexpected.  The love story was so touching that we could hear the audience crying as they watched

It is also a drama filled with singing and dancing, including many “old songs” decades ago.  But it didn’t bore us at all.  Very good use of the right music and the right dance at the right time to express the kind of emotion and circumstances as the storyline develops.

I was an actor and drama director on stage before.  But I’ve never seen such a masterpiece so perfectly done.  There are so many excellent actors and actresses there that we could hardly pinpoint who was the best, not to mention their costumes, the stage props and so on.

The official web site says it just right:

此舞台表演绝非一般舞台剧，其剧情感人非常，是晚演出定必让你赞不绝口。请万勿错过。

(This stage show is absolutely not a normal show.  The plot is so moving, that the performance in that night will be worth many praises.  Don’t ever miss it!)

This is a night well spent, for just RM8!  I wish they could perform more than once, and perhaps in other places too.  I will definitely recommend my friends to watch it.  The UKM team, whether on stage or off stage, are really worthy of all our thumbs up for them.  Amazing!  Well done!

国大各位台前幕后的朋友们，你们的舞台演出令人激赏，你们的幕后工夫令人感动。我从未见过如你们那么棒的表演。我不是国大生，我以前是来自马大的。但我为你们感到骄傲，明年还要再来支持！

不好意思，很久没写中文，见笑了

The first Malaysian Entrepreneur Challenge 2008 is coming!

It is organized by KL Monorail and Brandbuilding.com.my, and sponsored by NTV7, JobStreet and many others. It will be held from 22nd to 24th August 2008 at KL Monorail’s 11 stations along the Golden Triangle area in Kuala Lumpur.

In the competition, the participating teams plan, strategize and sell a range of products to the daily KL Monorail commuters of over 60,000 people.

Winning teams are determined based on net profits earned. Prizes worth more than RM100,000 await the winning teams and include:

• Various free workshops and intensive courses on marketing and entrepreneurship
• Job opportunities in the most established companies provided by JobStreet
• Challenge trophy
• Sumptuous 5-star hotel dinner
• PhotoBook package by Kodak
• Monorail season travel ticket package
• Exposure on TV, radio, Internet and other media
• And many others!

Free workshops are also provided for participating teams to groom you into a successful marketeer and entrepreneur!

All profits earned are given to charity. What you do goes a long way towards helping the disabled people in the Beautiful Gate Foundation. This is yet another reason to join!

Visit http://www.thechallenge.com.my for more information.

The charity event is for Beautiful Gate, a foundation for the disabled people.

Your job is to:

1. Support the participating teams
2. Logistics of the entire event
3. Stock check and safety
4. To assist the disabled people in terms of transportation, support, etc.
5. Manage some of the booths that are not in the event
6. Food management and others

It will be part of an Entrepreneur’s Spirit exposure to a huge crowd.

Helpers Complementary Benefits:

Any of the 2-3 days workshops below, normally charged from RM 1,370 per pax, and it will be totally FREE for you. Some of the workshops / boot camps are:

1. Intensive Internet Marketing Boot Camp
2. Entrepreneur Startup for Beginners
3. Effective Corporate Sales Strategies
4. iAchiever Program

A great opportunity for you to develop yourself, and at the same time contribute your energy for the less fortunate society!

Visit http://www.emalaysians.com for more information.

These are what I think make BarCamp stands out from other learning events:

It’s open – Anyone can propose to facilitate any topic. Anyone can choose to join any session he or she likes.

It’s participatory – BarCamp sessions are not spoon-feeding sessions. Rather, all are encouraged to participate. In fact, there is a “law of two feet” that if you can’t make a contribution by your presence, use your two feet and walk away!

It’s peer teaching – It’s no more one-way teaching. All can share and teach one another on the topic.

It’s web 2.0 – Content generated by participants. Everyone participates and contributes. Instant feedback by anyone!

It’s FREE – Last but not least!

In fact, I have been proposing something called the Internet Business Fellowship (IBF) where people come and learn from and teach one another on business, marketing and technologies.

These are my wish list for BarCamp and similar events:

• Make it into a smaller group so that more people can participate, not just listen.
• Make it more frequent, perhaps once a month!
• Make it more mobile so that it can be held anywhere.
• Make it available in other languages, such as Malay, Chinese and Tamil.
• Make it even more participatory!

In summary, can it be made more “agile”, so that it can be held anytime, anywhere, at any frequency, in any language, and by anyone?

There are many sessions to choose today and tomorrow. I missed the all-important Google Android session in the morning and I heard that the classroom was full. Anyway, I managed to join a few other sessions.

Getting started with Drupal – It’s an introduction to the Drupal content management system (CMS). CMS is used to generate a whole web site or web application with little or no programming skills. Drupal looks impressive. But I heard it’s not so simple to learn. I don’t know how it compares to other systems. But I will try it out myself soon.

Monetizing YouTube – Want to make money out of your YouTube video? Here it is! A very striking demonstration of an innovation to make money much like AdWords. Well done and I wish all the best to the team in their endeavor.

Monkeying around Yahoo! Search – Yahoo has something impressive called SearchMonkey in store for site owners and search engine users. It’s good for us developers to add value for users from the Yahoo search result pages.

Future of technology – Everything will come to pass including the now popular Web 2.0. What does the future hold? How can we innovate and position ourselves for future technologies. A very lively discussion and true nature of open, participatory session. Suddenly all of us became futurists!

How to develop API for web services – I had to skip two other interesting concurrent sessions for this one, as I really need a foundation on web services. Technical but good knowledge learned about using AtomPub for web services.

Blogging in Malaysia – Another lively discussion on the current blogging landscape. Many prominent bloggers were present to contribute, including those from Singapore! Facilitator was good to notice those quiet ones (including me) and gave us a chance to speak up. Shame to me, that’s the only time I spoke up in the sessions

Unfortunately, due to time clash of many sessions conducted at the same time, I was not able to attend many other useful sessions. Perhaps next time the organizer can consider arranging them in different tracks for different kinds of participants.

Anyway, I thank the organizer for their dedicated effort and good job done in organizing the pioneer BarCamp in Malaysia!

Did you attend any same session with me? Do you share my experience?

I knew Kenneth three years ago when both Kenneth and I were called to a meeting by a common customer to advise him on Internet business.

It’s good to catch up with him again. Kenneth has been an e-commerce consultant and Internet marketer.  Impressed by projects done for clients and ideas inspired by him.  The web sites are showing among the very top in search engine result pages!

I feel grateful to have listened to his presentation, though many ideas are not new.  There are a few facts and interesting points that I cannot agree more:

• 80% of companies in Malaysia are still not using the Internet to promote their brands!
• There are many well-known brands in Malaysia.  But amazingly you can’t find them on the first page in search engine result pages.
• Digital branding online does not need to be expensive.  In fact it could be much cheaper than offline brand building.  Branding using YouTube is an example.
• Your web designers can develop a beautiful web site, but may not be the right person to be your branding and marketing consultant.  You won’t hire an IT person to do marketing, will you?
• Many people are worried about payment and security issues on the Internet.  But when they come to buying air tickets from AirAsia online, there is no problem! Why?

Yes I think businesses are under-utilizing the Internet to do branding online.  What are they still waiting for?  Internet is not just a channel to reach customers, but is a market battlefield nowadays!

Besides the more technical aspects, I wish I could learn more about the more business aspect of building brands online, such as what brand image and personality to take relative to competitors.

Digital branding leads to me to think of how we as individuals and bloggers can brand ourselves on the Internet or in the blogosphere.

Kenneth took on the brand of being an “e-commerce doctor”.  Hanzo Ng poses as “sales ninja”.  Shall I become a “monkey blogger”?   How about you?

I’m one of those lucky to have registered early before its closing date.  But due to overwhelming demand, it’s now open for registration again!  But you’ve got to be early to report yourself there at 9am!

So come!  It’s open for everyone now!  Check out the announcement here. It’s not only FREE of charge, but you also stand to win a Nokia E90 Communicator!

Why am I going there?  Because I need to recharge my rather outdated brain with the latest technologies and ideas

There are many participatory sessions to choose, ranging from earning money by YouTube to hidden impacts of higher mathematics!  These are some that interest me:

• Aggressive web development
• Interesting Web 2.0 mobile services
• Web application development using Drupal
• Blogging in Malaysia
• Google Android
• Online marketing 2.0
• Social media optimization
• Free software movement

How about you?  What sessions are you attending?

First of all, I finally met – the famous tech blogger Liew CF of LiewCF.com!  I’ve been following his blog for a while and learning from him.  He started blogging years ago and later his income generated from blog exceeded that of his full time job.  Now he is a full time professional blogger!

He has been earning mainly from Google Adsense.  Though he didn’t reveal how much, the US$ X,000 figure he said aroused much curiosity among the audience.  Though the X figure is a single digit in US Dollar as he said, I do believe it’s a double-digit in Ringgit Malaysia!

He was one of the speakers today and he said it’s his first public talk (really?)  But he has successfully captivated our attention and regaled all of us.  Let’s wish him success and continue to grow from strength to strength!

The second dotcom figure I met is Andy Low of HomeTuitionCare.com.my, a tuition agency business online.  I’m glad that he graduated from University of Malaya (UM) too – same with me!

One might think that his business is a competitor to my NextLevel Tutor Network.  In a loose sense, maybe.  But I think he is not because our business models are different.  He charges tutors commission for each successful tuition assignment, while I charge tutors a fixed fee upon joining.

Even if we are competitors, I still like to get to know him as there may still be things we can do together in the future.  Who knows maybe we may form alliance and harness each other’s strengths to serve our customers?

As one of the speakers mentioned today, such webmaster gathering should be conducted more often.  I have also got some idea on conducting our future gatherings in the Internet Business Fellowship (IBF) later.

Thanks and kudos to the organizer!

I am glad to have heard their founder Fione Tan speak. She is a reputable expert and coach on Internet marketing, who has been running successful online businesses herself and so is an authority to speak on the subject matter.

The seminar gave us the basics of Internet marketing. Fione even motivated us to go for the gold in Internet business. Just look at her lifestyle. So enviable! Furthermore, her presentation was excellent and humorous, making us laugh from the beginning to the end.

However, I think the seminar was more suited for beginners as the content covered was quite basic, though it did remind give me some areas which I have overlooked. Frankly, I didn’t learn much about Web 2.0, which was the reason I attended the seminar.

It could have been better if she could teach us more on Internet marketing itself and leave the promotion for their Internet marketing coaching service at the end, instead of inserting advertisements in the sessions. And perhaps speak less on motivation as well.

Anyway, kudos to them for their success in this field. The country is proud of you!

Here are a few lessons that impact me most:

• Value innovation – Offering innovative values to customers yet at a lower cost.
• Strategy canvas – A visual tool to assess the state of a firm and reorient it against competitors.
• Four actions framework – Deciding what to eliminate, reduce, raise and create.
• Attracting non-customers – Redefining the market by looking beyond existing customers to non-customers.

Here are two incoming events conducted by Lifelong Learning initiative by MCA (I’m not affiliated to MCA):

1. Talk on blue ocean strategy on 24th April
2. Reading session on blue ocean strategy and the success stories of Malaysian enterprises on 26th April

Would you like to join me?  Please contact me here.