It was a gorgeous Saturday afternoon in the Bay Area. Spring was finally here (well actually in the Bay Area, spring comes and goes when it feels like it. Kinda like a case of relatives you don’t really like coming over when you least expect it) but in this case, spring was actually here. Not a cloud in the sky, warm weather, nice cool breeze and the occasional concussion when you get in the way of someone playing fetch with their dog.

Given the setting, I was honestly a little apprehensive approaching our hackathon in Stanford. It just seemed like a day that was usually spent on the sand with a beach ball and not a lot of clothes. Considering that we’re entering a community of mostly students, I fully expected to step into the venue with a bare handful of attendees plonked in the middle of a bunch of snoring frat guys hung over from the night before.

In any case, pushing those thoughts aside, the first thing I did was….

…get lost.

Seriously. They either change the roads around Stanford an awful lot or I really need to update my GPS maps. At one point, my little Gamin was insisting that I turn right immediately. I would have gladly complied aside from the fact that turning right would have made my car a permanent fixture in someone’s living room.

When I did finally get there tho, I was greeted by a very healthy bunch of eager hackers who have already started on technology tutorials. Just a quick side note, the PHP and Python bunch outnumbered *everyone* else by a huge margin. If a fight broke out between the different camps, I figured I’d be the one diving for cover yelling “<?php Echo “Hello World !!” ?>”. In any case once the Code For America guys arrived (their GPS was a lot more insistent than mine apparently), the hacking started in earnest. We generally worked on 4 different projects. Chach dragged her bunch off to a corner and worked on web scraping with ScraperWiki, Dan Melton took his guys and built some gems for client libraries that would connect to AFF data, Michael and Michael (it sounds like a cheesy boy band but what can I say, we both just had a cool name) took a group over for Open 311 and I know I’m getting mail bombed for saying this but I honestly can’t remember what the fourth group did. There was a lot of tech geek talk that went around that afternoon but the one highlight I want to insert here is: CouchDB is cool Definitely has my seal of approval.

I can’t for the life of me give you all the details even if I wanted to. The entire day flew by so quickly and the only moment I was aware of the time was when it turned pitched black out and there was a general murmur of discontentment when youth metabolism and hunger pangs combined. I think the pizza guy was greeted with a level of applause you don’t normally see for the winner of an Academy Award. All in all, it was a *LOT* of fun and I’m certainly looking forward to our next adventure with the CfA folks in this year’s Google’s Summer of Code. Quick PS: There was even time for a quick shirt swap of Dan in Joget colors and myself in CfA’s. That preluded an episode where we were looking at the fruits of his labors, me volunteering to fill in with a Java library to complement the PHP and Ruby ones they hacked out, and him deciding to diss me by going “who the heck needs Java libraries ?”. If you were on Stanford grounds on Saturday night and saw a skinny geek chasing a tall one with a chair, that was probably just us.

Similarly, San Francisco saw its first snow for the first time in 30 years and it just simply had to do it on the very weekend I was down in LA.

*PHHHHHBBBBBBBBBBTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT* !!!!

In any case, I spent the weekend and the earlier part of the week down in Palm Desert for Demo Spring 2011. I must stress that this will not be an objective view of emerging trends, nor would it be an insightful piece on the next big wave. There are already plenty of coverage on the blogsphere for those if you’re looking for that. If however, what you’re looking for is the perceptions from the eyes of a regular (if occasionally dense) geek-preneur on his first romp in a Demo conference, by all means read on:

1. Before the conference actually started, a bunch of the startups (us included) were already furiously tweeting on the democon hash. It kinda reminded me of camps when we were much younger where the new kids would all band together as quickly as possible to avoid the inevitable hazing which left your underwear pinned against your forehead while still attached at your groin.

It was fun tho and we met up with some very very cool people. Like most conferences, booth setup day happened the day before the official conference kicked off. Unlike most conferences however, you get a small pavilion and a list of restrictions on how you can decorate it (i.e. you’re not allowed to decorate it in any way). Given those circumstances, “setup” meant you basically stuck your laptop into the power socket and check to see if you’d get fried. If you didn’t, setup was complete.

I really don’t know what happens if you did.

2. We met up with Andres Blank and Inaki Berenguer from Pixable on the first night and bumped into them after the “booth setup”. Very cool guys the both of them. So while we were bunkered down under the LA sun, chomping on club sanwiches, getting smashed early in the day and swapping stories of technology entrepreneurship in the opposite coasts, I noticed a little something.

Here we are: a european, a latin american, a few asian dudes being served by an african american guy smack in the middle of a Desert Palm resort, alternating between mouthfuls of stories and messaging our home countries. The world is getting pretty small huh.

3. There were a few demo pitches that I found memorable. Before I start out, I need to make a point that I’m not belittling any of these guys. I think they’re all great in what they do and what they’re trying to achieve and as fellow startups we all want to see each other suceed (unless you’re competition, then we’ll pin your company logo to a voodoo doll).

In any case, the first was a company dealing with hyperbaric chambers. My first impression when I saw that little pod being brought out was, “Hmmm did someone mug Clark Kent ? I could have swore Superman arrived on earth with that thing”. For the demo, the guy stuffs a lady into that little pod and launches into his pitch. At the end of it, she gets out and Matt Marshall (the emcee) asks how she’s doing. The poor thing looks like she’s about to hurl before raising a wan smile and went “GREAT !”.

Funny

4. Honorable mention goes to Cloud 9 IDE which basically has a snazzy IDE that’ll run off your browser. I’ve signed up for their beta but haven’t really tried it out so I’m not sure how they’ll handle some of the heavier lifting that most IDE have to do. I’ll write another piece if I’m impressed. In any case, Cloud9 did their pitch in half the time allotted, so they decided pitch twice. 2 exact same demos in the space of 6 minutes. One of those things that made you chuckle and say “honestly haven’t seen that before”.

5. Demo itself was “meh” for me really. There were a bunch of promises that weren’t fulfilled. Tien Soon has bitched about it here so I’m not going to. Suffice to say tho that their space is being encroached, they seem to be losing their luster very quickly and unless they pivot effectively, I’m sticking to either TechCrunch Disrupt or the new Launch platform.

To wrap up, I know I missed snow and all but I did get hailed on while down in LA. Small consolation I guess.

In any case it was a really fun party. There were a number of “celebrities” there coupled with a generous amount of booze. Had a blast with general networking and even managed to snag Tim O’Reilly for a quick exchange. As a matter of fact, the only time I realized that I’ve had too much to drink was when I was midway thru my conversation with Tim, and I finally noticed that he was tremendously bulky, of african descent and didn’t speak english all that well.

Oh well, at least I made a new friend in Nokolulu Attwell.

In any case, one of the things that CfA is currently pushing hard for is an initiative called Civic Commons (www.civiccommons.org). In a nutshell, Civic Commons is a medium or a platform of exchange for civic software. It allows applications for civic use to be freely contributed and shared among the many cities and counties and even states of the US.

Now for those of you who have the trauma of knowing me well, who’ve read my bio or profile someplace or who has just been generally stalking me; you’ll know that working with civic development was a life I’ve lived in a different time. I think that’s probably one of the things that drew me to CfA and what Jen and her team are doing. The fact that their efforts struck a chord, understanding the pains they will inevitably face, knowing that the challenges might make them they contemplate jumping off a 16th story window (or pushing someone off), etc. Given that backdrop, I thought I’d pen a few words about what they’re about to embark upon and where I think their speed bumps might surface.

1. Getting the necessary traction. This one really is rather self explanatory. Given the nature of Civic Commons, it will be heavily dependent on the general acceptance and awareness from the civic community at large. No awareness = no participation = no contribution = very bad for everyone.

2. Cultivation of community. Any tech geek worth his/her salt will tell you that its never the building of software that takes the most time, its the maintaining and supporting it after. That’s precisely why the vibrancy and activeness of any given open source community usually defines the project’s success or otherwise. In this case, its really not about dumping a piece of software in an exchange platform on the web some place. Once an application is up, you’ll now need to worry about documenting it, supporting it, keeping an up to date knowledge base, troubleshooting during actual implementation, etc. The ground will look very appealing from the 16th floor if this isn’t well thought out.

3. Contribution management. When any initiative is open by nature, the parameters of exchange need to be fairly well defined. Some projects use technology councils to vet thru submissions, some rely on the community itself to screen thru contributions, others use something in between. Unfortunately there’s no hard and fast rule on which is better. The only general sentiment is that there just needs to be one especially in Civic Common’s case. Imagine if City A contributed Application 1, City B uses Application 1 but needs to make a small change to suit their case. City C takes City B’s change and changes it a litte more. All of a sudden you have 1 app with innumerable variance and nobody really knows how they’re different. The 16th floor just got elevated to 36th.

4. General scope issues. Make no mistake about this, Civic Commons is a *colossal* undertaking. The biggest reason why I say that is because of the sheer scope of what it tries to achieve. In a general sense, any community formed tends to be quite specific about its focus. For instance, the Linux community will be fairly focused on their issues and the MySQL guys will be focused on theirs. Unless you’re very drunk (or a bit of an idiot like me), you generally won’t wander into a Drupal community asking for help on your WordPress site. In this particular case, the scope is about as horizontal as it gets. So long as an application is meant for civic use, it will have a place in the exchange. The worse case scenario spells that every contribution is potentially a community by itself. That’s pretty darn big however you look at it.

There are a number of items I had on a list but I didn’t want come across as too being too much of a bummer. I think there are few more worthy cause to what these guys are doing at the moment and I really do hope it takes flight.

In closing, if you’ve not heard of Code for America, if you’re not aware of Civic Commons, maybe its time you educated yourself. I know its corny and its ridiculously cliche but I believe in our quietest moments alone, we all feel the need to make a difference no matter how immeasurably small. If that describes you, then what the heck are you waiting for ? Grab your IDE. Here’s your chance

Since another year has so fleetingly came and went, I figured it was a good time to pause for a moment and take stock of all that’s happened, give thanks for all that went well and generally swear at those that haven’t. Oh that and also the fact that I’m stuck at SJC and my flight out to the east coast is late.

2010 was turbulent to say the least. There was a myriad of key decisions that I was faced with, most of which was the colossal, life changing kind. Leaving behind an entire life, leaving behind a lifetime of achievements and the comforts built over the years really required a unique brand of mindset. Some people call it courage. I call it idiocy.

But you know, maybe its OK to be an idiot some times.

I believe that life is made up of a few key moments; crossroads where our decisions takes our paths on very differing tangents. The choices are never clear, the decisions are rarely easy, but it is precisely those moments that define our stories. So, if being an entrepreneur means to jump off a cliff and try to build an airplane on the way down (quoting Mr Penders), there really needs to be a willingness to do something that would be conventionally questionable. The blind leaps which defies explanation, guided only by belief or obsession that you can make a difference and carve your spot someplace in history.

There are still times in the middle of nights when I wake up asking myself what the heck I’m doing. I don’t know if those go away. All things considered tho, 2010 has been a very good one; and I wouldn’t really have had it any other way. We’ve done well with what we’ve set out to do, and given very limited resources we’ve put ourselves in a position where we can make a very real and very significant mark on the market that we’ve set our sights on.

Keep an eye out for 2011. I don’t know if the plane will get built or if the leap gets me very acquainted with a whole lot of ground. All I can promise is that it’ll be a hell of a ride.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Now Mobclix is basically a mobile ad exchange platform (if I’m not mistaken they’re current the biggest ad exchange platform for the mobile market) that puts developers in touch with advertisers and vice versa. Essentially, on one hand you’ll have mobile application developers who build cool software for smartphones and want to use advertising as a major part of their revenue model. On the other hand you have people who want to advertise but want to advertise on apps that have good market share, an active user base, a targetted segment or niche, etc etc. Smack those 2 hands together and you get pretty good synergy, and Mobclix is the one doing the smacking.

Mobclix started in 2008 by Vishal and a bunch of his friends; some of whom already have taken startups to their exits. Last month, they were acquired by Velti for a fairly huge sum. I’m not sure what the stats are but for an exit to happen so quickly is a tribute to how far they’ve gone and how quickly they’ve managed to achieve that.

In any case, there were lessons learned and certainly nuggets of very valuable insights that applies to what we’re trying to do with Joget (which I won’t write about here). Looking at what they have done over the course of 2 years tho I can say that:

1. There’s a general moan going thru the Valley about how there is very little innovation left and that everyone seems to be regurgitating old ideas into new packages. Personally, I just can’t subscribe to that school of thought. I believe innovation is innovative precisely when it solves fundamental key issues; so if you’re doing that, it really shouldn’t matter what market label you’re being pegged against or how “unsexy” that niche is. Ad exchange has been going on for a long long time but these guys believed that mobile app development was going to explode, that there was going to be a natural need for this and they went for it. Was it new ? Nope. Did it address a pain ? Heck yeah.

2. VC funding isn’t a be all and end all. These guys made it in record time without needing to go thru those channels so there’s valid hope for those without a term sheet.

3. You’ve got to be lucky. Needless to say, that doesn’t negate the hours you put in (or quoting Vishal “You’re not going to get to sleep much”), the sacrifices you’ll have to go thru, the willingness to do whatever it takes to make it work, etc. In the end you do need to be lucky. (BTW I’m putting this one up only because he think its a big deal. Personally, I believe they were just awesome).

So there you go, for those of you crunching apps and are looking at advertising as a means to monetize, check Mobclix out. I don’t work for them, I haven’t been offered stock options but I do think they’re genuinely kewl (and you guys know how much I like the kewl). Also as a parting note, Vishal is without a doubt one of the nicest guys I’ve met in the Valley. In fact he’s so ridiculously nice that he makes some saints look like a bit of an arse.

Now fortunately my trip back to KUL from SFO was previously covered here so I get to skip that. The stuff that I *do* want to talk about however are:

1. Mutton curry
There was a *lot* of face stuffing that inevitably occurred when I was back and I honestly can’t remember half of it. I remember however that the only thing I really wanted was good mutton curry. Its a testament of how cosmopolitan the Valley has become with the fact that there is really very little you can’t get here (food wise and otherwise) but good mutton curry unfortunately falls under that exception. I think its partly because most of the Indian food here comes from Northern Indian/Pakistani cuisine which rather lacks the spices that’s generally used in Malaysian styled mutton curry. You can tell almost immediately that its good Malaysian styled mutton curry when your tongue spontaneously erupts into flames and your arse feels sore after your bathroom trip the morning after.

Oh and if there is a good Southern Indian place in the South Bay area that I’m not aware of, please feel free to correct me.

2. Barcamp Bangkok
I was up in Bangkok at one of the weekends to attend Barcamp Bangkok 2010. Now there are a few things we need to clarify. It was not held in a bar, there was no alcohol served but there was camping involved. Barcamp Bangkok is actually a geek event spanning the weekend when geeks congregate for tracks, sessions, a bit of hacking and to generally network.

One thing I particularly enjoyed was the fact that tracks and sessions were not prearranged by the organizers. Rather, at the start of Barcamp, a stack of topic papers were made available to anyone who wanted to speak. The speakers would then write their topic and post them up along the wall and the rest of the attendees will vote for topics that they wanted to be involved with. There is no limit to how many times you can vote, just as there is no limit to how many times you can speak.

The “conference” room was actually a gym the size of a basketball court and the posted topics spanned one wall right to the other. With the dynamics there, you get all sorts of subjects from HTC’s “How to make money with Android” to the Mozilla Foundation’s “Hacking Firefox with Jetpack” to other…shall we say more unorthodox topics. I’ll let the picture below illustrate what I mean.

Oh and Tien Soon‘s legion of adoring young Thai students (mostly female) gathered in numbers when he spoke about Joget.

3. The Malaysian 2011 budget
I’m trying hard not to be too disparaging about our budget and was struggling to look at every issue in a constructive and objective manner. I really did like it when Najib opened with the statement that they wanted to make a budget for the people and they listened to everyone when drawing the thing up. Fact of the matter tho is that if you want to spend $5 billion building a 100 story tower that:

a. Nobody wants (aside from cronies and contractors that will wallow in cash when it comes thru)
b. Nobody needs (which is painfully obvious from the under utilization of office spaces in KL)
c. We can’t afford (didn’t his own department tell us the country will be bankrupt soon ?)

leads me to question who the heck he was listening to in the first place. Really hope we didn’t replace a dozing prime minister with one that hears voices.

4. My trip back
I flew Cathay Pacific this time round which was great because I didn’t have to stare at the back of a seat for 16 hours and I had access to like a hundred movies that was on demand. If you couple that with the fact that I was smushed into a window seat with a fellow passenger nearby that has issues with odor; I slept a grand total of 1.5 hours in a span of 2 days.

In any case, the highlight of the journey was the fact that my transit in HK only had a 1 hour window. Made me really nervous because the next corresponding flight out of Hong Kong wouldn’t be for another 36 hours and I really didn’t want to get stuck in an airport that long. I figure my chances of meeting Catherina Zeta Jones wouldn’t be nearly as good as Tom Hank’s for one. In any case, it worked out fine in the end except for the fact that:

…I’m not really exaggerating all that much actually.

And its good to be back. Looking forward to my first real Halloween experience this weekend. Nick’s description of the event has been fairly graphical

There is a soap opera being played out in the Valley at the moment tho (there isn’t as much sleeping around in this one…at least I sincerely hope not considering the actors involved). It started when Steve Jobs ranted this, then the second episode saw Andy Rubin do this, and then everyone decided to let loose. Amidst the artilleries that have been firing back and forth, what really struck me most about the entire saga is the many misconceptions that’s been floated in reference to what open source constitutes.

Now there are a few things I want to make clear:
a. I’m not entrenched in either camp so don’t judge me in reference to ownership of new toys
b. I’m not going to talk about the merits or shortcomings of open source. There has been enough successes and failures over the years for you to be making your own mind up about that.
c. I’m not going to debate who’s right and who’s wrong. Again the Apple and Google stands are very clear and if you’re reasonably well informed, you can again make up your own darn mind.
d. I’m not going to argue over who makes better technology. They both do some pretty cool stuff so that’s really beside the point.
e. I’m not going to miss the idiots on the road in this part of the world (altho I have to say that the valley with have one additional idiot on the road when I fly back next week)

What I *do* want to talk about is what open source is, and more importantly what it’s not.

In approaching this subject, there are 2 things we need to keep in mind. Much like the law, there is the letter of Open Source (i.e. what you must absolutely do in order to be validly open source) and the spirit of Open Source (i.e. the fundamental ideas behind the entire movement). The letter of Open Source has 2 basic requirements that you must fulfill to be an open source product. (BTW I’m calling it open source product but it could be an open source project/product/module/library/[fill in your blanks here]. Its just that the latter is a lot harder to type):

1. There must be source code availability. To the non geeks, source codes are the stuff your software engineers write to create software. In most commercial software (i.e. not open source), the source codes are religiously guarded (akin to the 11 secret herbs and spices that the Colonel Sanders uses in his chicken project). In the open source model however, the source codes that make your product must be made readily available to anyone who wants it.

2. There must be source code distributability. Now not only do you need to make your sources available; anyone should be able to take your sources, modify it as they see fit and redistribute it under a different branding.

There are a myriad of different open source licensing models (GPL, LGPL, Apache, Berkeley, etc etc) that tells you exactly what you need to comply with and there are certainly a great deal of variances with those (and I’m too lazy to write about that now) but in essence, those 2 precepts above are always upheld.

Now as far as the spirit of open source goes, the entire movement started behind the idea that the a community of developers should make a difference in the development of a product. The essence behind the thought is that communal contribution and engineering will help spur improvement far more rapidly, and that the evolution of the product will be determined and shaped by such a community.

If we understand those simple lines, lets apply those to what Android is doing. Again, I’m not partisan – and if I were I certainly won’t be championing Apple’s story. Its just that Apple has never been perceived as open anyway so the argument is moot in their context. So, as far as Android is concerned:

Letter of Open Source: Do I have access to source ? Yes. Do I have the rights to rip it apart and add new stuff as I see fit ? Affirmative. Do I have a right to redistribute, call it Diordna without paying Google anything ? Correctomundo (for some very strange reason that’s the third option for “Yes” that my thesaurus gave me).

Spirit of Open Source: Will I be able to check out the latest copy of the source (that is not a revision where someone somewhere decided should be a bloody release) whenever I want ? Nope. Is there a commit model in place so I can contribute my work to any/all portion of the project ? Not really. Is there any way I can eventually earn check in rights so I can contribute my work to any/all portion of the project ? Not to my knowledge.

So there you have it. Now go make up your own mind.

I’m not exaggerating in the least bit. I know my brand of descriptive expression doesn’t always lend itself very naturally to great credence but in this case, the scene above is a painful reality. To be fair, my trusty SE P990 has been a faithful companion for almost half a decade now and as with most things in technological GALAXY, the world passes you by fairly quickly. To that end (if I sound like I’m trying to justify spending a wad of cash on a toy…I am), its time to bury the memory and pay homage to my new mistress.

In any case, when it comes down to a new investment in the smart phone GALAXY, there really is only 2 viable options to me: iPhone or Android (and if anyone even mentions a certain fruit to me, I swear I’ll draw whiskers on your avatar). Oh by the by, if you *still* haven’t figured out what I bought, get the person next to you to smack you over the head right now and read the following:

A long time ago in a far away GALAXY !!!….

Anyways, I know a bunch of you Apple fanbois out there are mobbing me with the incredulous “why” so these are the reasons why I felt the Android rocked more:

1. I’m not an Apple fanboi. Sure they do a bunch of pretty cool stuff. Sure some of their products are nice to look at but simply having the picture of a half eaten fruit doesn’t swing it for me the way it does some of you. (Like someone once said: You can stamp an Apple logo on a pair of used underwear and their fanbois will still think its the best thing since sliced bread).

2. I just like Open Sourced guys more. It doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that its what I do as well (ok maybe it has a *little* bit to do with the fact that its what I do as well) but I like to know what goes on under the hood from time to time. If they screw up, its nice to know I can fix that crap myself. I’m not saying I will, but its certainly nice to have that option.

3. Yes I know the user experience is smoother on the iPhone. While that’s certainly true when you’re referring to some of the first gen Android phones, the same can’t be said of the new Froyo. Honestly, the Galaxy feels every bit as polished as the iPhone and I don’t have to avoid holding my damn phone a certain way.

4. Over the air syncing is a winner.

5. Being able to hack a server with a telnet client on my phone 30 minutes into buying it is just cool.

So there you have it. Nick if you’ve put my blog on your read list like you said you have, start sending me crap to mess around with. At the very least, you know I’ll be a far more interested participant in your next Android meetup event.

Before I sign off, a moment of silence please….

Ok….now what should I build ?

In any case, instead of my normal verbose manner:

1. The flight home took 23 hours with a single transit. I was seated next to a 70 year old granny who needed to visit the restroom every 15 minutes or so. If a granny fell out of the sky and landed on you for no apparent reason, I apologize now.

2. The whole switching between right and left hand drive gets tricky. Every time I switched lanes, my wipers came on instead of the blinkers. If you see a 4 wheeler driving on the wrong side of the road with runaway wipers, you really should get out of the way.

3. I’m not too sure how I feel about the AOL acquisition of TechCrunch. Most of us have come to regard TechCrunch as a source of quick groundbreaking and (reasonably) unbiased technology reporting. Hard to see how they can keep to those traditions when they’re now owned by a media company.

4. I’m *very* glad that this time a “proper” startup won Disrupt (proper as in not VC backed with bulging pockets and millions in the bank). Good on ya Qwiki.

Anyways, time to stuff me face with delicious cuisine of questionable cleanliness. Hope I don’t fall asleep on the road….

I geeked out a little bit over the weekend. Saw John Britton’s demo with Twilio ages ago and always wanted to play around; and finally got around to it. Ironically the Plugins I built took me about an hour or so – to write and test – while the darn video took me a few days Its still a little pixellated in areas so watch it in HD. All you telly junkies out there should be thankful I chose the life of a software geek and not an AV dude. If it had been the latter, House would look like Spongebob Squarepants.

In any case, I just felt that some things are worth the effort and should be done…especially when they’re beyond cool

PS: Should have added this on the first go so my mailbox didn’t die from the question about links. Check out Joget and Twilio.