iX Conference 2007

the iX conference took place over the past two days at the suntec conference and exhibition centre. attendees paid 500 bucks each to hear from the CIOs, CTOs, VPs, a.k.a. all the big shots influential people from google, microsoft, adobe, verisign, linden lab (creators of second life), podtech, et cetera. video streaming, podcasting, and various other forms of rich content were discussed as the speakers engaged the audience in active panel discussions.

courtesy of the digital movement (TDM), which is the new media partner of the iX conference, some of us were there as the “new media contingent”. it’s a group consisting a dozen people who are either community builders, entrepreneurs, technologists or new media practitioners. i masqueraded as a technologist (which i thought sounded pretty cool)!

i shall spare everyone the techie stuff, since you can read all about it from the blogs of the various geeks that attended the event (view links at the end of this post). besides all the geeky bits, here are a couple of funny bits and my personal highlights for the day (mostly from the after-party at paulaner brauhaus):

• having a picture taken with douglas merrill, CIO and vice president of engineering of — gasp! — google! i wish i had gotten his name card! it would have fitted right into my shrine of worship. maybe if i prayed hard enough, i could get employed at the google headquarters in mountain view, a.k.a. the land of free lunches.

• meeting and talking with the various members of TDM who helped conduct the conference. they also brought us highly successful events in the past such as nexus and blogout.

  - ming yeow, the founder of TDM. i found him to be very charismatic and intelligent. he was also instrumental in introducing me to the various big shots (read: douglas merrill from google). despite being perpetually based in vietnam, he somehow managed to organise a kickin’ post-party for all of us!

  - estee, the babe of TDM and also their PR person. we used to be schoolmates at anglo-chinese junior college (ACJC)!

  - su yuen, fellow female designer. it was the first time we met and we clicked effortlessly!

• connecting and reconnecting with technopreneurs like:

  - james of tomorrow.sg: both he and it need no introduction. again instrumental in introducing me to the big shots such as jeremiah owyang, director of corporate media strategy of podtech.net. (jeremiah happens to bear an uncanny resemblance with kenny sia, the most famous blogger in malaysia.)

  - u-zyn of ping.sg: popular community metablog in singapore that i designed. u-zyn also happens to be my most favorite web developer to work with!

  - herry of bookjetty: very useful website that i use regularly. it combines amazon.com with the national library board. found an interesting book on amazon? immediately check its availability in any of the singapore public libraries!

  - other entrepreneurs such as choon keat of sharedcopy and ying han of hitchoo (see next point).

• sharing my woes with ying han. he’s an incredibly nice guy. you know how there are some people that barely know you, but yet they judge you within five minutes based on the words you say alone, rather than making the time and effort to get to know you?

  he’s not like that. because of that, i found it extremely easy and comfortable to talk and pour my heart out to him. well that, plus the fact that his company helps people with love and dating, of course.

• catching up with my favorite bloggers like coleman, michael and walter of yesterday.sg. god, who knew walter was such a cheeky boy at heart? i mean, the dude is from the national heritage board!
• seeing the infamous, one and only sarong party girl in the flesh (no pun intended). you guys know who. ’nuff said.
• checking out kevin “social cyborg” lim’s electronic gadgets and appearing on the video streaming live on his blog (also singapore’s most popular technology blog). the guy walks around with two video cameras strapped on himself that automatically record everything that he sees. theoretically, he can record and playback his entire life!

  along with these he carries a portable video player, an ultra compact sony computer, a portable battery/power generator to charge all these devices — they all fit snugly within his small sousveillance backpack. today, he showed us the latest addition to his family of gadgets — a small solar charger that harnesses solar power to charge all his devices! whoa!

• guessing william claxton, co-chairman of the conference organising committee, to be 38 years old when he’s actually 55! i am extremely bad at telling a person’s age and i *always* think people are younger than they actually are. people love it when i do that. he looked as happy as santa claus on crack!
• giving away half a box of my new name cards. half the men that got it said “wa! pink color! so nice!”. what’s funny — it’s purple.

that’s it for now folks! congratulations to the organisers and TDM for a highly successful conference and the great chill-out session! networking at the party was awesome. the group was capped at the right number, which made it possible for everyone to have a chance to speak with everyone else — a rarity at events like this. there was no formation of centric cliques, which probably would have resulted had the group been larger (like the last blogout event).

i don’t know about everyone else, but i sure made many new contacts and had myself a lot of fun! thanks, TDM!

external links

The Digital Movement (TDM):
- Updates @ iX Main Conference (Day 1)
- Thanks for Joining TDM @ iX-TDM Social Media Forum
- Thanks For The Great Experience That Was TDM-iX!

Jeremiah Owyang (PodTech.net):
- Notes from IX 2007 a focus on Convergence, Collaboration and Creativity (Day 1)
- Notes from IX 2007 a focus on Convergence, Collaboration and Creativity (Day 2)

Live blogging from the Academic Forum held at SMU (Day 1):
Singapore Entrepreneurs: Live from TDM Event: The Next Generation of Digital Convergence

Videos from the Academic Forum held at SMU (Day 1):
Kevin: Choose Your Video - The iX New Media Academic Forum

Photos of the Chill-out Party at Paulaner Brauhaus:
Kevin: Photos - iX Conference’s “Chillout 2.0″ Party (who’s SPG?)
Kevin on flickr: iX Conference 2007

Other blogs:
Estee: Meeting Social Media Evangelist - Jeremiah Owyang
after6ix: Mike Downey talks AIR in Singapore
Walter: The Exciting World of Social Media
Lucian (WebSG): Social Media and the Old Economy
Benjamin: iX 2007: Now I’m full of AIR

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