With a last minute arrangement, a group of us from the local community met up with Greg Kumparak, the MobileCrunch Editor from TechCrunch. He was here to visit and report about the CommunicAsia event. Of all places, he has picked Zouk, one of the famous places in Singapore (like the number 11 out of the top 50 clubs in the world – I may be wrong about this). Here is a short account on what transpired in this gathering.
It was an informal gathering in the Zouk winebar as we exchange thoughts on the mobile and web industry. I reached the Zouk winebar 15 minutes before 8 pm but Greg has reached there earlier with his friends.
His group of friends include the PR team (one of them I remember by the name of Eric) who promoted Samsung’s new smart phone “Omnia“. They were there to chill out after a long day in CommunicAsia 2008. I did not get a chance to see the “Omnia” when I visited the exhibition earlier in the afternoon. So I asked them to show me the Omnia. They were happy and ready to show me how to use the device, which is a five megapixel built-in camera, 3.2-inch touch screen. I got the chance to really try the functions of this new phone. I thought the interface is pretty clean for a Windows Mobile phone. In fact you can see the interface from this picture.
Some of the young entrepreneurs from the E27 group – Julian and Royston (ZopIM) and Vinod (Homespace) have come to share what their start-ups are about with Greg. We also have Joanna, who was recently a guest host for the Geek Goddess show, popping by for the gathering. For myself, I discussed with Greg and several people my thoughts about the web and social media scene in Asia (for example, the OpenWeb Asia initiative and some of the emerging web start-ups funded by Thymos Capital LLP and other incubators under the MDA microfinancing scheme). I also shared some of my thoughts about Asia web start-ups that has evolved with their own competitive advantage, for example, OhMyNews which delivered an interesting model on citizen journalism.
Group photo of the Singapore web enthusiasts with Greg Kumparak
We stayed till about 11 pm before some of us headed home from there while the rest (including Greg) moved on for the Mambo night in Zouk.
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