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Monday, May 18, 2009


Unconference 2009 – Singapore kinda rocks.

As those who have been following our Twitter or Facebook feeds might know, we
recently got invited to a manic meeting of entrepreneurial minds in neighbouring
Singapore called Unconference 2009. The entire Foldees team actually hoofed it
down from KL over the weekend, and are now thoroughly exhausted, and thoroughly
amazed at what an exciting weekend it has been.

The first thing that amazed us was the venue. Much as its name indicates, the
Biopolis is a purpose-built bio-research facility. The minute to enter the compound
(which is HUGE!), you get the feeling you’ve just walked onto the set of Gattaca.

Foldees.com - Unique
Designer Greeting
Cards's Fan Box

Foldees.com - Unique Designer

Greeting Cards on Facebook

Shoutbox ©Ω
Soc_designs Like
the new rules!!
2 0 0 9- 1 2- 2 5 9 : 2 4 P M
Off

Osiris Thanks a lot


chak but cs1
version didn´t work 
so I'm trying to solv
it thru a mail reply.
2 0 0 9- 1 2- 2 2 5 : 0 0 P M
Off

chak sure thing,


osiris! check your
mailbox
Here’s my best impression of Ethan Hawke at the ground floor of the Biopolis… 2 0 0 9- 1 2- 20 7:04
A M Off

osiris eh... i only


have illustrator cs,
so... i gess i cant
design any more
cards, your
template wont work
2 0 1 0- 0 1- 1 3 4 : 1 9 A M

Name Guest
Website
Message
Refresh Shout! +

▼  2009 (60)
►  December (4)

►  November (3)

►  October (4)

►  September (3)

http://foldees.blogspot.com/2009/05/unconference-2009-singapore-kinda-rocks.html Page 1 / 7
►  August (2)

►  July (5)

►  June (6)
  
▼  May (6)
Hmm.. ok. Well, moving on.
Why the name
The Unconference itself was held at the MATRIX block, and took up a whopping 3 change?
floors! Despite being called an unconference, the event was surprisingly structured, Unconference
with keynotes, breakout sessions, pitches and of course, the display booths, which is
2009 –
where we were. I think the whole naming thing is just to con us entrepreneurs into
coming – which we’re damn glad we did. Singapore kinda
rocks.
Our agenda this weekend? Gain a foothold into Singapore, and launch @ddress. Here Sell Out!
are a few shots of our booth, which consisted of two buntings…
BookBinder
Designs

The Monochrome
Greeting Card
Contest (first 25
des...

The Winners
of “Where No
Man Has Gone
Before”

►  April (5)

►  March (6)

►  February (9)

►  January (7)

►  2008 (43)

…a greeting card stand with some of your ol favourites, and a plug to our contest!

Emila's Illustrated
Blog

Graphic
Competitions

Lowyat.NET News
Feed

Kinky Blue Fairy

designer's depot

spontaneous
insignificancy

Jayhan Loves
Design & Japan

Jamir Design Blog

KAKISENI.COM -
Articles

Design Enterprise

Milkberryland.com

ArtSentral

And the smallest cocktail table EVER, where were were showcasing the @ddress
function. We made our table a little bit less corporatey with our lime green tablecloth. chak

Starik

ShareThis

http://foldees.blogspot.com/2009/05/unconference-2009-singapore-kinda-rocks.html Page 2 / 7
Also, we were giving out these wicked customisable stickers… Here’s one we gave to
our neighbouring booth, fellow Malaysian startup, Elevyn.com.

In a nutshell, we were swamped! There were at least 4 people talking to both myself
and Alvin the entire time, and the general consensus was that we needed to move into
Singapore, both in terms of designers to recruit, and cards to sell! Despite totally
ignoring the card stand (which we were incidentally selling cards at S$4.00 a pop), we
sold a ton of cards as well!

We also made some very important contacts, for whom we will be working out some
very interesting collaborations in the coming months, which we are unreasonably
excited about!

If there was one key thing we took away from Unconference 2009, it is that us
Malaysians could learn a thing or two from our Singaporean counterparts.

First, the organisers, e27, did an amazing job of not only organising this conference,
but getting bigshots from Cisco, Google, SalesForce and Skype to come down and
share their insights. This is above and beyond anything I’ve seen in KL, and great both
in terms of exposure and education for us. Kudos to Mohan and the rest of his team.

Tragically, they actually made a loss on the event, due to a last minute cut in budget
from a sponsor. So to those who didn’t want to shell out S$ for your tickets, shame
on you (unless you were one of the awesome volunteers! Thanks Niyi for providing us
loose change when we ran out!)

Also, the other startups were just jaw-dropping. From what we’ve seen, Singapore has
a much more vibrant scene than our own, with loads of awesome projects, mostly
from people so young it makes the Foldees team look like a coupla grumpy old men
in an old pub talking about the good ol days. These guys have built up some fantastic
products with minimal funding, while studying for their university exams! It’s absolutely
amazing!

We’re gonna cover these guys instead of the more prominent ones that went for the
pitch, since they’ve probably been covered enough in places like this. Rest assured
that the pitches were almost uniformly excellent, but what I want to tell you about
were the smaller startups that were no less amazing.

One such example is CareerAlbum.com, a startup created by some very young


people that is basically a social-media enabled jobsite.

http://foldees.blogspot.com/2009/05/unconference-2009-singapore-kinda-rocks.html Page 3 / 7
How they differentiate themselves is through providing job-hunters with more ways to
convince potential employers (integration with LinkedIn, video and music file linking),
and employers with more information by which to make educated choices in terms of
who they want to hire.

On top of designing this amazing site, one of the girls, Shuyan also has a wicked
design for a wallet, which I wanted the moment I saw it.

And now, I’ve GOT IT! Thank you shuyan for SMS-ing me the details of where to get it
after the event. Much much appreciated!

Another really cool startup we saw was Phokki.com, which acts as a sort of online
version of a street-side portrait sketcher, except that they use vectors instead of
pencils and a pad.

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They also offer those same vectorizing services at 25 photo outlets in Singapore! Yes,
we’re already in talks with them about distribution of Foldees cards at those same
outlets :) Also, if you’re curious, the name of the site was created specifically to make
you snigger like you just did 5 seconds ago.

Further down the hall, were a bunch of really enthusiastic er… kids, led by this
efferverscent Chinese guy named Casper. Yes, he was certainly friendly, coming by
our booth 4 times to take the “I WISH YOU” Stickers. The first one I wrote for him
said “I WISH YOU WOULD PLAY GAMES WITH ME” because that’s what Casper
does, with GameMo, a company that specialises in Mobile gaming.

What’s really interesting about GameMo is that they offer both the option of Ad-
supported free gaming, as well as pay-to-play, an option that most providers stay
away from. This gives users the flexibility of Try-before-you-buy, which isn’t available
at the moment.

Another really cool startup (albeit without a profit model) was FFFFoundtape.com,
which can grab music from ANY site, and allow you to forever drag it into your own
customised playlist, that you can share with anybody. HOW COOL IS THAT!?

The only problem with the site is no clear business model. Yup, it’s run by a bunch of
really idealistic people, and we here at Foldees absolutely understand that. However,
in the long run, you still need some cash, so you guys should probably hook up with
these guys… www.cravecharts.com cos they have a pretty good business model.

Lastly, but not leastly (if there’s such a word, which according to Blogger, there isn’t),
is Foliohouse, ironically the first startup we met since they were our neighbours. The
site’s not up yet, but we got a sneak peek at it.

http://foldees.blogspot.com/2009/05/unconference-2009-singapore-kinda-rocks.html Page 5 / 7
Doesn’t it kinda look like Foldees except more orange? That’s cos the concept is very
similar to our own! It’s called an Artist Incubation Project, and aims to use contests
and events to recruit a bunch of designers to their site, and match those artists to
corporate work (this is the part that’s not so much like us). We can’t wait!

----------------------------------------------

Anyways, that was what we remembered from Unconference2009, which is probably


at least in part due to the fact that we were standing and talking the whole day on 3
hours of sleep. To those startups that we didn’t feature, please don’t get mad at us.
We need to rest too, so we can’t cover everybody :)

Speaking of which, we’re going to catch up on some now.

Ok Singapore, Good night from KL.

Posted by chak at 8:29 AM

4 comments:

Stephen said...
Some awesome ideas there. Exciting stuff.
May 18, 2009 12:11 PM

Sneha said...
Yo!

Thanks for the writeup. I fffound ffffoundtape to be cool too along with elevyn,
evolitera and iTwinn. We are glad you came for the event and most importantly
had fun!:)
May 18, 2009 8:08 PM

chak said...
We always have fun, Sneha!

Painful, teary-eyed, utterly exhausting fun :)


May 19, 2009 4:00 AM

Meng Weng Wong said...


Glad you guys had a good time, and congrats! Took a picture of your booth:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mengwong/3537666040/in/set-
72157618296780316/

cheers
meng
May 20, 2009 4:11 AM

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