Archive for August 2012

MySQL across two coasts

The end of September/beginning of October is a most exciting time if you dig MySQL & its diaspora. September 29-30 is MySQL Connect (register – early bird ends September 7) in San Francisco and October 1-2 is Percona Live NYC (register – early bird ends September 1) in New York City. I’m just attending MySQL Connect (thanks Dave for the ticket) and I’m speaking in New York so will take the redeye on Sunday. Four packed days of MySQL/MariaDB/Percona/tools/etc. across two coasts. Who can pass this up?

Who else is going to two of these events? Oh, MariaDB is also proud to be a sponsor of Percona Live NYC.

zalora malaysia II

Untitledcontinuing my awe with the great go-to-market execution of zalora malaysia, i happened to visit a starbucks over the weekend (my first in quite some time; i prefer drinking my rm2-5 coffee at the club). i also purchased my first frappuccino, normally preferring to go for a long black or a caramel macchiatto. why?

you can thank zalora & lazada. i saw an awesome banner offering a rm30 and rm50 discount.

one thing is clear though is that i could have probably done without the frappuccino. the starbucks staff weren’t proactive in giving me the voucher, and when prompted they just told me to take it. anyone could grab it basically…

that said, this is smart. in addition to whatever zalora is doing, they’re also going after the starbucks/yuppie/coffee drinking crowd. whom are mostly surfing the internet (no shortage of laptops at this particular starbucks). target market? check.

see the design for the coupons: zalora and lazada.

zalora malaysia: some quick thoughts

I’m not your typical shopper, but I’ve worked with a tonne of e-commerce in my days. From shopping carts to getting the word out, I’ve probably got to start listing more down here. 

One of the first shopping malls in Malaysia to me was jipaban. The terms (for sellers) weren’t awesome (have a bunch of stuff scribbled in my notebook that never materialized into a post), and I have no idea how they’re doing in Malaysia today. Strength? Blog advertising network link. Shortly thereafter, I saw postme, run by pos malaysia. I saw ads in the edge and even regular newspapers like the star. Clearly more promise but again, no idea how they’re doing today.

Then came zalora. Its hard to avoid them. Ads on the radio. Loyalty with bcard (seen at borders, starbucks, etc.). Today in email, hsbc cardholders get 15% off on zalora. Almost every other google ad that I see happens to be from zalora.

They’re going strong with mass media. And that’s brilliant because in Malaysia, online shopping/e-commerce have many impediments and zalora is out there spending money to make it better and convince people that buying online makes more sense. Malaysia totally needs this sort of forward thinking. Going beyond just the blogs that are part of blog advertising networks. 

Whether zalora succeeds or not in the long term, the money spent on a&p, getting the word out and persuading more people to become online shoppers is highly welcome. It will certainly help lots of independent retailers do well too.

Malaysia’s Evidence Act – #STOP114A

I’m not a huge fan of many oppressive Malaysian laws, but I believe we need to fight the good fight and never let our freedoms on the Internet expire. The government works for us, not the other way around. An expiring regime tries many tricks, but its clear that there are rifts within the regime.

If you need more information as to why the amendments to the Evidence Act are bad, the Center for Independent Journalism in Malaysia has a pretty good resource: http://stop114a.wordpress.com/. Read more about it. I’m particularly pleased there is an infographic so for people that are lazy to read, the infographic tells all.

There’s a huge chunk of resources, and you can even put on a twibbon on Facebook & Twitter. I’ve done so on twitter at least.

I don’t plan on being silenced or blacked out per se, but its important people know about this movement.

stop114a-infographic1


i