Colin Charles Agenda

So, a while back, I became a council member at the Technopreneurs Association of Malaysia (TeAM). My focus is on open source and open standards.

I would like to get more entrepreneurs building their products on opensource. I want them to harness open standards, and expose APIs so others can build cool stuff around it. I want to see TeAM help create more Malaysian tech success stories.

As an aside, I found FOSS FAQ, and decided to post a question there: How do you convince an entrepreneur to go opensource?.

Seems like a silly question. I mean, VC’s like Guy Kawasaki like you to use cheap, and highly available tools, and opensource fits that bill. But nowadays, proprietary vendors have also upped the game – they also provide cheap (free for a time period) tools. So how do you get entrepreneurs going OSS for their products? What’s your pitch to them?

foss.my 2009 is happening October 24-25 2009, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. There is already a tremendous schedule, and the registration prices are still ridiculously cheap.

If you’re in the region, consider flying in by many of the budget airlines available. Also, time is running out to register to win a free netbook, for two lucky winners. I hear it comes with GNU/Linux pre-loaded :)

In other news, the foss.my team had a press conference on Tuesday 6 October 2009, and the superstar reporter from The Star, Joanne Timbuong already wrote up a good article for The Star’s In.Tech titled: Open-source experts gathering at Foss.my.

So, great program, great lineup, what’s keeping you from registering?

Piracy is a big deal in Malaysia. Apparently, piracy is causing greater losses for the software industry, and is a billion ringgit problem. The piracy rate is 59%, which is below the regional average of 61%. Wow!

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) hates piracy. They’ve even setup an informative site, titled B4USurf. Its great to see that they run Apache, on CentOS, and are powered by PHP and CMS Made Simple. They however, don’t at any point in time mention opensource in all their information. Of course I understand why – the BSA themselves shouldn’t like opensource.

However, the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry plans to increase public awareness to buying only original software. They’ll also touch on the downside of pirated products. Will they then not talk about opensource software?

Its all fine and dandy to create an open source conference for advocacy purposes, but if we’re still doing advocacy after so many years, something must be amiss. Maybe enlisting help from other ministries, tacking on information campaigns organised by the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry might make sense, no?

Seeing ads that tell you to buy original software, just falls on deaf ears. Show them alternatives. Show them that there is no need to buy original software, after all, open source software is free (as in bebas, not necessarily percuma).

The good news – the website to track economic stimulus funds in Malaysia is now ready. Check out: Rangsangan Ekonomi Malaysia.

Even better news, they used an open source software solution (Joomla!) to make that website happen. So mad props go out to them.

Only thing that irks me? Its all in Bahasa Malaysia, with no translation in English.

The idea behind GeekCamp started from Kamal Fariz’s tweet:

I’m going to run GeekCamp. All technical talks, single track. No offense to marketers, *preneurs, social media experts but you can suck it.

It received overwhelming responses over Twitter, and Kamal couldn’t have suggested a better date/time scenario — right before/after the MSC Malaysia event.

What is GeekCamp?
Its a platform for all technical talks to take place, in a single track kind of scenario. There will be no marketing pitches, no entrepreneurial talks, and nothing about social media — just focus on good technology talks. There will also be an emphasis on great food, laid back learning and sharing environments, and after parties.

Be a caring geek, by sharing your knowledge openly. Don’t go up on stage, to speak on git(1), when you don’t know how to use a SCM… you’ll end up looking like a git.

Do you know all the cool tricks to tunnel connections, and make SSH do wonders, with all the variety of configuration options in the ssh config file? You’re probably entitled a lengthier lighting talk session, then, I’m sure :)

Do you know how to write a search engine in about two-hundred lines of Ruby? Do you know how to index email metadata at the server level, and provide a Spotlight/Beagle styled search on the server side? Do you know all the nooks and crannies behind making Apache scale? Do you know what the most common ways websites get broken into, and how to fix XSS, and other things? I think you’ll definitely get a session that way ;-)

What resources are there for GeekCamp?
We have a mailing list, a a Twitter account @geekcamp, and a poll to decide when to hold GeekCamp.

We are actively looking for a location, somewhere in central KL, preferably available for FREE (as in beerteh tarik).

Attendance is expected to be free, ala Barcamp style. All this of course, provided we get a free location. Food, drink, et al – BYO (bring your own). After all, you’re coming to learn, and hack on stuff.

Anything else?
Once the location is decided upon, there are thoughts to have a proper “call for papers” session. However, unlike many other conferences, the CfP process will be public, and chances are you can vote on Doodle, like you are doing for the location.

Let’s make this as open, and geeky/technology-oriented as possible. Kudos to Kamal for kicking this off.

If you’re coming in from overseas, once we have a location, we’ll recommend hotels.

Comments? Send them to the mailing list.

Takeaway

• Let’s decide how many days and when it should be – vote here
• Let’s decide where to hold it – a hall for the sessions, and another room for hacking/socialising – read more about the requirements
• If you do want to sponsor the event (not with marketing materials, thank you very much), we’ll be looking at food and drink

Just to set the record straight, OSDC.my 2009 has no relation to foss.my. They have a different theme, a highly swank location (i.e. not a place of higher education), it is not community run (there are community members in the committee though), and its sponsored by MDEC.

In fact, I’m not even sure what the event is called – it may differ between OSDC.my to MSC OSCON.my. Mad props to the folk behind the real OSDC (community run, in a different city within Australia) and O’Reilly’s OSCON, since their names are really popular :-)

Now, what about foss.my 2009? Its about time we started planning for the event. foss.my 2008 was most successful, held during November 8-9 2008, but a lot of students complained — they didn’t like the time, as they had exams before or after the event (heck, even one of the crew members, had an exam the next day!).

So, let me ask a few questions, and feel free to reply in comments:

1. What timeframe would work best for foss.my 2009? In terms of a month, is September or October better? Keep in mind we don’t want other event clashes.
2. Do you want foss.my 2009 to be longer? Two days, with two tracks, seemed to be a little short for people.
3. If so, how many days do you want foss.my 2009 to be?
4. Do you want it to run through the weekend (so maybe Saturday, Sunday, Monday)?

International folk should answer this too… because you’ll probably be coming to attend, to speak, to mingle, etc. Do you want to come at a time when Malaysia has a colourful event? Do you want to see parts of KL or other parts of Malaysia?

Disclosure: I don’t speak for anyone else on the past/current/future foss.my committee, just myself.