That’s right – this time Makeweekend is coming to Melaka, and we aim to be better than ever!

We’re looking at getting more participants, even cooler projects and participants who aren’t just from universities.

Join Makeweekend Melaka today!

If you’re in Melaka and you want to bring your ideas to life, come on over for Makeweekend Melaka! It’s absolutely free and much fun is guaranteed, as well as the opportunity to meet with industry leaders and cool, like-minded people!

You also stand a chance to win the State Innovation Award, where if you win, you’re in the running to receive recognition from our Prime Minister! Pretty cool eh?

Some details:

It’ll be at the Dewan Seminar FTMK, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM) from August 10 – 12. If you need help with accommodation, email tasnim@tandemic.com ASAP, rooms are extremely limited.

Spread the word on Makeweekend and register at bit.ly/mwmelaka today!

We spotted an interesting interview with Joi Of Neoteny Labs Speaks on his new role at the MIT Media Lab. Here are a few snippets from his interview in the Asian Scientist.

You have spawned a long list of successful initiatives that include Creative Commons, Technocrati, Flickr and Mozilla Foundation. You obviously have an eye for online media. Do you have any words of advice for start-ups such as Asian Scientist Magazine?

I didn’t actually start most of those projects, but I do have advice for start-ups. I think it is very important to understand what sort of differentiators you, your region and your network has, and focus on trying to figure out how to leverage that. Also, most start-ups fail, not because they don’t have an interesting product, but because they don’t get distribution – they can’t attract users.

Make sure you have a distribution plan. Also, launch early and talk about your work. Reid Hoffman often says that if you’re not embarrassed by your first launch, you’ve launched too late. He has a famous line, “Don’t ‘ready, aim, fire’. Instead, ‘almost ready, aim, fire, aim, fire, aim, fire.”

You mentioned previously that surrounding yourself with smart people stimulates your thinking. Where do you derive inspiration from, and who are your role models?

I derive my inspiration from my interactions with people and their interactions with other people. These people also make things, do things and impact the world around us. Being a part of a global network of active, learning and inspired people is my goal and my source of inspiration and energy. I find role model behavior everywhere I look – almost every single person that I meet has something that I can learn from or be inspired by. Having said that, there are people who have had more influence on me than others, but I have dozens of extremely important mentors and not a single one.

The Media Lab is an unusual place, in that it is a hybrid of art and science. Does science & technology complement and enhance the arts? If so, what significance does that type of research have for MIT?

I believe that the arts allow us to think about and explore science and technology in extremely creative ways – extending the models, frameworks and tools in ways that researchers and engineers wouldn’t naturally try. I think the arts are an essential component of the creative exploration of any scientific and technical area, and that the relationship with the deep and rigorous academic side can be extremely fruitful.

Read the full interview here.

We spotted an interesting interview with Joi Of Neoteny Labs Speaks on his new role at the MIT Media Lab. Here are a few snippets from his interview in the Asian Scientist.

You have spawned a long list of successful initiatives that include Creative Commons, Technocrati, Flickr and Mozilla Foundation. You obviously have an eye for online media. Do you have any words of advice for start-ups such as Asian Scientist Magazine?

I didn’t actually start most of those projects, but I do have advice for start-ups. I think it is very important to understand what sort of differentiators you, your region and your network has, and focus on trying to figure out how to leverage that. Also, most start-ups fail, not because they don’t have an interesting product, but because they don’t get distribution – they can’t attract users.

Make sure you have a distribution plan. Also, launch early and talk about your work. Reid Hoffman often says that if you’re not embarrassed by your first launch, you’ve launched too late. He has a famous line, “Don’t ‘ready, aim, fire’. Instead, ‘almost ready, aim, fire, aim, fire, aim, fire.”

You mentioned previously that surrounding yourself with smart people stimulates your thinking. Where do you derive inspiration from, and who are your role models?

I derive my inspiration from my interactions with people and their interactions with other people. These people also make things, do things and impact the world around us. Being a part of a global network of active, learning and inspired people is my goal and my source of inspiration and energy. I find role model behavior everywhere I look – almost every single person that I meet has something that I can learn from or be inspired by. Having said that, there are people who have had more influence on me than others, but I have dozens of extremely important mentors and not a single one.

The Media Lab is an unusual place, in that it is a hybrid of art and science. Does science & technology complement and enhance the arts? If so, what significance does that type of research have for MIT?

I believe that the arts allow us to think about and explore science and technology in extremely creative ways – extending the models, frameworks and tools in ways that researchers and engineers wouldn’t naturally try. I think the arts are an essential component of the creative exploration of any scientific and technical area, and that the relationship with the deep and rigorous academic side can be extremely fruitful.

Read the full interview here.

In November, we did an exciting Urekaweekend on the theme of social enterprise. The Urekaweekend was hosted by UCTI APIIT in Technology Park. The space was a blast to work in as they had many glass breakout rooms for the participants to split out into working groups.

Joining us for this weekend were a number of students from UCTI studying everything from business to electrical engineering professionalsfrom near and far also took time to join in – some came from as far as Penang. It was by far one of the most diverse of crowds so far. Our youngest participant, Sidd, was 15! More than sixty people attended.

What is social enterprise? We look at it as social mission driven organizations which apply market-based strategies to achieve a social purpose. We reached out to Ashoka, a global association of social entrepreneurs, and invited Alexis Ditkowsky to share about some of the most innovative social enterprises she has encountered.

Ngai Yuen from Kakiseni/Carrefour also took time to meet all of the teams personally. She listened listening to what they had planned and helped coach them on developing their social ideas. One of the teams working on a household energy recapture device took the opportunity to ask for a key component to their prototype – a bicycle. They received a brand spanking new one thanks to Ngai Yuen and Carrefour! Dan Ciambrone, the team lead, has used his project to apply to 7 universities, including MIT.

The third speaker was a real treat. Jamal is an amazing spoken word poet who recited a couple of poems from his repertoire. He talked where he got the inspiration for his poems and how they relate to pitching your project.

Winners

At the end of each Urekaweekend, we provide a micro-investment for the top teams to continue their projects. We had a hard time coming to a decision because there were so many projects that deserve love. Here are the projects we thought shone the brightest:

1. Expn$e: an innovative iPhone application to help people better keep track of their expenses
2. Social Edutainment Quizzes: a Facebook-based study game for SPM students
3. Hybrid Life: an energy recapture device that uses rainwater to charge an iPod

Read more about some of the interesting projects at Urekaweekend here.

Urekaweekend 7 – Designing Social Innovation in collaboration with think-lab’s design conference was a pleasant change of pase from the normally very tech centric Urekaweekend’s that we have been hosting. It was a 2 day affair – day one conducted by the think-labbers focusing applying a design thinking approach towards solving a number of social issues ranging from baby dumping to reducing plastic bag usage

Thinklab© introduced a new concept unlike the previous usual half a day conference, into a two day workshop collaboration with Urekaweekend, as a new feel to the already trademark of public engaging design conference. MAP KL and iTrain was the official partner for conference venues and was filled with energy and inspiration as participants began their weekend with optimism to innovate current social behaviors. 8 general social issues were identified, and were discussed by participants on how to improve the conditions through design thinking, conducted by Urekaweekend.

Speakers were the highlight of the design conference, as names such as Reita Rahim of Gerai OA, Mitch Gelber of TR Hamzah & Yeang, Dr Goh Chee Leong of Dean of the Faculty of Behavioral Sciences at HELP University, Fahmi Fadzil of Popteevee, Arvin Lee of CSR Commentator and Orkidstudio from UK, gave their piece on social innovation through design. Their multiple perspectives from business to architectural point of views were invaluable as the many of the discussion became point of reference for the second day workshop.

Via : think-lab

everyone at the end of day 1

Some of my personal highlights for day 1

The wallet project

Participants trying their hand at prototyping a wallet – this saw some rather innovative approaches at customizing this staple accessory.

Kal talking about the wallet project

Design goods vendors

A number of purveyors of design books and other nick-knacks including craft from gerai OA had opened booths to display their goods. The design books looked pretty awesome.

Design nick-knacks

Reita Rahim of Gerai OA

The flurry of ideas

During some of the ideating sessions, the participants were so engrossed at updating the idea boards so much so they didnt want to leave for the tea breaks, totally in the zone!

Ideas

Day 2

The 60 or so participants started working out solutions to the presented problems on day 1 and then continued to prototype their ideas on day 2 @ iTrain. Unsurprisingly having that many talented designers work on projects the nett result was beautifully rendered mock-ups and visually impressive presentations. A total of 7 projects were started and presented at the end of day 2, with everything from robots to smart bags. Here is a rundown

Robotix Camp

Using robotix to teach underprivileged/ rural kids important life lessons – they are planning to run a camp to reach out to kids.

Robotix Camp

KL Traffic

Maybe we can reduce traffic if everyone leaves work at a scheduled time so not everyone is on the road at the same time

Plastic boys

shopping bag + loyalty card = less plastic bags being used!

Plastic boys

Lost boys

losing your laptop is a pain – maybe we can come lock it up so it wont be worth anything to the person stealing it?

Lost boys

Styrofoam

Beautifully designed weighted disposable plates.

Eve Lynn championing styrofoam reduction

Hi neighbor

A social network for housing communities

Hi neighbor

Green walker

Planting trees, making things pretty and bringing communities together

Green walker

Teams spent the day preparing Prototypes and mockups that they then presented to a crowd + judges. For the wrap-up we awarded teams with the best presentations tickets to Kuching and KK courtesy of Firefly Airlines in conjunction with Iheartborneo

Stay tuned for updates on what the teams come up with at ideas.urekaweekend.com

Expn$e

So what do you do when you dont have a credit card and want to register for urekaweekend? well there is the Other payment method – a little known button at the bottom of the registration process

First you select your ticket type

Then you fill in your details and all the way at the bottom there is a button (in red circle)

Click that button and chose your other payment option

Hope you find this useful. if anything doesnt work always feel free to drop us a line

Here are some of the feedbacks that we got from participants of Urekaweekend 6:-

“The possibility to actually create even a simple version of awesomeness is what makes Urekaweekend a slightly different kind of weekend. Thinking is cool, but having people around you to bounce ideas around and give real feedback, all of you encouraged by nothing more than the desire to make some awesome sauce, and then actually BUILD something with all of the awesomenicity at hand kind of changes the game a little. Go to the next Urekaweekend. No arguments. Just awesomeness!”

-Daniel Ciambrone-

“Urekaweekend was a fruitful 2 and a half day idea generation workshop. We were able to meet some good keynote speakers and judges that are from the industry; where it allows us to be familiar with what the real industry is about. It’s also a great way to make new connections and friends that are currently working in the field. I had lots of fun, thanks for inviting us!”

-Ji Hsia-

“At first, I had no idea what to expect or what exactly am I suppose to do during Urekaweekend. But while I was there, I realised that it was a good exposure to what other areas are about and how they are related to my career choice. The environment was friendly, fun and energetic. Urekaweekend was not the usual traditional session of bringing like minds together to come up with ideas. Instead, participants from different areas were put together resulting in truly unique ideas. Key lesson, there is no bad idea; it just needs to be improved or modified to work around barriers. I learnt how to identify factors that stifle social enterprises and ways of making the social enterprise benefit the community and at the same time self-sustain and also how to effectively pitch an idea; state the problem, give solutions on how to go about solving the problem and its benefits.”

-Mbaki M. Mathambo-

“Well, I think Urekaweekend is a good place to meet up with new talented people, sharing & developing ideas. I had an idea of making a simple tracking expenses application for the iPhone. Actually I’ve been working on it for few months to build the prototype. Luckily, I attended Urekaweekend as it helped me accomplish creating the prototype within 2 days! All this was possible because during Urekaweekend, I shared my idea to people from all walks of life. The best thing was I got more ideas on how to make the application more compelling to the market. A month later, I finally finished the product and sent it to the AppStore for review.”

-Muhammad Hijazi-

“Urekaweekend was amaaaazing!! It was really fun because I learned many things such as brainstorming and presentation technique as well as negotiation skills, especially during presentations where I met great judges and learned a lot from their comments. I recommend this event for people who like to share their ideas!”

-Muhammad Yulian Noor-

“Urekaweekend was very hectic and interesting at the same time. It’s a crash course aimed at providing an avenue for people with ideas, to pitch and develop their ideas into workable businesses in a mere 25 hours! Even so, we both agree that Urekaweekend has been an absolutely awesome experience for us. Getting to know people in the industry, getting their input, advice, and most of all, we are truly happy to have known many awesome people during the weekend. They truly inspired us to do better, and work harder to develop ourselves. THANK YOU UREKAWEEKEND!”

-Munir Basheer & Ann Sha-

On the 20th to the 22nd of september we ran urekaweekend5 and the focus this time around was mapping – learning how to use it and developing applications that would be location relevant. The main participants of this weekend were students of the KPTM in Cheras and some entrepreneurs from KL. Thanks to Plug and Play for allowing us usage of their venue

Trying it for the first time we used eventbrite registration and it seemed to work pretty well – didn’t collect any money off the website (but we shall try that out for urekaweekend6)

Friday night started with everyone rolling in at about 7pm due to #kltraffic (i cant remember but i think it rained that day) at the time i was wondering if anyone would come at all considering most of the kl entrepreneurs were down at e27′s accelerate and another event in singapore but thankfully there were still some left in kl to drop by

Dinner was a little delayed that night no thanks to dominos – i think they were just a little shocked at the sudden order of 14 extra large pizzas (online no less) but when they finally got our order sorted out they were nice enough to thrown a free pizza for keeping us waiting + 4 bottles of ketchup for some reason. Quick plug for Dominos, make sure to buy their express card. its like magic getting 2 pizza’s of any size for the price of one (we only ended up paying for 7, and whats more you can order online and pick up later.

After some brief nom nom and a getting to know everyone session everyone convened for a quick briefing of what was to happen over the next 2 days conducted by yours truly. Then came the idea pitching session, where everyone that came with an idea got a chance to present theirs and we definitely heard some interesting ones (some not mapping based but that was cool too)

Among the ones that seemed to get a lot of crowd support were startupballs – a futsal league for startups in kl. I even ended up presenting one, (for surianee as she couldn’t make it on friday) project light box – a workshop intended for people that run their own blogshops to teach them how to build a light box and how to take better pictures of their products.

The sensing was pretty energetic and concluded at about 10+ and everyone headed back to get some zzz and think about what they would do on saturday.

Everyone that came in that morning noticed something new to the look of the venue as we had put up some really funky greeting cards from one of our awesome sponsors to light up the rooms. Foldees.com also provided a complimentary card for all participants so everyone was pretty stoked to sending one to their special someone.

Props to the students of KPTM for coming in super early on saturday – they had to load up their laptops with software for their training session with Aizat and Kegan that morning so almost everyone was in before 8 ( and before the breakfast even came). Everyone else rolled in at about 9 -10 plus. Right after breakfast was served and The class had started – but since they were working on their own projects thats all cool.

Lunch was a quick affair with packed lunches all neat and ready to go – the next session promised to be far more exciting and would give everyone a brief respite from their toiling over work.

We had the great pleasure of Amir Muhammad dropping over to preform a reading of his book rojak. What was supposed to be a 15 minute session ended up taking an hour with all the questions and general havoc – that was pretty fun as we had a chance to have a brief glimpse at how and why Amir starts new projects like his books and films.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in class – finishing up the mapping lesson and for the rest building their ideas, and before everyone retired for the day we had a quick session of powerpoint karaoke (thanks @qishin for downloading those random slides) those that participated won super sized greeting cards, sms blasting credit from our second sponsor Ezypzy.com and free name card printing from thisisbinding.com

Just a quick shout out to @razlanshah for staying after and helping with the clean up. Guys it was pretty messy after i must say.

Day 3 was pretty intense as the student teams were only just starting their projects (as they had been in Aizat’s mapping class the day before) but all the same everyone came in bring and early that morning to get going with the new skills that they had learned. Funny thing – one of our first students to pitch what they were doing that morning was also an Aizat (Nur Aizt to be more accurate) and her idea was also a college assignment – a mapping project that would allow people intending to run events find venues that could host them (make sure to get that done I want to use this app for the next Urekaweekends)

Right after lunch we had another bunch of guest join us to talk about an interesting project for #opendata in Malaysia. Since they did a private preview for all present and asked for us not to spill the beans till the project goes live sometime later this year i will not say too much, however it was a very interesting presentation by Karyn Mak, Kian Yang and Ching Yee from Senedi and we thank them for being cool with sharing this sneak peek with the Urekaweekenders. A lot of the mapping projects are looking to get in on that action.

Wrapping up and adding the final touches to their presentations and updates on what everyone did over the weekend too a little extra time but at the end of it everyone had a chance to share the urekaweekend story. To my surprise we even had a last minute idea hatched that day – Location based dating (this is going to be so much fun)

So everyone went back tired – but a little richer (experience wise that is) Im looking forward to seeing how their ideas develop and who ends up getting that grant of RM2500 for the best developed idea at the end of a month.

Finally id like to give a big thank you to the following organizations for making Urekaweekend possible.

MDEC for continually supporting urekaweekend getting things done and starting things. Entrepreneurs.my and technopreneur.my for helping organize the venue and waking up early to open the doors, and finally all of the people that have come and in some way made urekaweekend5 happen.

Looking forward to seeing everyone at Urekaweekend6 – social enterprise edition

So you participated in urekaweekend, did you enjoy yourself? did you manage to get stuff done? well we would like to know what you thought of it so we can make the next one more awesome.

Did i mention that filling in the form below entitles you to getting foldees cards. Make sure to fill in your details accurately so we can email you the digital certificates

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KUALA LUMPUR — This weekend, 60 of Kuala Lumpur’s best programmers and designers gathered to hack together new products and services at an intense, overnight session called Hackweekend. By dawn, software developers and designers built a variety of applications intended to make life more fun by turning everyday activities into games.

Late in the morning, 13 teams demonstrated services that ranged from promoting carpooling, turning meeting people at conferences into a game, and helping distribute work tasks. One nine year old participant developed a web browser design themed for Hackweekend.

Telemoney World and Mindvalley pledged substantial amounts of money to invest in applications built at Hackweekend and support for launching productions internationally.

Development work at Hackweekend was focused around the emerging trend of gamification. The event culminated in a live demo where developers showed off what they built to business executives and potential investors.

Gamification is not strictly about games. “Gamification is about about adding game elements to everyday activities. It’s a powerful way of changing people’s behaviour,” said Hakim Albasrawy, Director at Tandemic, one of the event organisers. “Loyalty programmes are a form of games. They can change their purchasing behaviour even if their members don’t plan on spending their points.”

“Gamification has been applied to areas such as social networking and cancer treatment to increase the use and effectiveness of products. In Foursquare, a location-based social network, users gain badges and mayorships for checking into venues such as restaurants. “People respond to challenges. While these badges have no intrinsic value, they drive greater Foursquare usage,” says Albasrawy.

Hackweekend is a collaborative initiative by a group of passionate individuals from the local technology community. Hackweekend is supported by Nova, which organises a series of Malaysian innovation programmes that aim to spike interest in and nurture budding innovators. Several organisations from the technology sector including Microsoft, Techmaki and Wakalab, are also offering their resources to support Hackweekend, all in the spirit of promoting innovation.

High resolution photos of the event can be downloaded here.

Hackweekend Projects

CarPool Tunnel

A car pooling application that helps people car pool with their friends and extended network rather than strangers. The application loads users’ social network from Facebook and finds friends and people nearby with whom to pool. Carpoolers are rewarded with badges and ratings for their car pooling. The app is designed for use by communities such as workplaces or universities and has already obtained a major customer.

BigApp

BigApp is a platform that helps event organizers publicly display and run games based on a twitter hashtag. The platform includes several templates for processing tweets, including a game where tweeters can inflate and pop a balloon based on the amount of tweeting they do on a hashtag. Another template allows tweeters to vote for different options and displays the results using a live bar chart.

Workpad

Workpad is an online work distribution and collaboration application. Workpad breaks down projects into programming tasks that programmers can bid on. As people take on and successfully deliver on more projects, their warrior avatar on the site is upgraded and gains access to more skilled projects. One project being run on Workpad so far is the development of the Nova Platform, a platform for collaborative idea development.

Qwest

Qwest crowd sources the best venues wherever you are. Users submit a question about where to find something on the mobile app, such as the best burger in town. When someone checks into a venue, they can vote that venue up or down on the question’s leader board. Similar to foursquare, users get badges for submitting questions and voting venues.

Matchaa

Inspired by the magazine face-off where two people are asked the same questions and readers decide which they like the best, Matchaa allows people to set up face-offs between their friends and vote on winner.

Lubang Lubang 1Malaysia

This application is crowd sourced platform that encourages citizens to report potholes and other municipal issues by gamifying it. Users sign in with Facebook, submit reports, and vote issues based on their importance. The more issues the user submits and the more votes the user’s issues get, the greater their credibility and points on the system. The app features a leader board with top reporters.

World War Tweet

A war game based on competing twitter hashtags. The game features a site where people can join a team (hashtag) and view their health and expend ammunition on enemy hashtags. The more popular your hashtag becomes, the more ammunition you have. When your hashtag is “shot” on the site, you lose health and eventually die. In order to be resurrected, friends must spend action points to help you out. These action points are related to actions on twitter users take.

Cab APB

With Cab APB, anyone who has a car can become a taxi driver. Cab APB is an all points bulletin where people can specify routes they want to take based on their destination and drivers can bid for the route. Points and badges are awarded to drivers and passengers based on their behaviour. For example, particularly fast drivers receive the “flash badge.”

HeyHey

This app encourages people to get in touch with persons they’ve recently met rather than shelving their business cards after meeting. Users of this iOS and web app add the email address of the person and the app displays a profile for the person sourced from several social networks, including a profile photo sourced online.

C4Square

C4Square is a location based game that allows players to place virtual bombs where they tweet with geolocation enabled. It is a virtual game of tag that can run through any city. The first player to tweet in an area can plant a bomb with the #c4sq hashtag. Anyone who tweets in the same area with geolocation turned on in the next 48 hours gets blown up.

ShortcutKami

ShortcutKami is a marketplace for traffic shortcuts. ShortcutKami crowd sources short cuts by making people submit traffic shortcuts to gain points, which they can then spend on viewing other people’s shortcuts.

Campr

Campr simplifies and encourages face-to-face interaction between attendees of an event. Users can post requests such as “I need a designer” “I’m a designer looking to help out.” People who you’ve worked with at the event can Thumbs Up your profile. Those who have Thumbs Up-ed you will be mentioned in an automated tweet from your Twitter account, so they’ll know how to get in touch with you after the event.

Hekken

Hekken turns your social network into a series of collectible playing cards, similar to Magic Cards. The profile for each person on Hekken is displayed as a game card with user stats and special powers. As a person connects to more people, they collect more cards and their powers on Hekken increase.

For more information

Kal Joffres (kal@tandemic.com)
Hakim Albasrawy (hakim@tandemic.com)

About Hackweekend

Hackweekend (http://hack.weekend.my) is a series of community events that brings together the very best programmers, designers and thinkers to build amazing applications. Hackweekends are an environment where developers rapidly build innovative software solutions in collaboration with like-minded people. Hackweekend is part of The Weekend Movement, an initiative that helps people bring their ideas to life by rapidly prototyping and launching new products and services over the course of a weekend.

The July 30th Hackweekend was free of charge to participants who were accepted. Developers and designers may apply to participate at http://hack.weekend.my/apply. Applicants are evaluated based on their credentials and project idea.

About Nova

Nova is a Malaysian innovation programme that aim to spike interest in and nurture budding innovators. The program includes a series of Weekend events that help people innovate and an online open innovation platform where people share ideas, seek expertise, form collaborative teams, attract funders and customers.

The Nova programme is a collaboration between between Agensi Inovasi Malaysia (AIM), the national innovation agency, Motionworks, a software development firm, and Tandemic, a social media firm focused on building social movements in innovation and entrepreneurship.

About Wakalab

WakaLab (Waka = “Youth” in Japanese) is an initiative by NSTP to engage with its youths and other young Malaysians. Its members aim to innovate ideas to find solutions to real world challenges.

WakaLab is also the physical space in NSTP e-Media where members and guests are welcomed to thrash ideas and network. WakaLab is interested in all unusual, out-of-the-box ideas. For that reason, if you have a bright idea which could benefit others, contact us at yo.wakalab@gmail.com.

We spotted an interesting interview with Joi Of Neoteny Labs Speaks on his new role at the MIT Media Lab. Here are a few snippets from his interview in the Asian Scientist.

You have spawned a long list of successful initiatives that include Creative Commons, Technocrati, Flickr and Mozilla Foundation. You obviously have an eye for online media. Do you have any words of advice for start-ups such as Asian Scientist Magazine?

I didn’t actually start most of those projects, but I do have advice for start-ups. I think it is very important to understand what sort of differentiators you, your region and your network has, and focus on trying to figure out how to leverage that. Also, most start-ups fail, not because they don’t have an interesting product, but because they don’t get distribution – they can’t attract users.

Make sure you have a distribution plan. Also, launch early and talk about your work. Reid Hoffman often says that if you’re not embarrassed by your first launch, you’ve launched too late. He has a famous line, “Don’t ‘ready, aim, fire’. Instead, ‘almost ready, aim, fire, aim, fire, aim, fire.”

You mentioned previously that surrounding yourself with smart people stimulates your thinking. Where do you derive inspiration from, and who are your role models?

I derive my inspiration from my interactions with people and their interactions with other people. These people also make things, do things and impact the world around us. Being a part of a global network of active, learning and inspired people is my goal and my source of inspiration and energy. I find role model behavior everywhere I look – almost every single person that I meet has something that I can learn from or be inspired by. Having said that, there are people who have had more influence on me than others, but I have dozens of extremely important mentors and not a single one.

The Media Lab is an unusual place, in that it is a hybrid of art and science. Does science & technology complement and enhance the arts? If so, what significance does that type of research have for MIT?

I believe that the arts allow us to think about and explore science and technology in extremely creative ways – extending the models, frameworks and tools in ways that researchers and engineers wouldn’t naturally try. I think the arts are an essential component of the creative exploration of any scientific and technical area, and that the relationship with the deep and rigorous academic side can be extremely fruitful.

Read the full interview here.

Expn$e

In November, we did an exciting Urekaweekend on the theme of social enterprise. The Urekaweekend was hosted by UCTI APIIT in Technology Park. The space was a blast to work in as they had many glass breakout rooms for the participants to split out into working groups.

Joining us for this weekend were a number of students from UCTI studying everything from business to electrical engineering professionalsfrom near and far also took time to join in – some came from as far as Penang. It was by far one of the most diverse of crowds so far. Our youngest participant, Sidd, was 15! More than sixty people attended.

What is social enterprise? We look at it as social mission driven organizations which apply market-based strategies to achieve a social purpose. We reached out to Ashoka, a global association of social entrepreneurs, and invited Alexis Ditkowsky to share about some of the most innovative social enterprises she has encountered.

Ngai Yuen from Kakiseni/Carrefour also took time to meet all of the teams personally. She listened listening to what they had planned and helped coach them on developing their social ideas. One of the teams working on a household energy recapture device took the opportunity to ask for a key component to their prototype – a bicycle. They received a brand spanking new one thanks to Ngai Yuen and Carrefour! Dan Ciambrone, the team lead, has used his project to apply to 7 universities, including MIT.

The third speaker was a real treat. Jamal is an amazing spoken word poet who recited a couple of poems from his repertoire. He talked where he got the inspiration for his poems and how they relate to pitching your project.

Winners

At the end of each Urekaweekend, we provide a micro-investment for the top teams to continue their projects. We had a hard time coming to a decision because there were so many projects that deserve love. Here are the projects we thought shone the brightest:

1. Expn$e: an innovative iPhone application to help people better keep track of their expenses
2. Social Edutainment Quizzes: a Facebook-based study game for SPM students
3. Hybrid Life: an energy recapture device that uses rainwater to charge an iPod

Read more about some of the interesting projects at Urekaweekend here.

Urekaweekend 7 – Designing Social Innovation in collaboration with think-lab’s design conference was a pleasant change of pase from the normally very tech centric Urekaweekend’s that we have been hosting. It was a 2 day affair – day one conducted by the think-labbers focusing applying a design thinking approach towards solving a number of social issues ranging from baby dumping to reducing plastic bag usage

Thinklab© introduced a new concept unlike the previous usual half a day conference, into a two day workshop collaboration with Urekaweekend, as a new feel to the already trademark of public engaging design conference. MAP KL and iTrain was the official partner for conference venues and was filled with energy and inspiration as participants began their weekend with optimism to innovate current social behaviors. 8 general social issues were identified, and were discussed by participants on how to improve the conditions through design thinking, conducted by Urekaweekend.

Speakers were the highlight of the design conference, as names such as Reita Rahim of Gerai OA, Mitch Gelber of TR Hamzah & Yeang, Dr Goh Chee Leong of Dean of the Faculty of Behavioral Sciences at HELP University, Fahmi Fadzil of Popteevee, Arvin Lee of CSR Commentator and Orkidstudio from UK, gave their piece on social innovation through design. Their multiple perspectives from business to architectural point of views were invaluable as the many of the discussion became point of reference for the second day workshop.

Via : think-lab

everyone at the end of day 1

Some of my personal highlights for day 1

The wallet project

Participants trying their hand at prototyping a wallet – this saw some rather innovative approaches at customizing this staple accessory.

Kal talking about the wallet project

Design goods vendors

A number of purveyors of design books and other nick-knacks including craft from gerai OA had opened booths to display their goods. The design books looked pretty awesome.

Design nick-knacks

Reita Rahim of Gerai OA

The flurry of ideas

During some of the ideating sessions, the participants were so engrossed at updating the idea boards so much so they didnt want to leave for the tea breaks, totally in the zone!

Ideas

Day 2

The 60 or so participants started working out solutions to the presented problems on day 1 and then continued to prototype their ideas on day 2 @ iTrain. Unsurprisingly having that many talented designers work on projects the nett result was beautifully rendered mock-ups and visually impressive presentations. A total of 7 projects were started and presented at the end of day 2, with everything from robots to smart bags. Here is a rundown

Robotix Camp

Using robotix to teach underprivileged/ rural kids important life lessons – they are planning to run a camp to reach out to kids.

Robotix Camp

KL Traffic

Maybe we can reduce traffic if everyone leaves work at a scheduled time so not everyone is on the road at the same time

Plastic boys

shopping bag + loyalty card = less plastic bags being used!

Plastic boys

Lost boys

losing your laptop is a pain – maybe we can come lock it up so it wont be worth anything to the person stealing it?

Lost boys

Styrofoam

Beautifully designed weighted disposable plates.

Eve Lynn championing styrofoam reduction

Hi neighbor

A social network for housing communities

Hi neighbor

Green walker

Planting trees, making things pretty and bringing communities together

Green walker

Teams spent the day preparing Prototypes and mockups that they then presented to a crowd + judges. For the wrap-up we awarded teams with the best presentations tickets to Kuching and KK courtesy of Firefly Airlines in conjunction with Iheartborneo

Stay tuned for updates on what the teams come up with at ideas.urekaweekend.com

On the 20th to the 22nd of september we ran urekaweekend5 and the focus this time around was mapping – learning how to use it and developing applications that would be location relevant. The main participants of this weekend were students of the KPTM in Cheras and some entrepreneurs from KL. Thanks to Plug and Play for allowing us usage of their venue

Trying it for the first time we used eventbrite registration and it seemed to work pretty well – didn’t collect any money off the website (but we shall try that out for urekaweekend6)

Friday night started with everyone rolling in at about 7pm due to #kltraffic (i cant remember but i think it rained that day) at the time i was wondering if anyone would come at all considering most of the kl entrepreneurs were down at e27′s accelerate and another event in singapore but thankfully there were still some left in kl to drop by

Dinner was a little delayed that night no thanks to dominos – i think they were just a little shocked at the sudden order of 14 extra large pizzas (online no less) but when they finally got our order sorted out they were nice enough to thrown a free pizza for keeping us waiting + 4 bottles of ketchup for some reason. Quick plug for Dominos, make sure to buy their express card. its like magic getting 2 pizza’s of any size for the price of one (we only ended up paying for 7, and whats more you can order online and pick up later.

After some brief nom nom and a getting to know everyone session everyone convened for a quick briefing of what was to happen over the next 2 days conducted by yours truly. Then came the idea pitching session, where everyone that came with an idea got a chance to present theirs and we definitely heard some interesting ones (some not mapping based but that was cool too)

Among the ones that seemed to get a lot of crowd support were startupballs – a futsal league for startups in kl. I even ended up presenting one, (for surianee as she couldn’t make it on friday) project light box – a workshop intended for people that run their own blogshops to teach them how to build a light box and how to take better pictures of their products.

The sensing was pretty energetic and concluded at about 10+ and everyone headed back to get some zzz and think about what they would do on saturday.

Everyone that came in that morning noticed something new to the look of the venue as we had put up some really funky greeting cards from one of our awesome sponsors to light up the rooms. Foldees.com also provided a complimentary card for all participants so everyone was pretty stoked to sending one to their special someone.

Props to the students of KPTM for coming in super early on saturday – they had to load up their laptops with software for their training session with Aizat and Kegan that morning so almost everyone was in before 8 ( and before the breakfast even came). Everyone else rolled in at about 9 -10 plus. Right after breakfast was served and The class had started – but since they were working on their own projects thats all cool.

Lunch was a quick affair with packed lunches all neat and ready to go – the next session promised to be far more exciting and would give everyone a brief respite from their toiling over work.

We had the great pleasure of Amir Muhammad dropping over to preform a reading of his book rojak. What was supposed to be a 15 minute session ended up taking an hour with all the questions and general havoc – that was pretty fun as we had a chance to have a brief glimpse at how and why Amir starts new projects like his books and films.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in class – finishing up the mapping lesson and for the rest building their ideas, and before everyone retired for the day we had a quick session of powerpoint karaoke (thanks @qishin for downloading those random slides) those that participated won super sized greeting cards, sms blasting credit from our second sponsor Ezypzy.com and free name card printing from thisisbinding.com

Just a quick shout out to @razlanshah for staying after and helping with the clean up. Guys it was pretty messy after i must say.

Day 3 was pretty intense as the student teams were only just starting their projects (as they had been in Aizat’s mapping class the day before) but all the same everyone came in bring and early that morning to get going with the new skills that they had learned. Funny thing – one of our first students to pitch what they were doing that morning was also an Aizat (Nur Aizt to be more accurate) and her idea was also a college assignment – a mapping project that would allow people intending to run events find venues that could host them (make sure to get that done I want to use this app for the next Urekaweekends)

Right after lunch we had another bunch of guest join us to talk about an interesting project for #opendata in Malaysia. Since they did a private preview for all present and asked for us not to spill the beans till the project goes live sometime later this year i will not say too much, however it was a very interesting presentation by Karyn Mak, Kian Yang and Ching Yee from Senedi and we thank them for being cool with sharing this sneak peek with the Urekaweekenders. A lot of the mapping projects are looking to get in on that action.

Wrapping up and adding the final touches to their presentations and updates on what everyone did over the weekend too a little extra time but at the end of it everyone had a chance to share the urekaweekend story. To my surprise we even had a last minute idea hatched that day – Location based dating (this is going to be so much fun)

So everyone went back tired – but a little richer (experience wise that is) Im looking forward to seeing how their ideas develop and who ends up getting that grant of RM2500 for the best developed idea at the end of a month.

Finally id like to give a big thank you to the following organizations for making Urekaweekend possible.

MDEC for continually supporting urekaweekend getting things done and starting things. Entrepreneurs.my and technopreneur.my for helping organize the venue and waking up early to open the doors, and finally all of the people that have come and in some way made urekaweekend5 happen.

Looking forward to seeing everyone at Urekaweekend6 – social enterprise edition

So what do you do when you dont have a credit card and want to register for urekaweekend? well there is the Other payment method – a little known button at the bottom of the registration process

First you select your ticket type

Then you fill in your details and all the way at the bottom there is a button (in red circle)

Click that button and chose your other payment option

Hope you find this useful. if anything doesnt work always feel free to drop us a line

Here are some of the feedbacks that we got from participants of Urekaweekend 6:-

“The possibility to actually create even a simple version of awesomeness is what makes Urekaweekend a slightly different kind of weekend. Thinking is cool, but having people around you to bounce ideas around and give real feedback, all of you encouraged by nothing more than the desire to make some awesome sauce, and then actually BUILD something with all of the awesomenicity at hand kind of changes the game a little. Go to the next Urekaweekend. No arguments. Just awesomeness!”

-Daniel Ciambrone-

“Urekaweekend was a fruitful 2 and a half day idea generation workshop. We were able to meet some good keynote speakers and judges that are from the industry; where it allows us to be familiar with what the real industry is about. It’s also a great way to make new connections and friends that are currently working in the field. I had lots of fun, thanks for inviting us!”

-Ji Hsia-

“At first, I had no idea what to expect or what exactly am I suppose to do during Urekaweekend. But while I was there, I realised that it was a good exposure to what other areas are about and how they are related to my career choice. The environment was friendly, fun and energetic. Urekaweekend was not the usual traditional session of bringing like minds together to come up with ideas. Instead, participants from different areas were put together resulting in truly unique ideas. Key lesson, there is no bad idea; it just needs to be improved or modified to work around barriers. I learnt how to identify factors that stifle social enterprises and ways of making the social enterprise benefit the community and at the same time self-sustain and also how to effectively pitch an idea; state the problem, give solutions on how to go about solving the problem and its benefits.”

-Mbaki M. Mathambo-

“Well, I think Urekaweekend is a good place to meet up with new talented people, sharing & developing ideas. I had an idea of making a simple tracking expenses application for the iPhone. Actually I’ve been working on it for few months to build the prototype. Luckily, I attended Urekaweekend as it helped me accomplish creating the prototype within 2 days! All this was possible because during Urekaweekend, I shared my idea to people from all walks of life. The best thing was I got more ideas on how to make the application more compelling to the market. A month later, I finally finished the product and sent it to the AppStore for review.”

-Muhammad Hijazi-

“Urekaweekend was amaaaazing!! It was really fun because I learned many things such as brainstorming and presentation technique as well as negotiation skills, especially during presentations where I met great judges and learned a lot from their comments. I recommend this event for people who like to share their ideas!”

-Muhammad Yulian Noor-

“Urekaweekend was very hectic and interesting at the same time. It’s a crash course aimed at providing an avenue for people with ideas, to pitch and develop their ideas into workable businesses in a mere 25 hours! Even so, we both agree that Urekaweekend has been an absolutely awesome experience for us. Getting to know people in the industry, getting their input, advice, and most of all, we are truly happy to have known many awesome people during the weekend. They truly inspired us to do better, and work harder to develop ourselves. THANK YOU UREKAWEEKEND!”

-Munir Basheer & Ann Sha-