Web 2.0 Asia ::

Open Web Asia is Here Again

Other | 2010/07/07 17:18 | Web 2.0 Asia

Open Web Asia, the conference that I created together with some good folks, was last held in October 2008. In 2009, we nearly held the Open Web Asia '09, but the plan faltered as the main sponsor backed off at the last minute (and besides I was too busy having my freshman year at Google.)

But the good spirit lives on, and a group of energetic and capable folks in Malaysia rekindled the pulled off the South East Asia version of Open Web Asia -- dubbed "Open Web Asia South East Asia" or "OWA-SEA". It's a very long name, but as I expect the future Open Web Asia conferences to take place in various cities in Asia, I think it makes more sense if we just go with the city-as-the-postfix system, a la TEDx.

Open Web Asia SEA will be held in KL, Malaysia next week. The conference will host great local speakers (and some foreign ones including myself, and Serkan Toto over at Techcrunch), and the conference has already seen 270+ registrants. (You can register here.) I'm really hoping this to become yet another successful Open Web Asia conference.

The guy who is doing the bulk of heavy-lifting for this conference is Daniel CerVentus. Daniel and I exchanged many emails and I'm really looking forward to meeting him in person finally. He and I have a lot to catch up, as we both know what it takes to pull off a conference of this scale.

Another heads-up for the Open Web Asia conference is that Dr. Gang Lu and his gang (no pun intended ;-) are preparing another Open Web Asia in Taiwan, hopefully to be held this year. Yet another good news is that we have started talks for sponsorship for Open Web Asia Seoul 2011, and it looks very promising so far. (It's too early to share any plans at this point though.)

For any future Open Web Asia's, I will check back and share any progresses; For the upcoming one in Malaysia, I will try to cover any interesting companies that catches my attention. But I'm sure Serkan will do a much better job spotting and introducing interesting services anyway.

TAG Open Web Asia, OWA, OWA-SEA

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Open Web Asia was a total blast!

Web 2.0 | 2008/10/17 20:06 | Web 2.0 Asia

Open Web Asia '08 was a total blast. The turnout was great - more than 300 people showed up at this inaugural conference. Speakers and their talks were indeed top notch. The lunch was good, and so was the networking dinner (hosted by Northern Light Ventures and their invested company in Korea, Nurien.)

There could have been more media coverage, but those media that did cover our event did so excellently. For example, Rain (no, not the Korean singer), our invited Chinese media reporter from 163.com, did a phenomenal job. She did some back-to-back interviews and has already posted them on 163's Open Web Asia-dedicated website.

163.com Open Web Asia page

Of course, we were not perfect and we know the major areas of improvement. As Jason Calacanis advised us later on, we should have reviewed speakers' slide decks in advance and phoned them to discuss how to make the slides better. Next year, we will probably have to hold it as a 2-day conference (vs. this year's one day event) and break sessions into parallel tracks, so that not everyone has to sit through all sessions whose topics vary widely from gaming to moblie payment. Also, we'll have to have less talks so that the audience doesn't get bombarded with too much content in a single session. Oh, and definitely, there should have been more startups represented. And so on, so forth. If you have anything to add, please visit our survey site and do a very quick survey (takes less than 30 seconds.)

But right now, I'm just glad the event is over and was a success. From the outset, I was calling Open Web Asia "The Le Web of Asia" as a very quick way to convey what our conference is all about. At that time, I never imagined the very creator of Le Web, Loic Le Meur, would be present at Open Web Asia. Turns out not only was he there, but we also beat Le Web in terms of the initial turnout! (Le Web had 250 people in its first year, Loic said). Not so bad for a first year conference, I guess. Already looking forward to Open Web Asia '09? I betcha. Yet again, I would like to thank all participatns, speakers, and--last but not least--our beloved organizers.

TAG Le Web, Open Web Asia, Open Web Asia '08

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More speakers announced for Open Web Asia '08!

Web 2.0 | 2008/09/08 20:14 | Web 2.0 Asia

As though the current speaker lineup wasn't enough, we are inviting more top-notch speakers to Open Web Asia '08. Jason Calacanis of Mahalo.com is coming; and so is James Wei, Opera Asia President. They will be joined by Andy Yao of 51.com (the hottest social network of China) and Sam Flemming of CIC data, a think-tank with great insights for the Chinese web market.

With these additions, there will be a total of 19 speakers. We truly hope the Open Web Asia will be one of the best web events of the region for this year. I'm quoting the bios of the 4 new speakers here; For more information on other speakers, check out the the "Speakers" section of our homepage.

Jason Calacanis

CEO of Mahalo

Jason McCabe Calacanis is the founder and CEO of Mahalo.com, a human-powered search engine. Prior to Mahalo.com's launch in May, 2007, he was an "Entrepreneur in Action" at Sequoia Capital, a position he held since December 2006. Jason co-founded and was the CEO of Weblogs, Inc., a network of popular weblogs that was sold to AOL in November 2005. Upon joining AOL, he was appointed senior vice president. In addition, he was named general manager of AOL's Netscape. Prior to forming Weblogs Inc., Jason was the founder of Rising Tide Studios, which sold its flagship publication to Dow Jones.

James Wei
President, Opera Asia Pacific

James is a seasoned telecommunications industry executive with more than a decade of experience in senior management roles on both the operator and OEM side of the business. His broad range of leadership encompasses the successful implementation of direct and channel sales strategies, marketing, product management, and strong general management. James joins Opera Software as President of APAC, responsible for growing Opera's leading browser technology and services activities throughout Asia Pacific. In this role, James will be responsible for managing all of Opera's integrated customer-facing activities and will lead the sales & marketing organization, technical pre-sales, and field operations. He comes to Opera Software from Teleca, where he served as Managing Director of Teleca Taiwan, one of the world's leading system integrators of mobile phone software. Before leading Teleca Taiwan, James served as General Manager of Openwave System in Taiwan for 3 years, He has also served in executive level sales & marketing and business development positions at HelloAsia and iAsiaworks. James holds a Bachelors degree in Business Administration from College of New Jersey.

Andy Yao
VP of 51.com

Educated in Art & Design from China and US, Mr.Yao is skilled in combining his design skill with software development experiences. He successfully started several companies in both China and US. In 1999, he and friends started an online calendar company named FamilyPlex, later sold to Nasdaq listed company Woman.com. In 2007, 51.com acquired Mr. Yao's avatar platform company and successfully integrated into 51.com. Now, Mr. Yao served as VP at 51.com, in charge of Product & Marketing.

Sam Flemming
CEO, CIC

Sam Flemming is co-founder and CEO of CIC, the first and leading Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM) Research and Consulting firm in China. Sam has been a participant of China's digital evolution for over 10 years starting with Chinapay.com, the first online payment platform in China. Under Sam's leadership, CIC has built a highly qualified team of analysts who utilize proprietary Chinese language text mining technology to provide a prestigious list of Fortune 500 clients with customized reports and insights based on systematic analysis of tens of millions of BBS and blog posts written Chinese netizens.

TAG Open Web Asia

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Open Web Asia launches - Asia's Web 2.0 Workgroup!

Web 2.0 | 2008/05/28 18:35 | Web 2.0 Asia

Gang Lu of Mobinode stepped up and built the Open Web Asia workgroup, arguably Asia's Web 2.0 Workgroup. And Gang also kindly included my humble blog there. Thanks Gang!

We're tired of hearing "There's no good English blog about Asian web industry." Now you have Openweb.Asia, so please stop whining. :)

Gang says he should perhaps

add more blogs before he lets the world know about the site. If you know good English blogs/sites about Asian web industry, ping the information to Gang at gang dot lu at mobinode dot com.