First Social Media Breakfast: Singapore A Success!

About 40 people turned up for the first Social Media Breakfast: Singapore at Frujch today and it was a really good experience for me and I just wanted to thank everyone for getting up early on a Saturday to have breakfast at 9am.

It never ceases to amaze me how “flat” interactions are between people involved in social media (ie I can be a student but people doing real research and real work are still interested in what I have to say on certain issues and vice versa). I don’t have pictures (because I was too busy running around) and I’m sure videos will be posted by Michael and Andre in the coming days, so look out for that.

Before going further, I just need to clarify that SMB: Singapore was not organised as part of the social media course I’m taking in SMU. I don’t get a grade for this. In fact, Derrick, who isn’t in SMU, started the ball rolling and I just joined him for the ride. The aim, as emphasised in my earlier post is community.

So, here are my memorable experiences (in no particular order):

Finding out ladyironchef.wordpress.com (aka Brad) is a guy and introducing him to the other foodie in the room, Amelia.

Finding out Jean is a researcher in life science (which you would not expect from a social media person). Thanks Xiao Hui for the introduction.

Meeting Andrew whose passion is virtual worlds.

Discovering Michael’s very cool site: Comiqs.

Putting faces to people like Michael Cheng, Debbie, Joanna, Brian, Enning & Supriya.

And meeting people I never even knew online before like Coleman, Hisham, Ridzuan, Yu Hui, Robert & Kenneth.

Of course, it was great seeing people from social media class: Andre, Amelia, Nabilah, Lydia, Yunying & Xiao Hui. As well to Prof. Michael who dropped by despite having classes to teach today.

Finally I need to say a big thank you to Derrick (for the initial idea to start SMB: Singapore), Sheylara (for really doing a lot of work to get it going and reminding me that if you wanna do something, gotta do it well), Nabilah for kindly letting us use Frujch even when they don’t open on Saturdays and Caleb for appearing out of nowhere and sponsoring SMB:Singapore for everyone. I think one thing the organisers felt really took off was the tagging concept (as explained in our video), but credit has to go to everyone who was game enough to help the activity take off.

Ps: I just know I missed out some people and there are people I didn’t even get to talk to today. So sorry about that, but hey, that means we gotta have another such event soon to make amends! Also, it was sad that Kevin and Vanessa couldn’t make it because they were speaking at NUS (I guess Kevin couldn’t have made it anyway unless he Skyped). Next time us Singaporean social media people must schedule properly! (And thanks for the Tech65 crew for postponing their podcast recording just to make it down. Means a lot!)

I have to say if today’s response, interaction and conversation is anything to go by, the social media community in Singapore is definitely present and definitely posed to progress strongly in the future. So if you’ve been a passive reader or consumer of the blogosphere and social media, it may be that time to get your virtual feet wet and jump right in.

Well that’s it for the first Social Media Breakfast: Singapore. Stay “tuned” for the blogosphere coverage that should occur over the weekend and I’ll post all the links up either late Sunday or early Monday. I’m really looking for feedback on today’s session, so any discussion in the comments or email would be greatly welcome and appreciated!

If you’d like to be in the mailing list for the next SMB: Singapore, just contact me directly or leave a comment below.

Why Twitter Is So Powerful

It hit me in the shower last night why exactly Twitter is so powerful. It’s like IRC.

No, I’m not kidding and don’t run away yet.

Today @stripedshirt and @valene were talking about why MSN (aka IM) isn’t used by them anymore, simply because it’s too distracting. On top of that, MSN mostly allows for one-to-one conversations (yes I know you can add more people to conversations), but Twitter is cool in that you can have many people adding to a conversation at different times of the day and it’ll continue on.

And that’s what I like most about Twitter and that’s why it’s so powerful. It requires a short amount of attention, but it allows you to feel connected and part of a community more than IM does (at least for me). A real example is when a few of us just got started on Twitter. Me (@uniquefrequency), Andre (@stripedshirt) and Valene (@valene). So 3 of us kinda were messaging here and there but with only 3 people, there wasn’t much benefits to reap in terms of network externalities.

Fastforward 4-6 weeks, add in Andre’s group’s great presentation on microblogging, and now we have Nabilah (@allquirknoplay), Jacqueline (@jacquelinechang), Amelia (@amsie), Lionel (@gaothebao), Peiling (@gniliep), Alaska (@alaskie), Xiao Hui (@thehsuperficies), Mark (@beatmastermark), Gladys (@gladyschock) and Christina (@tinana).

The best part is I have less than half of these people on my MSN list, and yet I talk more to most of them than to other people on my MSN list.

It’s like IRC in that we all drop in the same “room” at different times of the day and maybe I’ll know that some of them are in the library, some are awake at 5am finishing a project, who’s in a Starbucks, and the list goes on. It’s come to a stage where we even have @SMUtweets to tweet school-related stuff to all of us. How cool is that?

To me, Twitter has truly become the new social water cooler.

You might argue that 13 of us out of a school population of 4,500 is insignificant. But is it really? If you were a company and you had 13 passionate advocates following your brand on Twitter, Tweeting things to each other and spreading your brand and/or message, wouldn’t you be happy? (Wouldn’t it be great if Frujch could tell us when the queue is short? Or if portobello melts are running out so we can ZOOM down to get the last few?)

I think this is just the tip of the iceberg and here’s an experiment I want to run: All of us SMU students currently on Twitter should aim to get one, just one, other friend on Twitter by Week 14 (just lean over to the person next to you in the library and do some convincing!). We’re going to try to double the SMU-Twitter population and see just how far we can go with this in really forming a community and network, and see what comes out of it.

Post your success stories and/or great Twitter stories in the comments section so we’ll know who to follow and we’ll review this experiment in 2 weeks! Let’s keep in mind that getting new people to sign up on Twitter is just the first step, we need to make them feel welcome to get them to stick around and enjoy it as much as we do!

29th March 2008 – Social Media Breakfast: Singapore

Wow so many people have gotten excited about SMB: Singapore. Derrick and I are really excited to get it going!

Both Claud and Derrick suggested creating a Facebook event, so I did and you can find it here.

Big thanks to Nabilah from Frujch who’s helping us out with the venue and has even been kind enough to waive the venue booking fees! Do check out their food too. Porto bello mushroom sandwich is excellent.

Both Derrick and myself are contactable via Twitter: @derrickkwa @uniquefrequency

I’m going to try to do something to explain the personal tagging kit (it will be low budget I’m afraid), so look for that coming soon!

29th March 2008: Social Media Breakfast: Singapore

If you use social media in any way (blog/podcast/use Youtube/use Flickr/use Facebook/etc), come for Social Media Breakfast: Singapore next Saturday, 29th of March 2008!

This is a little experiment that Derrick Kwa (from Adventures in Social Media #1) thought of doing, and was generous enough to invite me along for the ride. The objective of the breakfast is simply to meet like-minded people who are into the social media scene, expand your network and of course have fun. It doesn’t matter whether you’re interested in social media from a business standpoint or a social standpoint, everyone’s invited because you never know who you’d meet!

Currently Derrick and I have two rules:

1. Everyone’s equal. When it comes to Social Media Breakfast, there’s no difference if you’re a CEO or a student. Everyone has something of value to contribute and everyone should be treated that way
2. Law of Two Feet applies. If a particular conversation or discussion is not getting you what you want, feel free to move on.

Both are nods to PodCamp rules and we’re sure they’re not hard to follow!

Finally, we will be borrowing an idea from Jeff Pulver regarding personal tagging. I’ll let the man explain it himself:

The venue we’re looking at is either going to be TCC at SMU or Frujch. Either way it will be in the SMU area, so it’s pretty convenient. Also, because it’s our first time trying this out there are no sponsors involved, so you have to pay for your own breakfast and we hope that’s not too big a problem! We’ll clarify the final date and time within the week.

So if you’re coming, leave me a comment or drop me an email: uniquefrequencyATgmailDOTcom or message me on Twitter and we’ll see you on the 29th!