A Late Night unChat about the unConference 2009
I had a great time at the unConference last year. I even blogged about it.
Naturally, I was really looking forward to this year’s unConference organized by e27. As I went ahead and visited the event website last week to register, I looked over the event details:
Same place…
Same time (almost)…
But many times the price… What? Ticket prices this year are three to six times more than last year’s prices?
Since the unConference last year and through various events since then, I have gotten to know Mohan Belani, e27′s young director, reasonably well. So I needed a straight answer from him – Wat up with da ticket prices this year?
So I messaged him over Windows Live Messenger a few nights ago, and we ended up chatting about a whole bunch of stuff – from startups to Southeast Asia to Microsoft to branding and even the science of managing expectations. Oh yeah, and about the unConference also.
Anyway, here’s the transcript:
Jonathan said (11:44 PM): Dude!
Mohan Belani says (11:44 PM): how u been man
Jonathan says (11:45 PM): not too bad.
Jonathan says (11:48 PM): Anyway, I put a banner to unConference on my blog – I also want to do a pre-event interview with e27 for a blog post. I had a great time last year. looking forward to this year
Mohan Belani says (11:48 PM): appreciate it. i hope the event will be better this year
Jonathan says (11:49 PM): well, looking at the program so far – it certainly looks like it will trump last year!
Mohan Belani says (11:50 PM): yup, that’s what i hope too man. should have done it 2 days though. internally, we regret it now
Jonathan says (11:50 PM): Well, there’s always next year. Anyway, this year’s speakers seem to have a heavy “international flavor” to it. 
Mohan Belani says (11:53 PM): yeah, you noticed the theme this year 
Jonathan says (11:53 PM): Singapore may be in a recession, but I think China is where all the action is right now
Mohan Belani says (11:55 PM): Yeah, Singapore is alright, but honestly, the market here is limited
Jonathan says (11:55 PM): But frankly speaking – and you will know a lot better than I – don’t you think the entrepreneurial community in Singapore is really picking up these last couple years?
Jonathan says (11:56 PM): I mean for once we have startups that are comparable in technology and quality to those you can find in Silicon Valley, like gothere.sg, fusion Garage, etc.
Jonathan says (11:56 PM): And don’t forget the government here loves to give out money to startups
Mohan Belani says (11:57 PM): very true… fusion Garage is a true example, but they had their roots way back in 2002. gothere.sg is cool, but i’m just worried that they don’t have a scaling strategy. but i definitely do laud Singapore startups for getting this far
Mohan Belani says (11:58 PM): I used to naively think that southeast asia had a market (this was way back in 2006)
Mohan Belani says (11:58 PM): language, culture, uneven broadband penetration, social/political issues
Mohan Belani says (11:59 PM): sadly, unless southeast asia bundles up, the market is gonna be overly fragmented
Jonathan says (11:59 PM): Any startup in Singapore must immediately think of Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and even China markets to start
Mohan Belani says (11:59 PM): brilliant. you got the point. now u totally understand the theme for unConference 2009
Mohan Belani says (11:59 PM): i hope to pass this message to all of the Singapore startups
Jonathan says (11:59 PM): Which is sad when I see like successful local startups like HungryGoWhere.com, Yum.sg, gothere.sg and stuff all focusing on the Singapore market. That’s too bad.
Mohan Belani says (12:00 AM): HungryGoWhere actually did an excellent job with scaling (that’s why they’re on the unConference panel). they managed to penetrate Hong Kong, which had entrenched competition, and even Australia!
Jonathan says (12:01 AM): Cool! I didn’t know they were in Hong Kong and Australia!
Mohan Belani says (12:01 AM): same here, i didn’t know until i spoke to Hoong An, and boy did they do an amazing job with scaling
Mohan Belani says (12:02 AM): actually, every panelist on the panel, has a specific market outside Singapore that they’re company has captured
Jonathan says (12:02 AM): I think that’s a great message for this year
Mohan Belani says (12:03 AM): i think i did a poor job of communicating this message in the website. darn
Jonathan says (12:03 AM): It’s alright – I think the unConference will still get more than enough attendees
Mohan Belani says (12:04 AM): yea.. ironically, a high majority of the people who have paid so far are folks we have never met. so we’re wondering why our “regular” folks aren’t signing up yet
Jonathan says (12:04 AM): Well, Sometimes, I feel the tech/blogger community here may have a bit of a sense of entitlement
Jonathan says (12:05 AM): it’s like they feel that they should be invited to the event for free or something
Mohan Belani says (12:05 AM): EXACTLY! fark!
Jonathan says (12:05 AM): And ironically, I’m speaking for myself too! hahaha
Jonathan says (12:05 AM): It’s also a matter of expectations
Jonathan says (12:06 AM): You see – last year, the ticket cost was dirt cheap. $10 bucks right?
Mohan Belani says (12:07 AM): yup
Jonathan says (12:07 AM): This year, it ballooned up to what $60 even for early bird tickets?
Mohan Belani says (12:07 AM): $30 for early bird
Jonathan says (12:07 AM): ok. $30 – which is still 3x last year’s price
Mohan Belani says (12:07 AM): yes agreed, but if u compare both events, its a much bigger leap
Jonathan says (12:08 AM): That is true, but…
Mohan Belani says (12:08 AM): it’s really a very big leap from last year
Jonathan says (12:08 AM): but that is not something that is immediately apparent from the website and other communications that you guys sent out!
Mohan Belani says (12:08 AM): agreed
Jonathan says (12:08 AM): People will still see that – oh, it’s still at the same venue… it’s still the same duration (fine, it’s a bit longer this year)
Jonathan says (12:09 AM): Yes, you guys got foreign speakers this year – fine, but folks assume that your sponsors cover all that
Mohan Belani says (12:09 AM): (they don’t)
Mohan Belani says (12:09 AM): lol… but yes, i agree with your points
Jonathan says (12:09 AM): so why is e27 charging me 3 to 6 times more money this year? That’s what everyone will think
Jonathan says (12:10 AM): And an Unconference by definition – I guess is sort of like a BarCamp – has a certain grassroots or bottom-up feeling to it
Mohan Belani says (12:10 AM): the funny thing is that we made a lot of these comparisons clear from the start… through the site (speakers and startups are right on the front page) and through multiple blog posts comparing last year’s and this year’s
Jonathan says (12:10 AM): I know, but people may still think of unConference as something social, interactive, open-sourcish, free…
Mohan Belani says (12:10 AM): i feel that the issue, it that we call the event “unConference” – our own brand is killing us
Jonathan says (12:13 AM): If this year was positioned as a more professional conference, perhaps in hindsight you guys should of branded it something else, but hold an unConference track in the afternoon or something like that
Mohan Belani says (12:13 AM): i was thinking about it and i realized that it should have been re-branded. i guess we were overconfident that the unConference brand would help
Jonathan says (12:13 AM): But regardless, I know you guys will still have a really kick ass event.
Mohan Belani says (12:13 AM): no Microsoft employee has signed up so far :p
Jonathan says (12:13 AM): Hehe… we are all cheapskates
Jonathan says (12:14 AM): But I’ll definitely be going. See you there!
Mohan Belani says (12:15 AM): Alright, see you there!
Mohan Belani says (12:15 PM): Anyway, just to let you know, but if i ever joined a corporate and i had to choose between Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, I’d choose Microsoft man
Mohan Belani says (12:16 PM): Microsoft’s a lot more active in the community here *pat on the back*
So there you have it.
If you are even remotely interested in the tech scene here in both Singapore and around the region, do yourself a favor and register for the unConference 2009 if you haven’t already.
Yes, the price is different this year compared to last year.
But if the e27 folks are right, it’s also going to be an entirely different event this year compared to last year.
I’m stoked. I’ll see you there.
Nice chat, that one.
Btw – “fusion Garage is a true example, but they had their roots way back in 2002. ”
I beg to disagree. Fusiongarage was born in Feb 2008 – After about a month or so of discussions at McDonalds and BurgerKings. The founder might have worked on another startup back in 2002, but we also had an architect, who had been in the industry for 25 or so years. Does that mean we had our roots in the 80′s ?
Most probably am gonna be there as well. Will c ya there!
Thanks for dropping by, Arul! It’s been a while since RIAction.
See you at unConference!
One-up for the Team!
Nice one there!
@Arul: I had a nice chat with Chandra some time back on Fusion Garage etc. When I said “they had their roots way back in 2002″, I was referring to Chandra’s passion in OS and mobile. He had been tinkering with the idea of a “browser without an OS” way before Fusion Garage, in the early days of Radixs. It’s through iterations of ideas, testing and failing etc. that finally brought him to Fusion Garage (which kinda happened by accident too.. hehe) and how all this started way back in the Radixs days..
Nice interview.
Honestly, why does it matter if gothere.sg (which is definitely the best startup in Singapore, IMO, for many different definitions of best) cannot scale to other countries? It doesn’t matter. As DHH from 37 Signals points out in this wonderful talk[1], you don’t have to sell for a billion dollars to be successful or more importantly, happy. You can be just as happy with a million dollars a year and no VCs forcing you to have an exit strategy. Singapore alone is big enough to sustain one really good player in the “mapping market”. And I think gothere.sg can definitely scale to other countries (albeit with a lot of data collection and other work) but obviously, they don’t see the need to yet. Mapping is an exciting field and even big companies like Google or Microsoft haven’t figured out a half-decent interface yet.
[1] http://www.omnisio.com/startupschool08/david-heinemeier-hansson-at-startup-school-08
@Abi, I think then the central question really is, “Can Singapore alone really be big enough to sustain one really good player in the mapping/online directory market?”
While you may think so, I think many like myself and Mohan will feel otherwise. (Of course, none of us are actually in the mapping industry, so we are all talking out of our ass
)
But seriously, remember the days before gothere.sg ? Streetdirectory.com was the de facto online directory for Singapore with practically zero competion. And while their product may not be as elegant as what we see gothere.sg is today, it was pretty decent and very usable.
Even then, they saw an immediate need to diversify into a bunch of other stuff like real estate listings, classified listings, and expanded overseas into Malaysia and Indonesia.
The point is, we may be overestimating how much money is there to be made in online mapping – I mean, this is an area where not even Google nor Microsoft is able to fully monetize yet. And these are international players with a presence in every country.
Much less if you restrict yourself to a market of 4.6 million people covering only a land area of 700 square kilometers.