Friday, May 23, 2008

We were at Barcamp Singapore!

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Barcamp Singapore II on Wednesday night was great. Some really interesting speakers from Google, Singeo, Lilihood (loved their control interface) and Homespace, and I loved Preetam's idea pitch about object-tagging. I didn't get to catch the Mobile breakout, because we were presenting a demo on Shoplette for the Maps session, but I'm sure it was great too. Will have to check out the video once it's out.

I think what really made Barcamp II for me was the feeling of learning from each other and sharing our approaches. It was great that the participants weren't just talking about what their site/service did, but also their approach to different problems and how they solved it. That was really helpful. Kudos to Singeo for the tip on Fire Eagle and Skyhook, and also to the Homespace team for their tips on Clusterer and custom info windows for Google Maps. We hope, when we have more stuff on Shoplette, we can share tips that might be useful and valuable to other startups as well.

Barcamp II was the first time we spoke about Shoplette to a public audience and it was a good experience. I think what we gained most was from the questions people asked about Shoplette and the feedback they shared with us about the service. And we actually met a few of our users at the event, which was a real blast!

It's great when you actually get to meet the people who use your service because you get a much better sense of who your market is. Putting an actual face and personality behind your users beats any kind of demographic description in trying to understand what they're expecting and might like from the service. Plus the fact that you get to thank them profusely for their support! (We're incredibly grateful!)

So thanks to the organisers of Barcamp II for a great event, and I'm definitely looking forward to the next one!

2 comments:

Joanna said...

This is the first time I visit your blog. The uniq-time clock caught my eye actually. And I didn't know that you cook! :)

tokyotribe28 said...

Haha, thanks for visiting! Yes, I enjoy cooking, and I love the uniqlock. Uniqlo will be setting up shop in Singapore next year I think.