Gerakan Bawah Tanah - Mr. GBT

Sunday, 27 March 2011, I gave a presentation at TEDx Bandung . If you don't know what TED is, check this out. My topic is " Digital Entertainment in Indonesia: the future of ". In essence, there are research and bussiness opportunities in Indonesia. Our culture is so much different, in that entertainment is our lives. It was a great event, with interesting speakers. I was told that the video will be available and uploaded. Will see... I am going to upload my presentation material this weekend.

I have close to 5000 friends in my facebook account. Facebook does not allow me to add more friends. I guess they have design issues related to this. Let me give you and example. If I want to do something (say tagging a photo) which requires a list of names, it is so slow. It tries to download the list of all friends that I have (including their icons / avatars). I could imagine what 5000 friends will do. This is even worse with slow internet connection like what I have (and perhaps what other people have in developing regions). Imagine if I have 10.000 friends :) and this is possible. I've been ignoring friend requests because I just couldn't add more friends. Currently there are more than 500 requests waiting. Almost all of them are legitimate requests. And why I get all these friend requests? Well, I hate to admit it but I do quite a bit of talk (to univesities' students, etc.) and in each talk there are more than 100 people. If 10% of them want to be friends with me, t...

[effects are in the bag] These were the gears Luqman dan I took to our gig yesterday.

I think Simon said it a while back, your show has to be memorable (hopefully because of good not bad). So, I am using that criteria to measure yesterday's performance. For me, the last two performances, James Durbin is the best. Maybe it's because I love rock music and get it? But, I think James has a great vocal. I thought he can only scream, but yesterday's performance - Maybe I am amazed - shows that he can control his voice. My vote for him ... My other fav contestant is Thia ... (but yesterday's performance was okay only).

CrackBerry visited Mangga Dua Mall in Indonesia and was surprised by the number of stores selling BlackBerry :) Check this video out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OB0lquizhE This is what I said in earlier post; you won't believe it until you are here and see it for yourselves. But, next time you'll come here, it would be Android all over ...

I know that all markets are different, but Indonesian cyber market is quite unique. People outside Indonesia don't know that Indonesia is the biggest market of BlackBerry products. Or that we rank #3 in the number Facebook users. The most important thing is why? I believe the answer to this question is related to our culture. For example, we tend to talk not to write. When people have minutes of meeting in writing, we don't have one :) [no, I am not joking.] Perhaps, we are more youtube than wikipedia. Our lives are mostly entertainment, not a learning one. If Westerners get a bigger bandwidth, they will think of distance learning. But for us it is time for karaoke online or online games or online chat :) Do you know the main driver of BlackBerry success in Indonesia? It's because of women and facebook. That was the main, original, driver. Many Indonesian women bought Blackberry to chat with their friends through Facebook. And when I say, chat, it is really really intense...

Last week I was asked to give a lecture at IT Telkom . The topic was " IT Audit ". I just had to squeeze this into my busy schedule (and I wasn't feeling well at that time). The class went okay. I am receiving emails from students asking guidance (what to do after they graduate). Well, this is actually another topic. On a side note, during the class there were only two questions from the students, but now I am receiving a few emails. I guess this is an-Indonesian culture thing :) [do not ask in class]. Oh, maybe this is an Asian thing. I took picture some of the students: here it is ... Outline of my presentation is here (at scribd and slideshare).

The meeting that I had yesterday (I can say yesterday because now it is 2 AM and technically it's already another day :) ) got me excited. It brings back the energy and spirit in me. It reminds me why I went back to Indonesia (instead of staying abroad). And when I got to this zone, I want to write. Thus, I blog. Even though I now I should be sleeping right now. There are many things that I want to write, but first I have to show to the world that I believe in our technical abilities. Do I really believe it? He**, yes! I met many tech savvy persons. Some of them were my students. My biggest problem is to keep them in Bandung. They go abroad and become the asset of those countries :( But what can I do? I don't have the money (and toys) to keep them in Bandung. I wish Google would open their research lab in Bandung. [Head spinning. Too many ideas and things to write ... and that's a good thing!]

I've just finished having an informal discussion with Steven Koltai, a Senior Advisor for the US State Department in charge of Global Entrepreneurship program. We talked about many things, but manily I talked about Bandung - or why Bandung is the tech center of Indonesia. There are so many things that I wanted to talk but could not because of time. He had to go back to Jakarta. Then it dawned on me that I should write things in smaller bits, so that they are more digestable. I could use this blog to do that. It would be useful not just for Steven, but for others who are interested in learning about tech-related situations in Indonesia. Wish me luck (so that I have time and energy to do it).