For you guys in Hanoi those expressed your jealousy of us after Google DevFest in HCMC and BarCamp Saigon, I have some good news for you today. I’m not trying to make my blog an event blog, but I can’t help blogging about it.

The first OpenSocial Hackathon in Hanoi is coming on Saturday December 13th at eXo Platform SEA Offices (7th & 8th Floors, Thai Ha Building, 11 Thai Ha Street. Dong Da District - Hanoi – Vietnam). The organizers of this Hackathon are noone other than eXo Platform guys (one of the companies who joinedGoogle DevFest Tour around South East Asia) and Jason Vu - co-ordinator of Google DevFest HCM. Frankly, the first Google DevFest HCMC wasn’t as successful as expected, lacked of participation from audiences and not many Vietnamese developers could understand such a long speech in English. But Jeremi promised this time it would be much more exciting with more hacking and less talk.
Here comes the agenda:

•  10:30AM – 11:00AM : Registration
•  11:00AM – 12:00PM : openSocial Presentation
•  12:00PM – 1:00PM : brainstorming + pizza
•  1:00PM – 5:00PM : Coding your openSocial applications
•  1:00PM – 2:00PM : guided walkthrough a first openSocial gadget
•  5:00PM – 6:00PM : presentation of what have been done in the afternoon

As promoted in eXo’s blog, this hackathon is to “help developers to use this new standard and to prepare them to the openSocial gadget contest where there are many prizes to win. It will be also the occasion for Vietnamese social networks to discover this standard.”

Sounds cool lah?? But there are only 50 seats available, so register soon. I wish I could be there to join you guys!! I love everything for free hahaha.

Another good news is Jeremi and Ninh Nguyen and maybe some other guys in Hanoi are preparing for the 2nd BarCamp Hanoi. Dunno when exactly it is but it should be before Vietnamese traditional Tet holiday. This time I won’t miss it. Hope that you guys will fix the date soon so that I can plan for my Hanoi trip. Miss Hanoi so so much!!! And if any of you have any idea for BarCamp Hanoi or wanna help with organizing it, come visit its wiki or simply put down your comment here.

Tags: barcamphanoi, barcampsaigon, devfest, exo

Here is BarCamp Saigon on eChip. Click to view the full-size version

This time I’m late, totally late. No excuse!!!!! But I’ll do what I have to do right now.
To be honest, I was worried before the day BarCamp Saigon happened. I haven’t joined any BarCamp before, I didn’t know what to be expected.
I went to bed at around 5am last Saturday and Rick called to wake me up at 6.30am. Of course I was tired. I arrived at RMIT to see that volunteers already there. Hùng did a great job. Some of our friends: Preetam Rai, Viirak, Tharum, Geoff, Rath, Ramana, Thảo, Christine Trần, Bryan Pelz, etc. came so early. Some reporters arrived early as well. Until 8.30am, there were still a few people showing up. We decided to have opening ceremony on time. And how amazing, we had 150 people at that time.
Everything after that went perfectly smoothly. We have 46 sessions and around 350 people showing up. They are all very interesting. Many of them are CEOs or senior managers from of big companies those you bet you already know. I can say, quality of BarCamp Saigon’s attendees were much better than Google DevFest HCMC’s. Everyone could communicate in English and enthusiasticly engaged in sessions even they were delivered in English.
BarCamp Saigon was  a huge success! The tag #barcampsaigon was among the top trending topics on Twitter, and our sessions are still on spotlight on SlideShare’s homepage. Some newspapers covering this event, and MegoTV had a livestreaming about one session of BarCamp Saigon. And unfortunately, this session was mine. BarCamp Saigon was red-lined on 2 biggest IT forum DDTH and JavaVietnam. We have recieved good feedbacks and thanks from our beloved attendees.
I myself made a lot of mistakes that day. I had a presentation, but I didn’t prepare carefully, and my laptop went crazy at BarCamp. It was the first I presented in public, nerves, questions made me speak out some stupid stuff that I would never speak out again. I’m sincerely sorry all of you! And I promise I’ll do better next time.
Here is my slide:

You can check out for more slides at BarCamp Saigon here.

Here is the list of sessions presented at BarCamp Saigon. The lines in red mean I have no information about it. Please tell me if you know who gave those presentation.



Morning sessions:

1. eXtreme Programming - A Practitioner’s Approach by Lê Vi Khanh and Huỳnh Vi Quang - Stanyang Group

2. Python for the rest of your life- Nguyễn Thành Nam - CEO of Bluemoon. FYI, Bluemoon security group just won 1st place at HITB contest, one of the biggest security contests in Asia.

3. ????Machine Perception Pattern Recognition (Chip making)

4. ????Experience in Learning English - T.Tran

5. Global Positioning System - Nguyễn Đình Bảo - MXI, Raytheon

6. ?????RUP by Minh/IBM

7. How to Twitter (and Why) by Thomas Wanhoff. He’s one of the most famous postcasters in Germany.

8. Using Ubuntu Linux at American International School by Kevin Miller

9. Mobile GIS - Lê Ngọc Quốc Khánh, admin của http://javavietnam.org A pretty useful presentation for programmers.

10. VoIP using Linux (En/Vi) by two guys from GHP Far East - Anthony Fernandes (CTO) và Nguyen Duy Phong (IT Administrator)

11. Web 2.0 in China, Korea, Japan & World. Interesting MobileWeb Services by Preetam RAI - one of the most admirable bloggers and travellers of mine. He’s everywhere!

12. ????Learn and remember effectively (En&Vi)

13. Intel Technology and what you can do at Intel by Huan Dương from Intel Vietnam

14. Virtualization (system) by Stephane Masse IT Director Apple Tree and Le Trung Cang, IT Manager Archetype

15. ???????Open CV eigen face recognition by D. Minh

16. Echo-o and Google App Engine by Nguyen Tien Loi - Multinc

17. Microsoft Sync Framework & the future of WebApp by Lê Trung Hiếu - Global CyberSoft

18. ?????Linux is good for geeks

19. Vietnam Online: A macro view on a troubled but growing market by Bryan Pelz, CEO Vinagame

20. ??In space application. Machine vision by Vu

Afternoon sessions:

21. ???Adobe AIR development by Quang Tran

22. Linux and Enterprise by Võ Hồng Quân from GHP Far-East

23. ????Scalable cross-language services development with Apache Thrift (It’s cool!)

24. Surface Computing by Eric Hosick - RMIT lecturer & Mr. Cuong

25. How to make money online? Is online advertising the only way? by Rick Rodgers (Cross-Trade Border Director at PeaceSoft) & Trần Ngọc Thái Sơn (SonnyMotives) - (Representative of Vega Corp in HCMC (En&Vi). Interesting topic and it attracted a lot of barcampers. Of course, who doesn’t love money

26. ????Truck management (use GPS, GSM) by Dang Viet Hung

27. Roundtable: Startups in Vietnam. Share Experiences, lessons learned and tips for starting companies. For entrepreneurs: “Future Entrepreneurs” - By James Vuong (Vice President - Investment & Technology) and Hiep Do (Vice President - Investment & Technology) from IDGVV together with one of our organizers Daniel Shupp from Tech Propulsion. It was really great and helpful. Whoever wanna get funding from a VC should join it!

28. Ingredients of a successful web business by Chris Harvey, Genaral Director Navigos Group

He seems to be a very nice guy but he left too early.

29. E-learner Platform 2.0 by Nguyễn Anh Hùng, a young talent from FTU and one of Barcamp Saigon’s organizers. His E-learner Platform once implemented can help a lot of people.

30. ???Python by Nghia

31. “Social Networks” in Vietnam: Voices from the street by Phạm Anh Khoa and Đạt. Khoa is the founder of VietAbroader and an expert at Vietnam web market. But I have no information about his friend: Đạt until now.

32. ????Key Information on Webpage

33. IT Strategy: “Advancing your future” by Leon Sikes from VinaConsulting

34. Ask me anything about Drupal or Open Source or starting a non VC company by Jordan Lougheed - He seems to be very confident and a great freelancer.

35. Internet Television by Lê Quang Duy, one of BarCamp Saigon’s organizers: enthusiastic and willing to help. He’s going to be a very nice film maker.

36. Roundtable: Bringing Linux servers into a wintows network: products that will sell it to your managers!! by Urko Masse (SSIS Tech Coordinator)

37. ???Experiences Running a company in Vietnam (for foreigners) by Eric

38. Meet Sexy Cambodian Bloggers (Both Male/Female) - Preetam and 2 sexy Cambodian bloggers: Rath and Ramanagal.

39. Vietnam Web Services Portal. Go Global! by me (Huyen Chip). I know I made bunch of mistakes but that’s the way I can learn. Thanks everyone for joining and supporting me.

40. How to collaborate with Google Docs by Thomas Wanhoff.

41. ???Info SEC by Nam

42. ????iPhone Dev and Echo-o by Quang Tran

43. Entrepreneurs Anonymous by Christopher Zobrist (VSVN)

44. Sáng tạo? Bạn đang nghĩ gì? by 2 extremely active high school students from Lê Hồng Phong (one of the best high schools in HCMC) Bình - An. They were the youngest orators at BarCamp Saigon 1, and I’m sure they’ll do much better when they reach our age.

45. How I use Second Life and Virtual Worlds in my class - Preetam Rai

46. ???Echo-o and Android Application

All pictures and documents about BarCamp Saigon should be tagged “barcampsaigon”.

There were alsosome misunderstandings between organizers ourselves. But after all, we are still friends.
I met a lot of cool people, attended many interesting sessions, learnt a great experience of the first time presenting in public, experienced the differences between Americans and Vietnameses, and the greatest of all, enjoyed a true friendship and realized that there are still someone really cares about me.

————–

Now, BarCamp Saigon 1 was over, time for BarCamp JB. I’m coming to Singapore to join e27 Singapore for 2 weeks and attend BarCamp JB in Malaysia. This time I’ll make a presentation about Web 2.0 Vietam. Thomas is trying to have me make a session like: “How to get a Vietnamese girl”. Hahaa. I don’t care about girls, Thomas. Tell me how to get a Vietnamese guy

Tags: barcamp, barcampsaigon, saigon, Vietnam