Manmohanjit Singh

[contentAd size=normal float=right /]I got back from Open Web Asia or OWA a few hours ago, it was fun. They were supposed to give out an iPad and a Google Nexus One to lucky draw winners but that didn’t happen. Instead they gave out two notebooks and a camera.

I had lots of fun, I managed to get a photo with Dr. Serkan Toto of Tech Crunch. I talked to a lot of people. I was also on a name card collecting spree. A lot of people I knew were there too. To name a few: Joshua, Fiona, Harinder, James Pong, Simon Lim, LiewCF[...]. Yeah, there were many familiar people that attended the event. Naming all of them would fill up this whole page.

So yeah, I spent most of my time with Joshua. James Pong is the guy who won the lucky draw gift which was a camera. Harinder gave a talk on Foursquare for Businesses which was quite interesting, especially during the Q&A part. He was getting a lot of questions. Fiona, I would say is the most cheerful person in the whole conference. I met James Pong on the first day, we did talk a little bit. He’s the guy from Lowyat forums with the username ‘hiphopstar’. He wore a Google t-shirt today, which I felt was cool. Simon Lim was busy talking to the speakers, he volunteered to help out organize the event. I think he might be attending DevFest 2010 Asia too. LiewCF was busy with his iPhone and Twitter as usual.

I met Bikesh L. who currently works with iTrain. He had an iPad, iPhone 3Gs and iPhone 4. Cool huh? He’s a friendly guy, I asked him a few questions about HTML5 and CSS3. The best thing is that he develops for all platforms, he knows dozens of languages.

I also managed to have a look at the Terato Tech booth, they specialize in developing iPhone apps, mainly games. They launched their new game during the event itself yesterday. It’s called Qalvinius. I did try it out on an iPad and honestly, it was awesome. They said it’ll be out in the App Store as soon as it gets approved, the price is $0.99.
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I was more focused towards HTML5 and web development, so the HTML5 talk was really more of my choice. After the event ended, I rushed to the Monorail station and by chance met a really cool guy. His name was Lye Shi Yin and he currently works at Dynamic Podium. I started the conversation by asking him if he was from the conference. And he said yes, then we talked and talked and talked and talked. He’s an interesting guy, very friendly too.

After we reached the Hang Tuah station, he had to get down. I then saw another guy, I remembered that he was sitting in front of me and Joshua. I approached him and asked him if he was from the event and yeah, he said yes. So his name was Richard Korff, we talked a little bit, he gave me his name card and I found out that he works with Fuji Xerox in Singapore. When I got down from the Monorail, I managed to meet another guy that still had his ‘delegate’ tag on with the big ‘Open Web Asia’ logo, so I went and talked to him. His name was Ing and he works with TransNiaga, a security company. It was raining and he was waiting for the rain to stop so he could cross the road without getting wet. In the end he bought an umbrella and used it to cross the road.

I waited for the bus for 2 whole hours, then when it came I had to stand up during the whole journey. I got down at Sunway Pyramid. I had to charge my phone at a Nokia shop and after that finally asked my mum to pick me up. Anyway I had lots of fun. I also met, met, met and met a lot of people. I gained a lot of knowledge from everything. Unfortunately I had to skip school for 2 days and most probably tomorrow too. So it’ll be 3 days.