SGEspresso

Joyce’s Inaugural Singapore Geek Girls Meetup!

Our very own Joyce founded Singapore Geek Girls and it had its first meetup yesterday! Here’s a picture of Joyce and myself taken by Michael Cheng:

Sharon’s Birthday!

We had lunch and Sharon had one of her favs at Food For Thought: Red Velvet cake!

She’s 22! We celebrated one month late though.

Christmas Cupcakes!

YUM! Larissa, SGE’s first intern and now alumnus, got us cupcakes for Christmas!

I only remembered to take a picture after two were gobbled up by yours truly.

Egi’s Birthday!

So we celebrated our intern, Egi’s birthday last week! Here’s the first and only tame picture:

Then comes the blurry, club pics. We went to Club Avatar at Marina Mandarin Hotel and had a blast of a time.

Above, Egi forcing me to go on stage.

Can you spot myself, Sharon and Egi in the picture above?

No idea what the above was.

We Skydived Indoors!

Last week, Isaac and I went skydiving indoors!

How it came about is this: we were invited to a special “bloggers” session at iFly Singapore, a 3-month old outfit that holds the world’s largest wind tunnel for indoor skydiving, also known as bodyflight: it is almost 5 storeys tall: 16.5 ft (5m) wide and 56.5 ft (17.2m) tall.

So, when we got the invite to try this out, I was very excited. I had done the real thing before (jumped out of a plane from 13k ft) and had always wanted to practise my skills in a wind tunnel because my aim was to eventually skysurf one day:

(Like, how cool was that?!)

But to skysurf, one needs to have done about 3000-5000 individual skydives. The cost of doing those thousands of jumps is a little prohibitive. In comparison, a bodyflight jump is considerably less expensive.

Even though having experience and jumps in bodyflight doesn’t contribute to a skydiving certification, the practice one can get would definitely lend to better control while skydiving outdoors.

So to Sentosa Isaac and I trotted last Friday. After some briefings and demonstrations, we each had two very windy 45 seconds “fall” at 190 km/h+ (120 m/h). :)

Check me out:

(Thanks iFly Singapore!)

Apart from treating us to this special opportunity, they have also kindly extended a special package to our readers: for every Wednesday for the month of September 2011, you can get an Adult First Timer package at S$59 (USD 49) instead of the usual price of S$89 (USD 74)! All you have to do is to tell them you saw it via SGEntrepreneurs and show them this post.

As their tagline goes: Anyone Can Fly. (Check out this FOUR year old girl do her thing.)

Evening Drinks with Lunch Actually

Last week we managed to get the busy husband and wife entrepreneurial team behind Lunch Actually and Eteract, Jamie and Violet to join us at SGE and a few of our readers for drinks.

This was our 8th official networking session at 29 Boon Tat Street - the space which the Preparazzi team had just won in the Martell The Ultimate Start-Up Space competition. (I say official because we are always meeting up unofficially.)

During the two hours, Jamie and Violet answered many questions and talked about many of the thought processes they had as they made each decision along the way.

From left: Violet and Jamie.

Thanks very much to Jamie and Violet for coming down to join us. Thanks to our guests that day, and lastly, thanks for Martell and Pernod Ricard for sponsoring the space and drinks!

The Dr Tony Tan Fireside Chat

A few weeks ago, we were presented with an amazing opportunity to engage Singapore presidential candidate Dr Tony Tan in a fireside chat with a small group of 30 entrepreneurs and investors from across various industries.

Throughout the entire 45 minute session, we heard from the group on issues that bug most entrepreneurs and investors: shortage and poaching of talent, funding environment, governmental feedback channels etc..

Isaac and myself moderated the session, held at The Pigeonhole cafe (more on the cafe on SGE):

Our enthusiastic audience:

There were many questions…

but alas, only 45 minutes. We couldn’t take all the questions obviously - there were also many more on Pigeonhole Live - the live Q&A software we used during this fireside chat (more on this company on SGE). But we hope that we as the moderators managed to allow for a diversity of questions and opinions during the session. You can watch a few video segments of the entire chat online.

Before and after the session, Dr Tony Tan also took time to meet with the various entrepreneurs and investors (pictures). Here is one of the SGE team meeting him:

The event couldn’t have gone on without a hitch without Terence, Egi and Joyce working tirelessly in the background. Take a look at Joyce registering a guest on arrival:

Here’s all of them looking at the guest list (and I guess figuring out some sort of logistics to-do ~> thank you!):

Finally, here is a SGE team pic with our special guest for this particular Chillin’ With session (we’re missing a few alumni!): from left, Joyce, Bernard, Isaac, Dr Tony Tan, myself, Egi and Terence:

Thank you! And, much thanks to Dr Tony Tan for his time and willingness to listen to the “grievances” of a bunch of passionate entrepreneurs and investors!

The showdown begins at Imagine Cup 2011

Last year this time, I was in Warsaw, Poland to judge the Software Design competition category of the Imagine Cup worldwide finals. It was the first time that I was exposed to the competition and the student enthusiasm I saw there amazed me. The teams buzzed around with clear excitement that they were part of something greater than themselves.

This year, I’m here in New York City to again participate as a judge for Imagine Cup, where there are 424 finalists from across 73 countries congregated here for the ultimate finals after topping their respective countries. 

My view during breakfast from the New York Marriot Marquis.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer kicked off the opening ceremony yesterday with Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley closing the round of speeches. 

This year, I’m judging the IT Challenge category. The final round of this particular category of competition takes place over 24 hours (30ish for the judges) as the students work throughout the day and night to build an entire IT network environment for a case scenario. 

Completing the tasks is not so much the problem as the time limit. Compounding that is the non-stop factor of the 24 hour challenge. Students will get tired, cranky and high on the sugar buzz from RedBulls.

The six finalists and judges of the IT Challenge for Imagine Cup 2011. From left: Valy Greavu (Co-Captain/Judge), myself (Judge), Chris Amaris (Co-Captain/Judge), Sinescu Ionut (Romania), Blazej Matusyk (Poland), Xuewen Tian (China), Alexander Wachtel (Germany), Yunheng Mong (Singapore), Jean-Sébastien Duchene (France), Rand Morimoto (Co-Captain/Head Judge).

Good luck guys!