podcamp boston – Derrick Kwa

Sui Generis Weekly #1

Nov 7, 2007

Well, I announced last week that I would start a podcast soon, so here it is! You can subscribe from here. I’ll integrate the subscription into my blog as soon as possible, once I figure out the best way to do it.

Anyway, here’s the first episode of Sui Generis Weekly (yes I know it’s not the most creative name, but I couldn’t come up with anything else. If you’ve got ideas, all suggestions are welcome). It’s currently hosted on Podango because I’m having trouble uploading to Ourmedia (which is also why I didn’t manage to get it up last night as I wanted).

Covered in this podcast:
– PodCamp Boston
– Personal Branding Talk by Mitch Joel
– Google OpenSocial
– Android and the Open Handset Alliance

It’s not the best quality and I know my voice isn’t that good either, but I promise that over time, as I get more used to doing this, I’ll get better.

As mentioned in the podcast, all music was from Natalie Gelman, an awesome artist who’s definitely worth checking out.

Back from Boston

Nov 1, 2007

After a week and a half or so, I’m finally back! Hope you guys didn’t miss me too much.

PodCamp Boston 2 was awesome! It was great to meet other bloggers and podcasters. I really enjoyed Mitch Joel‘s session about Personal Branding. For notes about the session, you can check out these two blog posts, by Connie Crossby and Christina Greene. And I highly recommend you do. It’s an amazing talk, on a great topic.

The other session that was really good was Kabren Levinson‘s. It was great to meet another teen into this field, and just to get into the discussion of how to spread this to the teenage generation. Will be waiting for him to do a post on it, and I’ll definitely feature it when he does. He’s doing great stuff for a 17 year old, and I wish him all the best.

Basically, the best part about PodCamp for me was just the connections, meeting new people and all. The interactions and community. After all, that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Not only the blog, but in life in general, relationship and people are one of the most important things. I’m not going to name all the cool people I met, but I’m sure I’ll feature them in one way or another over time. They are just awesome people, doing really good things.

Just one name for you guys, though: Natalie Gelman. Check her out. She’s a singer-songwriter, with pod-safe music. Really good musician and an even better person (from the limited time I had talking to her).

A final recommendation for those of you in Boston: The Seaport Restaurant (next to the Seaport World Trade Center). And this goes to illustrate another point from the PodCamp. The best value you can provide to customers is the personal relation. It’s not the product itself, but the service that makes a difference. Truly caring and trying to help the person you’re serving. That’s the best thing you can provide. And that’s why I’m recommending the Seaport Restaurant. The food may not be as good as, say, Legal Sea Food, but it’s good enough. And the service is much better. The people are friendlier and really seem to care more.

In other news from the trip, I visited 3 colleges while I was there. MIT, Harvard and BJU. The one thing that really struck me was the atmosphere. It’s just so different there. The schools in Singapore look like prisons compared to the ones there, in my opinion. The look and feel of the colleges are so different. In Singapore, everything is bland and plain. I’ll hold back the urge to go crazy over MIT for now. Will post more about MIT when I get the pictures up. But it’s amazing. It’s been my dream college for ages now, and getting to visit it was just awesome.

Finally, I have an announcement to make. Inspired by PodCamp, I’ll be starting a podcast really soon. It’ll probably be a weekly thing. More details will be available soon, so be sure to keep checking back.

That’s all for today. Sui Generis will be back in full swing over the next few days, after I get more rest.