As one of the organizers of this year’s BarCamp Hong Kong, I’m absolutely amazed by the turnout: 220 attendees, a number very close to that signed up on Facebook and Wiki, and many of them arrived early. This is so different from the iPhone Party crowds, so I can’t help but think that “geeks” are more punctual and better in keeping to their words.

My team at BeansBox is responsible for designing the logo, website, standup banner, T-shirt and email template, which are all loved by the attendees. Big thanks to our designer Dennis!

I’d like to thank specially my fellow organizers:

• Napoleon Biggs - the “Mastermind” of BarCamp HK from the very start. Never short of ideas, connections and British humour.
• Ben Crox - the “Man of Action”, speedy and generous efforts throughout the event, excellent M.C. in Chinese.
• Aaron Farr - another ruthlessly efficient and intelligent gentleman who could manage everything you can (and cannot) think of around-the-clock.
• Conrad Benham - Mr. Agile who put together meeting notes, timetable and tasks lists from the start to get the ball rolling. Kudos to the excellent write-up and T-shirt throwing.

It’s such a pleasure to work with all these smart, efficient folks and received widespread acclaim for our efforts:

• laihui@nicesoda
• jacky@seezone
• daisy@DigitalAnthology
• paul@edublogs
• sammy@sammy dot hk
• wanszezit@案內人隨筆
• infilmity
• caphun@yelotofu
• nicholas@currystar
• sarah@roosemoore

.. more on BarCamp Wiki.

Out of the sessions I attended, these were my favourites:

• “Online Marketing for Consumer Acquisition” by Sarah Moore
• “Creative Commons Hong Kong” by Ben Cheng
• “Twitter Visualizing Conversations” by Napoelon Biggs

Unfortunately I couldn’t attend everything at the same time, but Siu Ying is very kind to have captured many sessions by QIK. Check them out and very soon MobileRadio.hk would upload all the video to their site, thanks Jonathan!

As for the “Startup Lightning Talks” at the end, I think it’s a very good idea but we may have to make it even shorter (say 2 instead of 4 min) next time. It’s tough to present before such a huge crowd in a foreign language for some non-English speakers, but I believe with more preparation they could do a much better job. Congratulations to the “dude” who pitched the idea “WhereIsMyBusNowDude.com” and won the XBOX 360!

A very successful and memorable BarCamp all in all. 15 Dec 2007, 6 Sept 2008 … when do you want the next BarCamp Hong Kong?

The first BarCamp last year was a great success, finally we’re having the second one this Saturday, 6 September 2008!

Food, drinks and free wifi will be provided. Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join.

Come, speak and learn at BarCamp Hong Kong!

“One of the greatest achievements in cinematic history”, “Not just another Pixar masterpiece….A modern day SCI-FI masterpiece!”, “Who says popular films can’t be art? “WALL·E” is magical” …

These are just a few of the hundreds of comments on IMDB for Disney/Pixar’s latest animated film - WALL·E.

You should see WALL·E if:

• You consider yourself a geek
• You use Mac
• You are on a date
• You like other Pixar films like Ratatouille, Finding Nemo
• You can only see one film this year

It’s very kind of my few friends who recently alerted me of a potential security problem of my blog, it seems that my site is listed as suspicious.

Fixing my site using Google Webmaster Tools

Based on my experience with a few other WordPress sites, I’m pretty sure that it is caused by some security holes in my old copy of WordPress (2.2). Finally I made up my mind to upgrade it today. The upgrade process was pretty painless as advertised, except that I lost all my categories. Luckily a simple google search found the fix in no time.

Now I’ve requested a review from Google, hopefully my site would be declared “clean” again.

What has been keeping me busy in the past two weeks? Other than the usual stuffs at work, I’ve been spending a lot of time in organizing (possibly) the biggest Mac event in town - iPhone Party Hong Kong. As the host of HKU Mac User Group since 2002, I’ve not been very active in organizing any events for our members. After all, I’ve left HKU for 4 years and the growing market share of Mac also means that the University has significantly improved their support.

Exactly one month ago, I finally met up with Derek Ngai, the President of the biggest local Mac User Group - MACitizen. Aside from all the geek talk, we casually brought up the idea of organizing some user group gatherings together, and wondered if the arrival of iPhone 3G to Hong Kong would be a good excuse to make that happen.

This is how the idea of a co-organized Mac gathering was born. With our “niche” membership base, we never thought that this would turn into such a mass event.

Since the launch of the official website on July 5, we have received more than 650 sign-up (and growing)! The response has been overwhelming, without any media coverage or proper “PR” work done. Our facebook event has also attracted 110 sign-up, and many corporations have expressed huge interest in sponsorship - including the exclusive iPhone 3G carrier Three HK!

[Photo above] Today, we’ve done our first “publicity” task: recording a podcast for the “Apple Age” program at CMM.hk - the biggest Podcast Network in Hong Kong. We talked about the iPhone Party, the local Mac/iPhone development scene, the HKU Mac User Group and our personal history of using (and switch to) Mac.

It was a pleasure to finally meet Paul Lin, host of CMM.hk, a fellow Machead. I figure there would be more opportunities to work together in the future.

Thanks to Bill, Napoleon, Clement, and the folks at aNobii, 9gag, Zendesk and EditGrid for their tremendous support.

No matter how this turns out to be, I’m very grateful for all these people and in particular my team at BeansBox for making this possible.

You probably already knew that Hong Kong has the cheapest iPhone 3G Plan in the World, so am I getting one finally? Oh hell yes.

Last week Bill helped me upgrade the 120GB hard drive of my trusty 15“ MacBook Pro. Now I’m happily running a 250GB with plenty of space left even after installing VMWare and Windows XP! We found the most lengthy how-to online, and closely followed one step after another. It appeared to be an easy surgery, but it turned out that we both got some minor heart attack!

First, it’s not that easy to crack the case. Removing all the screws is dead simple, but when it comes to opening the last piece (the top panel with keyboard and touchpad), it’s not something you wanna see as an owner, no wonder I never saw any shop doing that in front of a customer!

Another online guide said the front edge is ”a little tricky“, guess how long that tricky edge took us? Well, two brilliant brains together for almost 30 min! Understandably, Bill didn’t dare to pull the last trigger - so we were just stuck there. Notoriously known as a rude and impatient lady, after 25 min of frustration, I used FORCE and cracked the last piece behind him. ”BAAAK!“, a big cracking sound came and we just freeze. Luckily, ”force“ worked this time. Nothing was broken.

And that’s not the end of it. In fact putting the top panel back was the second challenge! No matter how hard we tried, the case near the SuperDrive was still separating (like this kind of gap). Damn, just one last fxxking plastic latch! This time, not even FORCE can help.

Long story short, I realized that we couldn’t put pressure on the latch because the SuperDrive was right beneath it - it’s an empty space and any pressure added would be fruitless. So I somehow came up with this stupid idea - ”Shall we put something into the SuperDrive?“. Here’s the photo of that glorious moment - a piece of folded paper placed inside the SuperDrive, and BINGO! The last latch was in place.

Now I could confidently say that I’m able to do this again, would any one dare to let me do it for his Mac?

After more than 6 months of implementing GTD, I’ve only set up the ticker file (the “43 Folders”) today. Since I’m not a quick (and committed) follower of any sort, it takes me quite a while to appreciate its necessity - after all, not everything can be digitalized. Hopefully this would mark the end of my “desktop chaos” era.

What’s next?

• Respecting the Friday weekly review ritual
• Setting up a reference cabinet
• Going back to my beloved Filofax personal organizer

Looking for GTD gear in Central? You’d find all the physical, non-electronic tools you need at my favourite stationery store in Central: Yat Fat Stationers on 2/F, #44-46 Des Voeux Road Central. Shopping for stationery is one of my obsessions (yes I’m a weirdo), and this shop is just superb, they have everything you could imagine (esp. the old style stuffs) and the shop keepers are helpful, friendly but not pushy.

I thoroughly enjoyed tonight’s Web Wednesday Social Mixer as the guest speaker is Kenneth Kong, BD Director - Digital Media for IMG, the company that invented sports marketing. I’ve always loved sports, and combining sports with digital media sounds a perfect match for me. Any one needs a sport website done?

Lovely son of Mikkel from Zendesk, check out their cool web app and try out for free.

Happy New Year every one! I’ve been very quiet over the holidays because I was so busy doing the books for tax return, running all kinds of errands and going to parties/gatherings/shows. So much stuff (trash) has piled up every where as I’m kind of hopeless in executing my GTD “Weekly Review” so far … so only when it comes to long holiday I got a chance to do it. It feels great indeed and I keep wondering: why couldn’t I do that on a regular basis? Sometimes it takes much more to be motivated, knowing something is right for you is not enough!

So my first gadget in the new year? Slingbox Classic which I got from Three HK for FREE. What’s the catch? Extend my current mobile contract for 12 months. This box is selling at HK$1,880 retail price, so I figure it’s a bargain! I’ve never setup a device like this, so it took me quite a while to get it to work. I’m glad it’s working now, and you can see my desktop image here - watching football on NOW Sports Channel on my MacBook Pro! After enabling remote viewing, I could watch anywhere I like, even outside my home. All I need is just a computer with Internet access. Wanna try? Download the free SlingPlayer and enjoy!