April 23, 2015

Silicon Dragon Hong Kong - Meeting of Minds and Money

Silicon Dragon hit the shores of Hong Kong for the fourth year in a row yesterday at Cyberport. The host, Rebecca Fannin, pulled off another great gathering of money and minds to talk about Hong Kong's role as the "new international start-up city".

I was invited to interview three promising start-ups, iDecorate, Passkit and Launchpilots.

Listen to the interviews below to make your own judgements. I wonder if you agree?


April 2, 2015

Photos of Web Wednesday V94

Here are the photos from last night's 94th gathering of digital entrepreneurs - Nixplay at Web Wednesday Hong Kong (V94). Click on the arrows below or tag them on Facebook or Flickr.



Adam Place warmed the audience with his musical magical ball, AlphaSphere.

Douglas Mulcock tempted them to sign up for the Omni-Channel Retailing Conference on 9-11 June at HKCEC.

Our guest speaker, Mark Palfreeman, shared his vision for a future where photos (personal and enterprise) drive a whole ecosystem of software, hardware and big data and explained what the Internet of Things (IoT) really means.

Mark also proved that we have the smarts and drive in Hong Kong to create and build global technology businesses. I've challenged him to list in Hong Kong so that we can all be proud of a new HK-born success story.

A big thank you to Victor Isaac Cheung for providing a cool venue, Orange Peel, and to Bronney Hui for capturing the moment on his camera.

Finally, a shout out to Mark for being the first speaker to publicly thank me for all my efforts in nurturing this community.

April 1, 2015

Discounts for Omni-Channel Retailing Conference

Event organisers, Diversified Communications, will be joining the upcoming Web Wednesday social mixer to say a few words about the Omni-Channel Retailing Conference, held at the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre on 9th and 10th June, 2015.


For the lucky draw on the night, they are generously offering a full delegate pass, valued at HK$10,500 for non-retailers and HK$3,500 for retailers.
For all Web Wednesday regulars, you can get 50% off by using code "#OCR15WW" when you register here.
I've had the pleasure of speaking at the last two conferences (see photo below) and I continue to be impressed by the calibre of the attendee, all C-suite retailers looking to tap into this new phenomenon in cross-channel retail.


My new venture in innovative software for multi-channel retailers, purecomm, was launched at last year's Retail Asia Expo (Diversified's main exhibition space), with a booth designed to look like a boutique! Yes, our software stood out from the typical ecommerce software vendor outlay.




AlphaSphere to play at Web Wednesday

Wicked last minute news!

AlphaSphere, the award-winning expressive musical football, will make a special appearance with a live performance at the upcoming Web Wednesday on April 1st. Who said networking was boring!



Inventor Adam Place came up with the idea at university after growing bored with conventional keyboards to play synthesized music.

"On a keyboard, the keys are just controllers, they're not really like notes on a piano," he said. "But with the AlphaSphere, the notes change as you press harder and harder, you really engage with the instrument, and you can perform with it."



Adam is generously offering an AlphaSphere me (worth US$199) as a lucky draw prize for the event so come along and drop your namecard at the door. Web Wednesday members get a reduced price for the AlphaSphere nexusseries, a more metallic upgrade.

Follow AlphaSphere on Twitter (@alphasphere), Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

Watch/listen to Jason Hou (侯珺硕 ), a young composer from Beijing, make the musical ball sing.