Photo: Garena Forum

Tom Cadwell of Riot Games talks about how even experienced game designers can still make mistakes. “There are lots of examples of really well executed games,” he said, “But despite that, you still see tons of really bad outcomes and decision-making even on good projects. The question is how can a designer who is really good at designing, still consistently make a lot of errors?”

On January 19, local game publisher Garena hosted a talk by Tom Cadwell, at the Games Solution Centre in Singapore. Cadwell is Design Director at Riot Games, a publisher and developer of premium online games for a global audience. While its headquarters is based in Santa Monica the company also has offices in St. Louis, Dublin and Seoul. Riot’s most well-known game is League of Legends a free to play, online action RPG from the creators of DoTA (Defense of the Ancients).

With a degree in Computer Science from MIT and MBA from Kellogg, Cadwell was previously a Designer at Blizzard working on World of Warcraft and Warcraft III The Frozen Throne. He has also been winner of Blizzard Brood War Beta invitational and #1 several times on the StarCraft and Brood War ladders.

During his talk “Game Designers are Human Too” Cadwell imparted game development wisdom based on his experience as an industry professional and leading competitive gamer. Although professional game design has been around for over three decades Cadwell noted that game development could and still does produce bad results. ”There are lots of examples of really well executed games,” he said, “But despite that, you still see tons of really bad outcomes and decision-making even on good projects. The question is how can a designer who is really good at designing, still consistently make a lot of errors?”

Process can impede good decision-making

Sometimes the way in which the game development process is structured, impedes the ability of a team or individual to make good quality decisions. To circumvent this problem Cadwell stressed the importance of establishing a formal review step or process of submission. Goals should be clearly defined from the outset allowing developers to measure their progress against expectations. Studios should also encourage a culture of honest feedback. Citing an example where his team ran into difficulties while creating a new character, Cadwell said, ”saying that something is ‘bad’ is much more difficult than saying its ‘not bad’.” However if staff are empowered to assert (in a constructive manner) that an element is not working or meeting expectations, it can save a lot of time, money and heart ache down the track. Consistent rounds of presentations can also reduce the risk of development going too far off track.

Designers can be influenced by emotional and social motivations

Photo: Recognition Pattern

“I believe that good game development comes from iteration. Inherent to that is the idea that you have to get feedback from others,” Cadwell said. But feedback is hard to obtain when team members choose to work in isolation for too long or during critical stages of development. A common scenario is the ‘grand unveil’ where individuals will pour over their work for hours (alone) leading up to presentation of the concept with a grand flourish only to be met by the sound of crickets chirping. Although unhelpful, the behaviour is understandable. ”Designers are worried that their great idea will be misunderstood or unfairly judged. A lot of designers, especially junior designers, view themselves as successful if they get a lot of their ideas into the game, when their goal should be: is the game good?”

To alleviate this difficulty and perhaps protect sensitive egos, Cadwell suggested introducing the notion of a ‘crappy first draft’ which reduces pressure for initial idea generation, provides creative freedom and encourages a mistake-forgiving environment that doesn’t seek to blame, judge or embarrass others. Aligned with this approach is making feedback or the peer review process a fun, positive and helpful experience.

Designers, in any creative profession, understand that creating ideas is a bit like having a baby. We conceive them, give birth and then want to protect them as much as possible from judging eyes. Cadwell described a similar situation called ‘too awesome to cut” which is when an individual or team have emotional attachment to an idea that has a lot of promise but also serious flaws. ”When you invest emotion, you start to lose objectivity,” he said. In these situations, try to involve people who aren’t personally involved on that project to provide honest feedback or consider formalising a process to identity costs and risks associated with alternative design decisions.

But no-one said coming up with amazing ideas was easy. Creative fatigue is a well-known risk in an industry often subjected to tight timeframes and strict deadlines. However there a many counter-intuitive practices such as long meetings. Cadwell pointed to research indicating that people are most creative during the first 15 minutes of a meeting followed by a steady decline in attention. To stimulate fresh thinking he suggested teams take frequent short breaks or work on another project entirely before returning. Mixing or rotating team members can also bring new perspectives.

Another common problem that affects designers is the notion of designing for yourself. ”It’s easy to be excited by games you like and things you like.” Similarly, its easy to design games that you’d like to play, but you are not always the game’s target audience. Being self-aware enough to recognise when you may be guilty of this is central to ensuring that you are designing an experience that may not be your cup of tea but in the end will delight and entertain the intended players.

Unnecessary constraints

Although constraints are often based on specific timing, budget, resource or cultural considerations, trying to adhere to too many constraints can “produce  mediocre results”. Consequently its important to identify which constraints are requirements versus those that are merely preferences. Creating innovative game experiences can be difficult enough without also trying to honour competing objectives.

In summary, Cadwell noted that it was important for designers and other team members to identify their own personal weakness from the aforementioned flaws in order to develop strategies to overcome them. For junior designers specifically, as they develop their careers in the game industry it’s important to have a circle of design mentors, people who they can bounce ideas off and give constructive feedback on both good and bad work.

This post was first published on RecognitionPattern.com

Natalie is co-founder of Hummingbird Interactive, a Singapore-based gamification design consultancy. She blogs at www.recognitionpattern.com

Epicurious Recipes & Shopping List (free)

Sure, you can bring your partner out to dinner, but to really make an impact, get your hands dirty! Epicurious should be a familiar name to those who like to mess around in the kitchen, and is a treasure chest full of recipes sorted by categories, including “Romantic dinners”.

Fancy some Grilled Pork Tenderloin with Cherry Salsa? How about Roast Salmon with Sweet Chipotle Glaze and Hominy Puree? If you haven’t yet settle on a dish, you can discover recipes by filtering out the main ingredients of each dish, such as cheese, berries, or various meats.

For the noobs out there, there’s even an “I can barely cook” category which sorts out the easiest recipes for your perusal. At the time of writing, there are over 8,000 of those recipes!

Once you’ve identified the dish you want to make, add it to a built-in shopping list, which automatically helps you list out the ingredients you need to buy. Hit the supermarket, get what you need, and get ready to impress your partner! (Or not, depending on the taste of your masterpiece)

Cocktail Flow (S$4.49)

Now that you have the food, it’s time to break out the booze. If you want to impress the ladies (or the gents) with your mixing prowess, you need Cocktail Flow. At S$4.49, it’s not exactly cheap, but it has a huge and regularly updated library of cocktail recipes that makes it worth the money.

Load up the virtual bar with spirits that you have in your physical bar, and watch the app start generating a list of drinks you can immediately start making. Discover even more drinks by visiting the “Shopping” section, and let the app will tell you what other sweet alcohol you need to buy to expand your repertoire.

And it’s possibly one of the slickest Windows Phone app you’ve ever seen. Just take a look at some of the user reviews, which heaps lavish praises like “designed spectacularly well” and “perfect interface” among others.

But remember: drink responsibly. You don’t want to wake up the next morning with a tiger in your room.

eBay (free)

Nothing says you care more than a thoughtful gift. That means going off the beaten on-the-shelf items track and go on the hunt for something unique. And one of the best places to find that perfect quirky gift is eBay.

But we can’t camp by our laptops/desktops all day just to outbid other people, and that’s where the eBay app for Windows Phone comes in. Featuring a slick interface that is completely at home on Windows Phone’s metro interface, the apps lets ebay members search, bid and check their activity on the go.

Unfortunately, the app doesn’t support the listing of items for sale at the time of writing. If you want to sell your possessions to raise cash for a present, you’ll have to list it on the website first. After that, you can keep track of the sale on your phone.

Good Movie (free)

What’s worse than getting stuck in a lousy movie? Getting stuck in a lousy movie with a date.

To prevent that from happening, you need Good Movie! Fire up the app and do a search of the movie you’re thinking of seeing, and it will pull in information from various movie databases, including reviews from Rotten Tomatoes, trailers from YouTube, information from Wikipedia, and Images from Bing image search.

Unfortunately, the app can’t read your partner’s mind to see what types of movies he/she like, so you’re on your own there!

Love quotes (free)

This free app features more than 300 quotes from personalities as diverse as Julie Andrews, Mother Theresa, and Shakespeare. An in-app rating system helps you sort out the well-liked quotes from the rest of the pack.

When you see a quote that you like, you can send it to a loved-one via SMS, Facebook, or email. But don’t send them all at once! Keep your love alive by adding your favourite quotes to an in-app favourites list and then sharing them one at a time.

Just be careful to pick the right moment to use the quotes, or you’ll end up looking cheesy!

Did I miss anything? Share your top V-Day app picks in the comments below!

From that moment on I knew I wanted to live abroad – one way or another. I knew the quickest path to getting abroad was a career in tech. Stints in computer tech support lead to web jobs. I can remember installing paid versions of Netscape on Solaris servers. I saw the birth of Java and started the first Java User Group  - outside of the official one started by Sun.

Then I hit San Francisco to sell Java Application Servers – some of you may remember WebLogic which vaulted BEA into the stratosphere and eventually a crazy deal with Oracle. WebLogic was the vehicle that took me around the globe but BEA grounded me in Hong Kong and China for a while. I helped to build out an engineering center in China before it was hip – back when one could see the sun from time to time in Beijing.

Then I pulled the ripcord and crash landed in Bangkok, Thailand. Let’s just say I tried to apply my skill sets outside the world of tech and lived to tell about it. I have some scars, a light grasp of Thai, a motorcycling habit and a love for Southeast Asia. Then the WebLogic batphone rang and I suddenly found myself back in the thick of it at Yahoo!. I get tired of all the Yahoo! bashers, yes the place is not what it used to be, but I am sure any company would die for their customer base, their revenue and their brand. I guess I will always bleed some shade of purple given I have used Yahoo! since the internets started.

However it is time to move on. To join the startup troops that are marching to their own cadence around Singapore. I didn’t know that my trip to India would be as symbolic as it has become given the transit point was Singapore – where I now find myself many light years later.

Asia is happening – we all know that. Some folks take the China route, others take the India route and yet others peel off a country or two. It all holds promise but one thing is certain – Singapore has become a center for startups in the region and I bet it will continue to grow in importance. The government has carefully cultivated a strong base for startups, incubators, investors and entrepreneurs.

As of today I join those ranks. I plan on writing a regular column for E27, my favorite SEA tech site – discussing startups, the region and my own tales from the trenches. Stay tuned for more and be sure to get ready for Echelon 2012.

Michael Smith Jr. is the Chief Product Officer at Spuul – yes we are hiring. Prior to Spuul, Michael worked at Yahoo! as the director of Global Tech Initiatives. Michael spends his time between Thailand and Singapore working on putting SEA on the global startup map. You can follow Michael on twitter.

Photo: thatveganblog.com

Ashley Choo of qeeple talks about the interior design industry in Singapore and how it is struggling to find its place on the web.

BRIGHT FUTURE

Even in its infancy stage, the local interior design industry could be seen as one with a bright future. As early as the 1960s, the newly elected government was eager to give citizens a sense of “a concrete stake in this country” through countless housing programmes. Among them, was one that opted to cultivate that elusive sense of ownership via a state published magazine, Our Home which was filled with idealized design versions of the modern living in Singapore’s high rise homes. The magazine ran from 1972 to 1989 and was distributed to all HDB tenants.

On this backdrop, Singapore not only achieved one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. It also created a fertile ground for local architecture and interior design providers to fulfill the needs of the new home proud owner.

DOMESTIC THIRST FOR DESIGN

Today the interior design industry still enjoys consistent demand. The Singapore homeowner is now better travelled, more discerning and many can now recognise designer furnishings the way they would a designer bag. Coupled with a low interest rate environment, the typical homeowner can also easily obtain substantial bank loans to do a major redesign.

Yet despite the vibrancy in the design industry, supporting platforms in the print and online media industry have failed to keep up.

Homeowners now still have to rely on exhibitions and local magazines to look for services. But these mediums often favour established firms who have a substantial marketing budget and act as a high entry barrier for new and talented designers.  Few new players can afford a bill of S$2,000 per magazine feature or a US$1.20 per click fee to stay on the front page of Google searches for “interior design Singapore”.

With limited choices available, homeowners usually end up asking for recommendations from family and friends. Today, a typical design firm gets 60 – 80 percent of its business from word-of-mouth sources. But all too often, goodwill referrals end up with frustrated homeowners with designers who-can’t-get-the-job-done and designers who have to spend time rejecting homeowners with-too-low-budgets.

FLOCKING TO THE WEB

Things are turning for the worse. The print industry has its own bag of pains with a recent spate of bookshop closures. MPH closed down one of their key locations in Novena Square last May, Borders last August and PageOne later this year in February. With interior magazines less easily obtainable, homeowners will be increasingly driven online for their design needs.

Most local firms have their own websites but many are neglected and nestled deep in the recesses of the web where few users will stumble upon.

Google searches often end up with results as meaningless as directory listings. While there are a couple of discussion forums, some quotation portals and a handful of emagazines and blogs but none that comes close to truly engaging the new web savvy consumer that’s used to Web 2.0’s beads and baubles.

THE ODD JOB DESIGNER

For the web entrepreneur, the untouched amazon of an industry represented by tens of thousands of gorgeous portfolio images and countless design talents will prove to be inviting. But this rose doesn’t come without its thorns. This is a traditional industry still suspicious of the idea of sharing in a Web 2.0 landscape.

One of the six new local interior design platforms we knew that sprouted last year shut down just five months after launching as it was unable to gain a critical mass of content from local design firms and furnishing merchants.

Yet it is increasingly critical for new platforms to help marry local designers and homeowners. Homeowners are increasingly going to better developed US based platforms such as Freshome and Houzz for inspiration and it’s just a matter of time before they engage foreign designers for their design needs.

What’s left for the local interior design industry will be low budget projects and odd jobs. The domestic demand for design will always be there, but the supply of the design services need not be local, not for the smart Singapore web consumer.

About the author

This guest post was written by Ashley Choo, co-founder of qeeple, a local interiors and furnishing platform. She has a huge passion for the local interior design and is still looking for a viable web solution for the interior design industry.

Photo: Facebook

In an announcement on e27 today, Michael Smith (better known as Smitty to the startup community), will be leaving Yahoo! as Director of Global Tech Initiatives to join Spuul as their Chief Product Officer.

Michael Smith has been a strong supporter of the regional startup community and e27. He was involved in the Yahoo! Open Hack Day in 2009 and also the Koprol acquisition by the Yahoo! in 2010.

Michael will be writing a regular column for e27 called “Tales from the Trenches“, talking about startups, the region and his own experiences. We at e27 would like to extend our warm welcome to Michael and wish him all the best in his startup venture!

Photo: iTwin

For this week’s Coffee with Cofounders series, formerly know as How Cofounders Meet, we are happy to feature iTwin, founded by Akash Nemani, Lux Anantharaman and Kal Takru. A while back we did a review on the product and since then, iTwin has been growing tremendously especially in the international arena. We at e27 had a chat with Akash on our Coffee with Cofounders series.

How did you and your cofounders meet?

At the beginning of my senior year at NUS, I had just returned from my Entrepreneurship program at Silicon Valley and was looking for a good idea to work on. I was then introduced to Lux (CEO) via my Professor. During those days, iTwin was still a part of A*STAR. So I joined A*STAR under the student attachment program and once I graduated, we started our process of spinning off from A*STAR and establishing iTwin as a legal entity and raising our first round of investment.

Photo: iTwin

Why did the you decided to take the plunge together with your cofounders?

Lux and Kal (COO) were already working on the idea while they were at A*STAR. When Lux spoke to me about the idea and the vision he had for iTwin, it immediately appealed to me. So I looked further into the remote file access space and saw the potential iTwin possessed. That’s when I decided to dedicate my time to iTwin.

Did any of you feel like quitting at any point?

Every day at work is like a roller coaster ride. You feel the thrill and the adrenaline rush when things go right. On the other hand, there are days when there is too much stress as you need to wear multiple hats at the same time. So for a moment, one does think of moving on to a more stable environment. But your passion towards you work keeps you motivated. When you read customer testimonials and product reviews, it adds in to your motivation.

What were iTwin’s achievements in the last three months?

The last three months have been really fruitful for iTwin. We have won a number of awards in the last three months including Best of What’s New 2011 by Popular Science and the CES Innovations 2012 Design and Engineering Award.We also raised our Series B investment in the 4th Quarter of 2011. This will help us to create more brand awareness globally and expand our product range.

Also, what would be the best Valentine’s Day gift you can think of as a gift for a girl?

One of the most common gifts you would see is a heart shaped pendent which breaks into two and a couple keeps a half each. In the same manner, we see iTwin as a great Valentine’s day gift for couples who are in different cities or geographies. iTwin helps in creating a secure connection between the two halves. As a couple you want to share photos and videos of your special moments which are private and thus you do not feel comfortable uploading them to social media sites. So iTwin provides a mechanism to have your own private network.

For couples who are in the same city, I personally believe that the best way to express yourself is not by buying expensive gifts but by putting in an effort to show your loved ones that you care. So, cooking a special meal and hand written cards or letters is something I would recommend.

Photo: EFY Times.com

Are you an owner of a tablet device? How useful do you think it is to you? We at e27 seek to explore what are the main criteria that determines the usability of a tablet to the casual user.

So far, I have managed to try out a couple of tablets in the market. Own a BlackBerry PlayBook (thanks to the awesome people at BlackBerry DevCon Asia 2011), tried out the HP TouchPad, iPad and the Lenovo IdeaPad and have even managed to have a go at some Chinese production which runs on the Android OS and has USB ports on it.

What I have always been wondering is that, is there really a use for a tablet? I may not be a typical tablet user, but when I start using one, I can’t seem to find a tablet sticky enough for me to keep using it. I’m not a gamer, so gaming apps don’t keep me coming back for more, and if I really need to do something more complex that I can’t do on my smartphone, a tablet doesn’t cut it as convenient for me. I’ll usually head on to my laptop. This got me thinking, what matters in a tablet for a consumer like me?

Size matters, and weight

The tablet is suppose to fill in the gap between a laptop and a smartphone, to complement them. Some things are better done on a larger screen, yet require more portability than a laptop can offer, like gaming or consuming videos. A seven-inch tablet like the PlayBook and the Kindle Fire is probably the better choice when it comes to size itself. I tend to find 10-inch tablets like the iPad and IdeaPad aren’t comfortable for long periods of holding, could explain whey most iPad advertisements show the user curling up on a couch with it or typing away at a coffee table.

Number of apps

Like gaming consoles, the tablet is pretty much a two-sided market product. The manufacturer can pump the hardware with steroids but it still won’t be a success without the software side, especially apps. Ever walk into a beautiful store with little product choices? Kind of explains why shoppers love shopping along Orchard Road, variety. Here’s where the Android Marketplace and the Apple Appstore make a killing on their competitors. Other than just having a lot of apps, a nice mix of free (from crappy to fun to novelty) apps and cool paid apps also helps. Productivity apps adds value to the portability of the tablet by allowing users to work on the go more efficiently. I know of some people who code on their iPads, although I can’t really get use to excessive typing on a touch screen.

Device interconnectivity

A tablet needs to be able to be linked with the other devices in your workflow, basically your laptop and phone. This removes any need to duplicate certain simple but time consuming tasks like syncing media and documents and address books. So far, Apple is the only one that does this seamlessly between its own products. Microsoft has the opportunity to provide this same value since they already have their desktop/laptop, mobile and tablet OS too.

In my opinion, the tablet is a niche product in a diverse and demanding market. It is not able to satisfy all the requirements of the user but at the same time is still desired for it’s lifestyle contribution. The ideal tablet, from where I see it, needs to be small enough, light enough, connected and has a whole suite of apps. Where I see this going, the Samsung Note might be the beginnings of the ideal tablet. Anyone knows?

Photo: LinkedIn

The Startup Firehose aims to be the one-stop information centre for Singapore Startups by aggregating startup blogs in Singapore.

In this technology-focused niche we live in, everything is evolving so fast that it is getting harder to keep track of all the stuffs that is going on. With the advancement of technology, more and more things are created everyday at faster speed. Startups, websites, information, new business models and blogs are created everyday. Take a day off and you’re behind. Take an hour off and you just missed 300 more blog posts. Recognizing this problem, Ric Shreves of GottaGetaway recently launched The Startup Firehose which aims to solve this problem.

What the Startup Firehose is about
Startup Firehose is a blog that “aggregates RSS feeds from various start-ups in the Singapore community and is open to anyone.” It is completely non-commercial and the listings are free for any startups to list their site onto Startup Firehose. Essentially, you can find the aggregated blog posts of Singapore startups on The Startup Firehose. So far startups such as Alldealsasia, Gamemaki, ReferralCandy, and Intraix among others have been listed on the site. The blog entries are sorted in chronological order, and can also be sorted  by companies or by authors.

Visiting the site versus visiting individual startup blogs
Personally, I feel that the blog is a good initiative for the startup community in Singapore. “I’ll buy coffee for whoever built this.” says Daylon Soh of CuriousCore when he first came across The Startup Firehose, reflecting a positive attitude towards the idea. Indeed, aggregating the blogs of startups in Singapore provides an avenue to keep track of the activities of these startups. Instead of having to visit all the individual blogs, one could have an overview of the latest activities of the Singapore startups with The Startup Firehose. Besides, with The Startup Firehose, you no longer have to have aggregate all the RSS feeds of Singapore Startups, because the website does exactly that for you.

Is Startup Firehose just another website?

With so much content on the web every single day, it is clear that we are gradually reaching a point where tools which aggregate, centralize and most importantly filter our content are going to be the ones that win out. There are only so many hours in the day and other than our daily jobs, we are all spoilt with web content that demands and fights for our attention. The Startup Firehose definitely is working towards providing readers an avenue to filter out the various contents from the blogs of Startups through its aggregated website as well we its built in features that allow reads to sort and filter the content.

How can you be part of Startup Firehose

If you are a startup that needs more traffic and awareness, you should definitely get your startup’s blog listed on The Startup Firehose. Existing startup blogs that have already been listed could also go onto the site to claim their accounts. Even if you are not a startup, you could also check The Startup Firehose out and let us at e27 know what you think about the website.

While the notion of Valentine’s Day as a commercialised holiday is not far from the truth and haters will be haters, there is no doubt that many couples still partake in this tradition of romanticising each other on this predetermined day. Whether this day is a success or a failure still ultimately depends on the skills of the man in the relationship. As such, I shall endeavor to pick out 5 apps for the pants-wearers out there.

SG Florist

A bouquet of flowers adorning the arms of your date elevates her status amongst other females. To preserve feminine pride, do consider investing in a presentable bouquet. SG Florist app allows users to purchase flowers on the go with fully integrated credit card and Paypal payment options. Their services are a tad expensive but for the convenience and quality, it might be well worth it.

Babbel

French is hailed as the language of love. Serenade her with the sounds of the French language by first mastering key phrases taught in this app. Better yet, if you have chosen to patronise a French restaurant, impress your lady by placing your order in French!

Foodspotting

“A hungry man is an angry man”, I am sure we have all heard of that! In order to ensure that your date goes well, make sure you treat yourself as well as your date to a nice dinner. Scout for the desirable dinning place with the use of this app. With the testimony of others as well as a whole array of mouth watering photos, you are well disposed to make a good decision. Tip: Source out the desired place with a friend prior to the day to learn “the lay of the land” and start making your bookings well in advance!

18,000 Cool Jokes Free

A commonly listed quality that a woman looks out for in a man is a sense of humour. This app is jam-packed with jokes that would crack anybody up. Just read through the app and pick out a few favourite ones and work them into your conversations. Be careful when you crack the jokes, don’t go cracking them when she is chewing her food or reaching for the wine!

Lemon

Keeping track of your expenditure this Valentines’ Day is made much easier with the Lemon app that incorporates an OCR (optical character recognition) technology that reads your receipts and does your accounting for you. Do not worry if you have no physical receipt as you can easily key in purchases manually too.

Hopefully, armed with the above apps, you are better equipped to impress the girl of your dreams on that special day.

All above apps are available on the App Store, free for download.

Bartop helps you expand your real life social network and allows you to meet with someone new over drinks.

Fancy meeting with someone cool over drinks? Derrick Ko recently launched Bartop.co where you get to do just that. The idea is a simple one. You browse for an event, buy a ticket at a set price, show up and grab a drink with awesome people. The only drawback is that you can only see who is going and who is at the same table as you when you buy a ticket.

The idea behind Bartop

Essentially, Bartop.co started as an avenue for people to meet new awesome people out f their own social circle. According to Derrick, he observed that there are a lot of people whose social network shrink, especially after university, when they enter the workforce and the corporate life. Life is mundane and one reports for work everyday. There is a lack of avenue for social networking, and hence, you have Bartop.co.

How the Bartop concept is faring in an Asian market

When we at e27 had a chat with Derrick Ko, the founder of Bartop.co, the biggest challenge so far is user acquisition. Of course, this is nothing new for all startups, but essentially for Bartop.co which tries to get people to break out of their conservative way of meeting new people, this could be a much more challenging problem. Bartop is actually fighting against a Singapore or Asian culture where the idea of meeting new people could still be intimidating for some. It is hard to change the mindset of people in their comfort zone. While this could prove to be frustrating, it actually make an interesting problem for Derrick to solve, and could pay off quite well.

Traction achieved by Bartop in its early months of product launch

Bartop was launched a few months ago and had its first event on November. We at e27 found out from Derrick that during the first month of launch there are already near to 150 sign ups. The team aims to have 10 events a week in the upcoming months, and is currently working very hard to achieve that goal.

Bartop draws its inspiration from Grubwithus

As mentioned on the “About” page of Bartop, the idea is inspired by Grubwithus, based in the States. Although both Bartop and Grubwithus are very similar right now, there are no tie up or affiliations between the two startups. Bartop.co is a localized version of Grubwithus, and is looking to moving towards experiences rather than meals in the long run, like getting people to enjoy certain experiences together instead of meals.

Photo: Bartop

e27 was in Jakarta last week to check out how the local IT startup industry was benefiting from Boost. e27′s Gabriel Yang managed to grab a quick interview with Andy Zain and Ryu Kawano Suliawan of the Boost organizing team to find out how this non-profit event is looking to add value to the local ecosystem.

How Boost kicked off

The initial idea for Boost took seed when Ryu met up with Ari Awan, another of the Boost organizing member, last year. ” We were just talking about the Internet today in Indonesia and I was interested to learn more about it. And we were talking about what was missing in Indonesia and Ari was saying there was not enough conferences or not enough get-togethers, this was back in April,” said Ryu.

Ryu was also spurred on by a friend in Japan telling him how the IT conference he was running in Japan was helping to bring up the local ecosystem. After much discussion with Ari, Boost was born. The idea for Boost received a lot of support from the key individuals in the Indonesian community, such as Andy Zain and Antonny Liem.

According to Ryu, Boost has three objectives:

• Boosting the possibilities of younger startups through mentorship
• Profiling Indonesia as the next big digital market
• Increase collaborations between the various players within the industry

The value of Boost in the Indonesian IT startup community

According to Andy, existing local conferences targeting the same community are too passive, with little interaction between the attendees. “We want interaction. Startups want something to be part of, they want to interact with someone who has been successful and learn from them. So, when Ryu came in with this concept of bringing in veterans from Silicon Valley and Japan, the ones who have being doing it and have been successful, and pair them with a smaller group of Indonesians, that is what we need for this industry,” said Andy.

As such Boost 50 is a group of selected startups for the event that will be paired with promising names in the industry in order to help in the knowledge transfer. “If you look at the very successful IT ecosystems in The Valley and Japan, the reason why they are so successful is not just because they have money but because they have all these mentors that help the younger startups. In Indonesia, unfortunately, there is not enough successful IT veterans to mentor the younger startups. And therefore the idea was to, on a temporary basis, import IT veterans from overseas to Indonesia,” said Ryu. The startups will stand to gain valuable knowledge from experienced entrepreneurs in the same industry such as on topics of hiring and funding. The rest would be up to them to apply this knowledge into the context of the local market.

However, Ryu and the Boost team also understands the value of making sure that the Indonesian IT startup ecosystem is self-sustainable. “A healthy ecosystem should be able to sustain itself within the local community, with Indonesian entrepreneurs. If next year, we don’t do BOOST, that’s a good thing for us. That would mean that there are Indonesia mentors already mentoring the younger startups and there’s no need for that [BOOST],” said Ryu.

Follow up actions from Boost would be to see how the team can collaborate with Mobile Monday, through Andy Zain, and SparxUp, through Antonny Liem, to take these startups to greater heights.

Indonesia’s IT startups on track for greater things in 2012

According to Andy Zain, the initial birth of the IT startup ecosystem in Indonesia was started with the acquisition and rapid growth of local companies such as Koprol and Kaskus. Back then, about two year ago, these activities spurred a flurry of Indonesia startups which were based a lot on cloning existing ideas in other markets. These were ventures by entrepreneurs who wanted to get in on the action but did not necessarily have the right tools.

Fast forward to the last couple of months, with strong infrastructures set in place after the initial boom, local incubators and accelerator programs such as Merah Putih Incubator are beginning to graduate their first batch of startups. These are the new breed of IT startups that have received the proper guidance and mentorship to allow them to gain a strong understanding of what they are trying to achieve. According to Andy, this is when exciting things will happen.

Photo: The Wall Street Journal

Research In Motion (RIM) announced yesterday that it has replaced co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie with the company’s COO, Thorsten Heins. Immediate reaction saw US-listed shares climbed 4.1 percent in premarket trade but e27 sees more needed to bring RIM back to past glory.

Research In Motion’s (RIM) board has announced the appointment of RIM’s  Chief Operating Officer (COO), Thorsten Heins, as the new President and CEO of the company. The move was made on the recommendations from RIM’s co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie in their recently submitted succession plans to the Board. The move seems to have garnered investors’ approval as premarket trade of US-listed shares of the company saw a 4.1 percent increase. However, after Heins announced his plans for RIM that sees little changes being implemented, investors’ perception soured and sent the stock back down 8.5 percent.

Changes to RIM’s corporate structure

Photo: Gigaom

With Heins at the helm of the struggling BlackBerry maker, now ex-CEO, Mike Lazaridis, will chair RIM’s Board’s new Innovation Committee. Lazaridis will also relinquish his role as co-Chairman of the Board and will settle for Vice-Chairman. Jim Balsillie will remain on the Board as a director. Existing Board member, Barbara Stymiest, who formerly served as a member of Royal Bank of Canada’s Group Executive, will take on the chairmanship. RIM has also added CEO of Fairfax Financial Holdings, Prem Watsa, to the Board.

Heins plan of action

Thorsten Heins joined RIM in March 2007 from Siemens AG, where he last served as CTO of  the Siemens Communications Group. He was one of RIM’s two COOs, and before that, Senior Vice President for the Handheld Business Unit.

In a press release, Heins said that RIM has grown quickly. “As with any company that has grown as fast as we have, there have been inevitable growing pains,” he said. “We have learned from those challenges and, I believe, we have and will become a stronger company as a result. Going forward, we will continue to focus both on short-term and long-term growth, strategic planning, a customer- and market-based product approach, and flawless execution. We are in the process of recruiting a new Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) to work closely with our product and sales teams to deliver the most compelling products and services.”

In response to the Barclay Capital’s correspondent during the conference call and webcast on what are his immediate plans, Heins summarized them as marketing communications and execution. The recruitment of the new CMO goes in line with Heins’ marketing communications plans. In terms of execution, Heines pointed out that RIM had a history of “innovating while developing the product” which tends to disrupt the production process. He strongly supports the importance of innovation, but highlighted that it should be done in the early prototyping stages before the product is defined. Once the product has been defined, RIM should focus on execution.

Public opinions of RIM’s management changes

Investors and the general public opinions were mixed. Engadget’s take is that Heins is not enough to save the Canadian company. Engadget’s managing editor, Darren Murph, wrote, “RIM needs a shock to the system. RIM needs a reboot,” which a fair number of the tech community agrees. Lazaridis and Balsillie had allowed RIM to slip from having a strong hold of the smartphone market to something short of insignificant. The company lost 75 percent of its value in just 2011 alone.

However, in the press release, Heins said that the company still has a strong balance sheet. He quoted US $1.5 billion in cash at the end of last quarter with negligible debt, US $5.2 billion in Q3 revenues, up 24 percent, and a 35 percent year-to-year increase in Blackberry subscriber base, now over 75 million.

In order to survive against companies like Apple, Google and Samsung in the smartphone industry, RIM has to reinvent itself. Heins doesn’t seem to have plans that involves reinventing what RIM was and has been until today, a company with a slipping grip on the market. Everything still seems to bank on the acquired QNX OS to save RIM. Will this work? Even Yahoo! brought in former PayPal President, Scott Thompson, for a fresh look on how to set the company on the right path. We at e27 think bringing in an external talent would have benefitted RIM more than just an internal shuffle. RIM has got to rock the boat more to get moving in the right direction.

How much time do we actually spend on games? According to game researcher and developer Jane McGonigal, PhD, by the age of 21, the average gamer would have spent 10,000 hours on gaming. With 99 percent of male gamers (94 percent for females) under the age of 18 gaming five days a week.

Recognizing the enormous potential of the gaming industry, it’s not surprising for accelerator programs catering to the gaming industry to be started to provide the resources needed to help gaming startups capitalize on these opportunities. YetiZen, founded by Sana Choudary, is one such gaming startup accelerator program, and it has been making quite a name for itself in the Bay Area. We managed to speak to Sana while she was in town over the New Year.

Tell us about YetiZen

YetiZen does two things. First we are a community builder and secondly, we are the only game industry focused accelerator program. When we started our event series called the San Francisco Game Developer’s Workshop (SFGDW), various platforms like Facebook and the Apple Appstore had opened up and were letting developers build their own games on them. This led to a rise of self publishing, and a number of new gaming startups without much knowledge of the business cropped up in high density in the Bay Area. As a consequence, there were a lot of rookie mistakes and repetition of the same mistakes across companies. We realized that most gaming events are networking only and none of them were focusing on educating game developers on best practices, common mistakes and how to avoid them, or talking about what made the best succeed. Fast forward to where we are now running workshops and mixer events with upwards of 500 people every month. Last year the SFGDW touched over 5000 unique game developers. These events, along with YetiZen hosted pitch competitions at major US and Asian game conferences, will mean that this year we will connect with even more game developers. As you can see, we meet a lot of game developers regularly.

From those we meet, we took the companies and teams with the most traction, developed vision, potential, and clear plan to exit into our YetiZen Accelerator Program, and to date we have had two rounds of 12 companies. The accelerator is built upon four major pillars.  the first being an intense educational program led by more than 150 mentors who represent the best of the gaming industry. Their backgrounds range from game design, serial entrepreneurship, investing and any role you can think of in the game industry. The second pillar is a robust set of partnership deals actively negotiated by YetiZen. These include reduced cost customer acquisition and revenue share based funds at favorable rates from larger industry players. For a company leveraging every single partnership deal, the value is upwards of US$1.25 million. Third, our companies connect with a vast array of investors ranging from angels (both institutional groups and individuals) to VCs such as Tim Chang (Mayfield Fund), Baris Aksoy (Intel Capital) and many others. Finally, YetiZen actively helps companies source and negotiate with exit partners.

Why the name YetiZen?

The name YetiZen combines two ideas we are passionate about in how we do business and mentor others to do business. When you think of the word Yeti you think of a large powerful beast that has the sheer muscle strength to move anything to successfully get what he wants. At the same time you think of brashness, a lack of balance and control. When you hear the word Zen on the other hand you think balance, wisdom, calmness, peaceful progress and movement. For us YetiZen is about creating leverage and power to craft successful companies but doing so in a balanced, wise and calm way.

Do most of the companies in YetiZen come from the Bay Area?

The higher density of game companies in the Bay Area and our existing interaction with this set due to the SFGDW means that many of the companies that apply and get into the program are from the Bay Area. However, we have been seeing a consistent rise in gaming companies from across the globe. In the past we have taken British, Argentinean and Italian companies into the program. Recently we have seen applicants from Russia, Belgium, Latin America and other countries as well. In the past we also saw a couple of Asian applicants, but they didn’t pass the criteria. We’d love to take in more Asian companies, and recently we’ve seen more interesting games companies apply from Asia.

Just curious, why didn’t the Asian applicants pass the criteria?

For the most part we didn’t feel these startups were on a trajectory towards being investable. A lot of the companies we saw seemed more like an investable consumer web startup in their packaging than an investable game startup. For consumer web you often need a strong solution to an existing problem,, a small amount of traction that shows proof of market and problem/market fit, and lastly that you are likely to get investment. The hits based nature of gaming as well as the structure of most investment groups makes investors particularly risk averse when looking at game companies. So with game companies you need a lot more traction, strategy and thinking around how you will repeatedly and scalably create hits and monetize your hits. And even before all that you need to be able to confirm that you are playing in a big market sandbox, i.e. one with a lot of profit potential. And if this sandbox has incumbents, a clear strategy for how you can address them. Creating a game, gamification app, or platform because you personally wanted that experience without thinking through these other questions is a recipe for disaster and these companies in a position where we can not accelerate them. Unfortunately, with these applicants we felt they weren’t thinking along these lines and weren’t coachable or open towards these ideas. The attitude was “you give me the funding, I’ll think about the business model later”. There was a lack of long-term strategic vision to grow beyond just solving a problem.

This is a very common problem everywhere, but the ecosystem in the Bay Area is more matured meaning we get a higher proportion of companies who are on a trajectory towards asking and answering these questions. We as an accelerator open more doors to allow them to be successful as they answer these questions.

With that being said, Singapore in particular has the best opportunity to mature as an ecosystem because startups are asking these questions. As YetiZen, our hope is that by coming to Singapore, meeting and collaborating with bright entrepreneurs, and developing pre-incubator programmes where entrepreneurs can learn about these concepts we will do our part in helping this process.

We are seeing increasingly more gaming apps than web app. What are your thoughts on this trend?

I know that downloads on Apple Appstore have reached about 15.8 billion. If you have any stats on what percentage of these are games, I’d love to see them.

There has been a rise in traditional game developers, those making console or PC games previously, moving over to develop mobile games as the game play styles they are used to—arcade style and harder core games – become more conducive in a mobile experience than they were on Facebook. On Facebook, some of these games succeeded, but predominant success was enjoyed by social style RPG games.  On the PR front, you are probably hearing more about the gaming app successes than the web app successes due to the smaller money amounts and user bases involved in the latter and the sheer conduciveness of games to media and consumer excitement. It’s easy for consumers to get excited about a new game they really love—they will rave about it, share it, talk about it. For more people (unless you are a techie) its harder to get excited to that extent about the next utility app. Sure, in some cases there is an initial peak, for example the person who just discovered Flipboard on the iPad, but there is less of a reason to continually talk about the app usage and experiences. After a while it becomes something that works in the background, makes life great but not something that is an active part of your daily conversations. A new game on the other hand, especially one that keeps the challenges and content fresh (think PocketGod) are another story. People still rave every time PocketGod launches a new update pack.

Could you provide more information for the companies that are looking to participate in YetiZen’s accelerator program? In terms of the expenses that will be incurred, accommodation as well as the resources they need.

Happy to answer that, but first let me describe the types of companies YetiZen accepts. We are looking for game studios, gamification apps, and platform plays serving the game industry. These startups must have a developed and launched product and existing traction—in the case of games and gamification apps we are looking specifically at number of downloads. For platform plays it’s business development deals or developer signups, depending on the business. The minimum bar for traction has been rising with each applicant pool. For the current round, game studio applicants have anywhere from four to 20 million downloads. These teams are primarily intending to enter the program to accelerate this growth, tweak unit economics, and strengthen their strategies to make them more interesting from an investment stand point. Companies at this point do not need help financing accommodation or their costs when entering the accelerator program. We therefore do not provide any money for participation in the accelerator program. We do have several partnership deals that provide funds on a revenue share basis, but these are meant to accelerate growth and not cover costs. The idea is that if you are generating enough revenue for your company and you come into our accelerator program to scale your business, you would have enough to come over to the Bay Area.

The model of the accelerator program is to take equity from each company entering the program. We do not charge companies and neither do we take a finders fee of any investment monies received. The amount of equity ranges from three to 11 percent, depending on the number of areas of need we help the startup with. These areas are decided during the due diligence phase and both us and the company discuss this to confirm we are on the same page at that time.

About YetiZen

YetiZen is a startup accelerator program focused entirely on game studio and platforms startups. YetiZen helps startups in building and strengthening their business models, marketing strategies, and accelerating their overall health towards a successful market position. We also facilitate funding companies for profitability and/or exit. We have hand selected a highly promising portfolio of companies to participate. All of these companies have a developed product and are already launched.

YetiZen startups are interviewed and go through significant due diligence to determine if they will be selected for the accelerator. During this time mentors are hand selected for each startup in the acceleration period. These mentors are crafted specifically to advance the round of accelerator companies. During the acceleration process accelerator companies go through a rigorous educational program run by various veterans and successful entrepreneurs from the game industry. At the end of this period they pitch at three events. The first event is an opportunity to pitch to YetiZen’s larger network of 50 angels and angel groups. The second is a private dinner open to the accelerator’s board of advisors; that include the top brass in game investing such as Tim Chang (Mayfield Ventures), Baris Aksoy (Intel Capital) and many others. The final pitch event is a public demo day, open to the wider Silicon Valley investment community, press, and acquirers.

Photo: Facebook

JFDI.Asia’s CEO Hugh Mason sheds more light on what to expect at JFDI-Innov8 2012 Bootcamp and what the team is going through.

“Two years ago, Meng Wong and I started pushing a big heavy ball up a hill”, writes JFDI.Asia CEO Hugh Mason. “We set out to raise the funding and support we needed to set up JFDI.Asia, the first TechStars network program in South East Asia. Now, as 2012 begins, that ball is poised right at the top of the hill and it’s about to start rolling down …

In the next few days, we will publish details of the teams who are joining us for our 100 day startup-to-investment bootcamp which starts on 26 January. The teams come from around the world. 20 percent are from Singapore and the rest come from countries as diverse as Japan and the Netherlands, Thailand, Philippines, India and Indonesia.

(Updates: Since this post was written, JFDI.Asia has published a list of the Bootcamp startups. Read about them here.)

On running Bootcamp

This is the first time our small team has run the program, so we are a startup too. The response to our offer has been overwhelmingly positive so it now feels like a lot is riding on what happens next. Tech celebrities like investor Dave McClure and a host of successful entrepreneurs including Derek Sivers, Steven Goh and Boris Nordenström have dropped by to lend their support, invested in us or will be acting as mentors. SingTel Innov8 is our key partner, providing space for us to work and access to their 416 million customers.

Of course the focus for the next 100 days will be on the startup teams who are joining us. They will race against the clock to get their businesses investment-ready to show at our investor demo day in mid-May. Some TechStars programs have secured funding for 70 percent of their startups. We don’t yet know if we can match that success but however you look at it, the bar we’re trying to jump is high.

What to expect

Whether we make it or fail on the way, we have committed to share what happens openly so everyone can learn from what we get wrong as well as what comes out right. Starting in the first week of February, we will run one or two public events each week and anyone is welcome to come along and meet our mentors, investors and startup teams. They want to hear about your ideas and experience as well as sharing theirs.

Indeed the recruitment process for the bootcamp has already brought some fascinating insights into the development community and the range of business opportunities around the Asia-Pacific region. Working with local partners, we ran Startup Weekend events in Singapore, Jakarta, Manila, Melbourne, Delhi and Bangkok. Over 100,000 visitors followed us on the web, livestream and Twitter and we had over 10,000 views of the over 200 videos we posted on our YouTube Channel. Along the way we met over 1,200 developers and supported over 200 teams to create prototype businesses. We plan to share all the feedback they gave us in a free report that we will publish online shortly. We hope it will help anyone trying to create digital businesses in Asia to get a sense of who’s doing what around the region.

2012 will be a strange year for Meng and me in some ways because once demo day in May comes, we need to decide what to do with all the energy, enthusiasm and connections that JFDI.Asia has built. We could not have got this far without the support of many people in Singapore’s startup scene. Thanks to all of you: please come by to see the ball you helped to start rolling and if you have ideas about where we can take this next, do let us know. In return we promise to share what happens and publish details of our events openly. You can follow us @jfdiasia.

About Hugh Mason

Hugh Mason is a successful entrepreneur, mentor and investor. Born in the UK and now living in Singapore, he connects people, communities and cash to make ideas real. Hugh is CEO at JFDI.Asia and Adjunct Professor at NYU Tisch School of the Arts Asia.