clips of logic

In recent months, I’ve been reading a couple of really interesting books. They range from Steve Jobs’ biography, a book on how to generate your business model, Michael Lewis’s Boomerang on the European Sovereign Debt Crisis and the grand design of universe by Stephen Hawking.

The book that I’ve found to be the most insightful and a must-read for entrepreneurs out there is The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. It’s so good that I’ve put in at the No. 1 spot on my books page.

The great insight that Eric had about startup was the goal to learn as much as you can in the shortest amount of time possible. You do this by conducting experiments to tests your hypothesis. He called this validated learning.

In the spirit of Lean Startup, we are conducting a simple market survey to gather some information and validate certain assumptions we have for our mobile budgeting app. If you got a few minutes to spare, help us out by completing Budgetarian’s survey. Thanks!

Back in August, I’ve mentioned about all the things we’ve done so far this year, but nothing could have prepared us for the crazy month of November.

On November 4th, we had our fourth and biggest Webcamp KK ever. With the support from SATA, we flew in 3 awesome speakers from KL. Premesh Chandran (MalaysiaKini CEO, Allstars.my), Kamal Fariz (Founder of Bitfluent & Fluentspace) and Wu Han (Chief Designer of Mindvalley, Founder of Webcamp KL).

The day after, John and I joined Sabah Got Ideas, a pitching competition organized by SATA. This was the Kota Kinabalu District level and we finished second to enter the finals. 2 weeks later, at the finals, the unthinkable happened. We managed to finish in the top 6 for 20k.

Our pitch was about a mobile budgeting app dubbed ‘Wife in your pocket‘. For all the insights and lessons we learned, check out my previous post on how to craft a memorable pitch.

Then on the final weekend of November, an old friend of mine, Edham Arief together with the support of Sabah Computer Society organized our first ever Hackathon in KK. We were tasked to build a working application in 24 hours. Our team (John , Isaac and I) finished first with the app (CityQuest) that rewards you for exploring the city.

To end the month with a bang, on the last day of November, we attended the Sabah ICT Month Gala Night to receive the prizes for Sabah Got Ideas and Hackathon. Crazy month indeed…

Even though I spend most of my professional career as a software developer, I do have interest in web design. I have also done some design work for clients and Flexnode‘s own sites. Since I couldn’t get someone else to present at Webcamp KK so I decided to try it myself.

Here are the slides and a ton of useful links for web design. I’m glad I decided to do this because of the sheer amount of things I’ve learned in the process. Hopefully, you’ll find something useful here.

You can also download the pdf version of the slides.

Links and Resources

CSS / Layouts

• Bootstrap from Twitter
• Blueprint CSS
• Golden Grid System
• Simplebits.com – Awesome Fluid Layout

Typography/Fonts

• Google Fonts
• Typekit
• Smashing Magazine Typography guide
• FontsInUse
• Lettering.js
• FitText
• HTML ipsum
• Elysium Burns
• A List Apart
• CreativeMornings

Whitespace

• Whitespace – A List Apart
• Whitespace and Simplicity : An Overview - Smashing Magazine
• I Love Typography

Colors

• ColourLovers.com
• Color Wheel
• Color Theory- Color Matters
• Color Theory for Designers – Smashing Magazine
• Hershey’s Website

Graphics

• Make Faces - tap tap tap
• Florida Flourish
• Highrise - 37signals
• Famfamfam Icon Packs
• iStockPhoto

Information Software Design

• Magic Ink - Bret Victor
• Showtimes.my

User Experience (UX)

• What is User Experience Design? – Smashing Magazine
• 10 Most common misconception about User Experience Design – Mashable
• User Experience Design – Peter Morville
• UX Myths
• Why User Experience cannot be designed? – Smashing Magazine
• Behind the Scenes : A/B Testing – 37Signals
• 15 examples of addictive user experience - Design Shack
• Smiley goes public – 37signals
• Balsamiq Mockups
• Optimizely
• KISSMetrics
• Usabilla
• Flipboard
• Panic

Others

• iCloud logo infused with Golden Ratio
• Behance
• Swiss Miss
• Alertbox – Current issue in web usability
• Make Awesome Web
• 35 High Quality PSD UI Web Design Elements
• Responsive Web Design Techniques - Smashing Magazine
• Form Design – Seth Godin

After about 8 months into this year (2011), it feels that we at Flexnode did a lot of stuff but yet seems like we aren’t really moving forward. Here’s a short recap for 2011 so far.

• StartNOW – We envisioned it to be an online community for entrepreneurs, visionaries and action takers. Maybe the features on the site is too confusing or doesn’t fit the target audience. Or could be that we need to find ways to seed content to the site and make it useful. Right now, the site is practically dead. For now we are trying to form an offline community first and see what’s needed there.
• Showtimes.my – So far, it’s been a rather good year for our movie showtimes site. We added a mobile version and favourite cinemas feature.
• Showtimes.my iPhone app – We spent a few months getting into iOS development to try to build an iPhone version of Showtimes. We got a prototype built but it’s still very far from what we have planned it to be. So meanwhile, we made a mobile site first.
• Ok.Bah.my – This is more like a pet project to mimic lolcats. The idea is basically to seed the site with funny pics that aims to cheer you up if you are having a bad day. Haven’t really put much effort into promoting it yet. Might pivot into something else.
• Webcamp KK – As mentioned above, we figured we needed to form an offline community to find out more about how it works and what it needs. The first Webcamp was awesome and hopefully we can keep this up. It’s nice to have a local support group for web enthusiasts in Kota Kinabalu.
• Idea on Permission Marketing – Back in July, we pitched this idea at NINA (incubator/startup event) here in Kota Kinabalu. Our aim was really to gain more experience in pitching our ideas. It was a good try and we are currently considering whether to pursue the idea or not.
• Revamp Flexnode.com – All this while we never had a proper company site so this year we took some time to put one up that is at least presentable.

There’s still 4 months left before the year is over and hopefully there will be more awesome stuff in store for us. The next 2 months will be exciting as we are going to work with a client in KL on an interesting project.

How’s the year been treating you so far?

Last night, we had our very first Webcamp KK and surprisingly about 30 people attended.  Although mostly dominated by developers and programmers, we had some photographers, designers, bloggers and marketers in the mix. My hope is that eventually we will be able get a better mix of web professionals together to share and create awesome stuff.

For those who missed the event, check out the slides:-

I consider this event a success and hopefully we will be able to keep the momentum going. As I said to attendees of Webcamp, I want everyone to gather together to not just share their knowledge or expertise but also lend their hand in creating and building awesome work/projects. I hope it will be more than just a gathering but also a catalyst for cool and exciting projects between the community.

If you are interested in Webcamp KK, check out our Facebook group. Webcamp KK will be held on the first Tuesday of every month. Come join us!