Webmaster Gathering 17th Nov07 @ KL Sentral

Yesterday, there was a gathering for Malaysian webmasters at Starbucks, KL Sentral. I happened to know about it 2 weeks earlier from one of my RSS subscription but didn't really consider on attending it. It was a last minute call a few days before the event when I decided to join the gathering. I don't really have anyone I know personally but that is the point of having a gathering, to get to know people around your community up, close and personally.

So, my journey started with hopping on to the KTM Komuter after I've parked my car at Sentul KTM Komuter station free parking space (fingers crossed in hope of last year's daylight thieving doesn't repeat). At first I wanted to drive to KL Sentral but then I heard of someone telling me of the high parking fees over there, I guess I'd better off paying RM2 (getting there and back) for the trip. I got to KL Sentral and saw a good amount of crowd already there networking and getting coffee for themselves.



Check out the guy in the green shirt, that's LiewCF, a full time Malaysia tech blogger. I stalked him last year at eBay Explained 2006. Didn't talked to him last time but this time I did said 'hi' and introduced myself to him. The first guy I greeted when I got to the gathering was Sumardi, the CakePHP guy who did the CakePHP presentation during the PHP Meet Up 3.0. I then got myself a cup of coffee and strike a conversation with Menj, he is so taller than me. I hang out for a while with a couple of other guys. Then it's show time!



The MC was LimCS, the Webmaster Malaysia forum moderator or is it Administrator? Mmm..Anyway, he did a great job of facilitating the event while the Exabyte team who was the sponsor of the event supported him all the way. The Exabyte team took a flight and came all the way from Penang just for the event. I think they did an awesome marketing strategy since Webmasters are the one who will splurge their money for webhosting and internet stuff. A picture of the boss of Exabytes giving some introductory speech:



Moving on to the presentation, the first presentation was done by a mysterious guess only known to be a Googler. Apparently, he is Hanson Toh (read more about him here).



His presentation was all about Google. I like the part where he told about the 80 - 20 principal that Google enforce their employees to adopt. A lot of Google's product are inspired during the 20% of the time spent on personal project. I wonder how that can be applied for other non web industries? Some latest news from Hanson Toh was Google Map for Malaysia is progressively on its way to be ready and Blogger is going to be available in Malay language. Other than that, he shared his experience of traveling to the Google HQ and how work is done at Google. By the way, he said he is the only person in Malaysia currently employed by Google. The wonders of working remotely nowadays.



After all the crowd being fascinated by Google stuff, it's time to learn new webmastering stuff. Najib from SuccessIdeaWeb enthusiastically presented all about a Content Management System called Drupal. Najib is an electrical engineer by profession but he does webmaster stuff outside of his office hour based on my conversation with him. I remembered there was a time I've played around with Drupal but it seems too complicated to me so my journey with Drupal ended there. Now that Najib showed about the beauty of using Drupal for a portal site, I think it's time to play around with Drupal for my next personal project. Najib also said that eventhough he gave up on Joomla a couple of years ago, he still uses Joomla for a few of his websites. I was quite impressed with the lists of big commercial websites that is developed using Drupal. It is another good open source CMS software to try out. Join the Drupal Malaysia Group if you are interested to be part of Drupal's family.

Next presenter is a well known Malaysian Internet Marketer. He is:




Gobala Krishnan is someone I really have respect when it comes to the internet marketing circle. There is one more person who also earn the same respect, Kidino who is also Gobala Krishnan's buddy which I kind of shy away from him a couple of months back after he approached me for a network marketing business. Although I had a few bad experiences with doing internet marketing and network marketing, I blame myself for each failures I've endured. Anyway, I've already found my own way of making money online (I can't disclose it yet), I still value the information the internet marketing circle teaches. Anyway, Gobala gave such an inspiring insight of how online entrepreneurs life is all about and the lesson I've learned is that it doesn't matter what your job is, you will always have choice and personal development is what you should be focusing on.

The gathering was just scheduled for 3 hours, so a lightning round is done for a Q & A session. I guess webmasters are shy people or they might have probably know all the answers, so there at first there was a silent moment when LimCS asked around for any questions eventhough there was Exabyte coupons being offered for both the person giving out the questions and answer. I recently bought a USD19/month Windows Virtual Private Server (VPS) from a US web company and the Remote Desktop Connection is rather slow. The VPS is currently being used for one of my automated money making project. So, I asked Exabytes if they provide Windows VPS since a local server connection would be much faster. Unfortunately, they only have Linux VPS server at the moment. If you want to know more about what I'm referring to, you can read about Virtuozzo here.



I'm not sure if I'm going to use this RM50 from Exabytes coupon so soon. It has an expiry date of this 31 December 2007. I think I'm going to give it away if someone really need a discount for purchasing any Exabytes services or products. Drop me a line ok?

Alright, it's snapshot time:




I also met a friend of mine, Azizi from high school during the gathering. The last time I met him was last year I guess but I didn't had a chance to ask what does he do at that time. He's now a Mac application developer for Legal-Bytes. I'm not a Mac user but I can see Mac has awesome GUI and probably are much more stable than Windows. I also had the chance to see for myself Zeo's Macbook and learned a thing or two about the latest buzz in the Malaysian blog arena. The time spent during the networking session among webmasters after the event is priceless.

A list of other bloggers and individuals I've personally met (or maybe noticed):

• Vangardx- Nice fella, read about his entry post about this event here.


• Zamri Nanyan- He's from Penang, a really nice guy.


• Fayz- I just gave him a friendly smile at him, I think.


• Edward- His blog entry about this event.


• Ershadul Hoque- He seems a bit shy but I like what his company is doing.


• Galadriel- A petite Malay lady. His blog entry about this event


• Mr Kay- Nice to have talked to you dude.

That's about it I guess. If I've met anyone which I didn't mention about in this blog post, give me a shout on my comment box below, ok? I really should be hanging out at Webmaster Malaysia Forum more often and get to know more people over there. If I am not mistaken, I heard that Exabytes will invite all the webmasters who came in for the event an invitation to a private screening. I'm not really sure if it's true or not but that is what I think I heard. If it is true, I am for sure will come for that one if I'm not occupied of course. ;-)


After 642-825 and 642-845, most of the students think of certifications like EX0-101 and in this order they need to do 642-552 as well as 70-294. They may skip 640-863 if they wish to save time.