Attending Microsoft Innovation Summit 2019 at KLCC Convention Centre

It's been a while since I last attended a technology event. Recently I had the opportunity to attend Microsoft Innovation Summit 2019 at KLCC Convention Centre. I wanted to write more about it but I will try and find time to complete what is missing.

The photo backdrop place

The long queue

Spent 10-15 minutes

The hall is full so we resort to live broadcast at the banquet hall

Me and my partner

The live broadcast screen

This was awesome

The booth

The exhibition hall

Cheat mode

Me and the comrade

Selfie me

Afternoon Session

Gen Z is coming

I love free food

Unfortunately, I didn't win the lucky prize

Anyway, it was nice to finally attend a technology event. I learned a lot of new things and I hope to attend more events like this.

Attending Lenovo+Nutanix Event at WORQ Glo Damansara

After attending the ARCHICAD seminar, I had another event to attend which was a follow from my last meet up with IBM. It was a privilege to be invited to come to this event to learn about Nutanix solution and Lenovo hardware although we are just a small fry compared to the other attendees.

Anyway, I first encountered Nutanix during a visit to one of our client data centre. I managed to snap the physical hardware during one of my visits. I was astonished by the 42U rack only having a small number of hardware with almost 70% of the slots are empty.

The actual setup of Nutanix at one of the small data centre I've visited

Only after receiving the technical sheet specification of the server they are purchasing from one of our clients, I realised that they are now adopting hyper-converged infrastructure on the campus. It certainly is a fascinating concept where the hardware cost can be optimized to strike a balance between cost and performance.

Glo Damansara is a new building located at TTDI Damansara.

Worq Coworking Space at Glo Damansara

Worq event hall

Lenovo + Nutanix solution presentation

Me at the event

Sponsored lunch, this is one of the reasons I am here..yay!

Nutanix login page

My brand new teammate in action

Malaysian Digital Hub at WORQ Glo Damansara

WORQ Community

Nutanix is certainly is an interesting hyper-converged solution. I also like Lenovo's concept of leasing servers at the client's office and only charge the local on-site user by the electricity consumption of the server. This is really out of the box concept to me and I hope my client would really like it as I do.

ARCHICAD - An Old Alternative Digital Drawing Tool

I've long heard about ARCHICAD but I never had the desire to try it out. Out of the blue, my boss asks me to attend a seminar about ARCHICAD at the office where originally they were selling Autodesk product. It kind of surprise me that they are not associated with Autodesk any more.

Anyway, I took some pictures for all my readers (hopefully I still have readers):

The ideal in-house marketing: An introductory class to ARCHICAD from GRAPHISOFT

Me in class

What ARCHICAD is all about

I am really intrigued that ARCHICAD still uses the dongle for license control. The price of each license is not much different compared to Autodesk AutoCAD but of course, you can't really compare the benefits of both software since both software has their own little league.

Why BIMcloud

Interesting enough, the BIMcloud is actually a software being installed on a host machine or a server where connected users operate their model or drawing files. I can't really say ARCHICAD is superior or not since I am not a heavy user of Autodesk product but the product can be an excellent alternative if you need an alternative tool that works. In today's world, we normally wouldn't want to be too dependent on one particular brand.

ARCHICAD is free to try out so just Google it and start trying it out.

Disclaimer: I don't get paid writing this.

Visiting IBM HQ at Bandar Utama Damansara

In February, somehow one of IBM partners got hold of me and invited me to join them for a meetup. As I didn't have any important task at the time, I accepted their invitation and went ahead to meet up with them at IBM HQ in Bandar Utama.

An established name in the IT world

 

Where are the receptionist?

 

IBM hardware offerings

 

IBM solutions, I got lost here

 

People of IBM

 

IBM is huge, the price is huge, the challenge is also huge. However, they have huge competitions nowadays and in the razor-thin profit business of IT hardware, they need all the help they can get to stay relevant.

We'll see how this partnership plays out.

Attending VMWare vForum 2017 at One World Hotel Bandar Utama (November2017)

A Happy New Year 2018. It turns out that I only wrote a handful of blog posts last year. I know it was pathetic but I am working really hard to make a positive change this year.

Anyway, this was my 3rd year of attending VMWare's vForum in One World Hotel, Bandar Utama. The first and second was also held at the same place. The registration queue stretches from the lobby of the hotel towards the registration counter. The crowd was jam-packed but I must salute the host and the hotel venue for well managing the food for the enormous crowd, superbly done. I attended Google Cloud event earlier at the same place but the crowd was far less than VMWare vForum, clearly, the event organizer did a very good job.

I've been lazy to write or update this blog but determined enough to make a video using my rarely used outdated Camtasia Studio on my laptop. Check out my less than 2 minutes of video presentation. It may look crappy but I made the video in less than half an hour so imagine if I can spend an hour or two if I'm not that lazy.. haha...

By the way, check out the cool demonstration using Virtual Reality concept done by the awesome presenter on stage starting at 0.19s onwards. Very Cool stuff!

How To Get Headhunted By Job Recruiters

Success can be defined in many ways, shape and form. If you are an employee, don't feel bad about it. There are times when I wish I had the freedom of time, money and no boss that I need to serve. Well, I guess I never got to that situation yet. An honest confession, I currently have a huge debt of almost 3 times my yearly salary that I need to serve after trying to achieve the freedom of time, money and no boss to serve. I got cheated, duped and failed miserably. However, I know that I can bounce back stronger than before. That's how life teaches you a lesson.

Enough about my failure, I want to write about my experience being sought after by these job recruiters. A few years back, I had to change jobs because of some unfortunate circumstances of the company that I served at that time. Basically, at the moment I'm back at the same company because I can't resist the complacent working environment but I'll try to write on that later. After going to almost 10 job interviews, a job recruiter spotted me on this site called 'Monster' which was a big job recruitment website and hook me up with a job interview that landed me a job offer for big public listed local IT company. I chose to accept a smaller company because of the permanent status rather than contract and stayed there for more than a year.

The point here is when you are good at your job and even when your resume sucks, you can always try further on the next round like I did. I never had a degree in IT, furthermore, my only qualification is a Diploma in Mechanical Engineering with specialisation in Automotive but how did I end up in the IT world. My only answer would be because of my passion. So, if you have passion you can definitely survive anywhere you go.

Recently I tried to update my Jobstreet profile after  4 years of dormancy. Suddenly a 'Job Opportunity' landed in my inbox.

The job description given was very interesting and if I was 5 years younger, I would have definitely grab it. So, if you are interested in a change in career or a job opportunity such as this one, do contact me or the guy in the screenshot above. I would love to communicate with a 'younger me'. ;-D

I didn't answer the topic of this blog post. Well if you ask me, a few ways you can try to get headhunted is to:

1. Advertise and expose yourself. Don't be scared to be different from the rest of your peers. If you have a blog, write about yourself on your blog, social media account profile, Linkedin or anywhere you can get spotted.


2. Register yourself to all job recruitment agency. If you found a job recruitment website, register an account with them. If there is a 'Job Fair' in your area, attend and drop your resume, your name card if you have one or a note to the guy or girl at the job booth.


3. Network with a fellow headhunted guy such as myself. What a headhunter would probably look for are recommendations by trusted sources. If I find out that you are good and there are opportunities for you to go further, I will definitely recommend you to the headhunters I know (I have a classmate who is an experienced head hunter).

There you have it, a combined answer with some of my experience after being absent from this blog for a while. I never thought it feels so good to write a decent blog post again. I should really write more often. Until next time my fellow readers.

My Failed Attempt to Renew My Malaysian Passport Jan 2017

I'm trying out another medium od blog post so I decided to try out videos. At the moment I think it is much faster and more interesting to create. Of course, this would be my first so the quality is not up to par I guess.

My family and I will be heading to Bandung Indonesia for a holiday end of this month.

I am planning to create a video of the trip very soon. Need to polish my video skills then.

XM Forex Broker Review

If you've notice, I've put a couple of Forex broker ads on this blog. I was exposed to the world of online forex trading back in 2005-2006, at that time the retail forex trading was rising up and I was amazed at how electronic trading was done. Yes, I got burned that time but I know that in any business, there will always risk involved. After a while I got sidetracked and completely forgotten about it. Thinking about it, it was rather wasteful of me not pursuing being in that industry since I got a lot of the technical knowledge on trading forex equipped.

After I had a career change at the end of the year 2013 where I got introduced back to the world of retail forex trading through a good friend of mine. What triggered me to get back to this industry was when I went to a seminar on stock trading. The huge initial investment needed for stock trading was a turn off for me since my capital wasn't enough to proceed further. The course alone would burned off my entire savings and that doesn't include the initial capital to fund a trading account. Luckily my good friend referred me to a free forex class conducted by a forex broker which I had used way back in 2006. Strangely, there were only 3 person attended the class including myself so I had the upper hand to learn a lot of inside things from the trainer. I then pursued for close to 4 months before I got the trainer to give me a special excel sheet containing trading formulas. That is where my retail online forex trading activity returned.

Enough about my Forex journey, let's talk about a broker that I've been using which has proven to be a reliable broker for me. I even got paid a couple of hundred of dollar just referring people using them (one of the many ways to make money online). The broker is called XM. Previously known as Trading Point during the time I got introduced to Forex 9-10 years back, in my country Malaysia, I believe XM is one of the top name in retail online forex trading. I've been to their office and a class (also free BTW) in Ara Damansara, their seminar at Sheraton Hotel KL 2 (Oct 2014) and their Gala Dinner at Bukit Tinggi (Dec 2014). They're truly doing a lot of aggressive marketing in this country and their turn out is huge, you can refer to their website for the event they've organized. Who doesn't like MONEY right?

That's the fun stuff, let's dive into XM platform technical stuff and some other benefits provided. Here are the pros and cons in my opinion:

Pros:

1. I like it when I make a deposit into my account, the money instantly shows up in my MT4 software. No need for waiting unlike the rest of the competitors. BTW, I use Skrill to do my deposit or withdrawal.


2. The minimum deposit is USD5 (or around RM20) which is kind of affordable if you ask me. The cost of doing this trading business is very low. I spend more than RM20 on a single trip to Speedmart..haha..


3. The Micro lot account is superb with the maximum leverage of 1:888, it gets even better although if you go for full margin it is not recommended.


4. There are all kind of MT4 platform available, I only use MT4 Windows and Android to analyze the charts but I execute my trade using the MT4 Multiterminal. There are quite a number of other brokers doesn't give their client the MT4 Multiterminal.


5. There are no additional charge for both deposit and withdrawal. So I save some money on the transaction made.


6. Their servers are very responsive, I've compared them with another broker I'm using and it is proven to be quicker and no re-quote.


7. XM gives 50% bonus on top of the deposit. So if you deposit USD10, you are given USD5 bonus so you have USD15 of equity to play around. This could be very useful if you are very watchful of the margin level (I rarely leave my account margin level below than 500%, its just to high risk).


8. There is also a 'No Deposit Bonus' of USD30 promotion since 2014. I've traded using this credit on one of my account registered under my wife's name and grew it to almost USD60 before I got greedy and emptied the account in just 1 day..hahaha..

Cons:

1. There are waiting period for withdrawal which in my experience was less than 24 hours.


2. The price quote used is 5 decimals (eg. EURUSD 1.26445) which I find a bit advanced during my beginning of trading forex. I would recommend for beginners to forex trading should start with only 4 decimals (eg. EURUSD 1.2644).


3. They deploy floating spread where during busy news announcement can get quite high. However don't be scared of the spread, based on my experience it the least thing I worry about.

So there you have it, my review of XM Forex Broker. Please don't ask me on how to trade forex or can I learn to trade from you or anything, I don't do such thing as I do other stuff for a living. However this online forex trading is something that I can get the hang of it and most probably be one of the things I would do when I decide to retire one day.

So go and check out XM broker by clicking the banner below:

Microsoft Malaysia TechDays IT Camp Best of MMS 2012

Oh dear, I've been so accustomed with Blogger that I find it easier to navigate and write a blog post on Blogger instead of my own hosted Wordpress blog. It has been a rough couple of months since my last blog post back in earlier January this year. After almost 5 years with the current salary, I recently took a month of unpaid leave and went on job hunting and finally landed a job offer where I then tendered a 2 weeks notice to start work next month. So it was all hectic and crazy the past several months for me.

It's been a while since I last attended any events so last month I was invited to a Microsoft event and I jumped on it. The event was 'Microsoft Malaysia TechDays IT Camp Best of MMS 2012'. Basically, I was half-hearted to come because I had issues in my job hunting quest. It wasn't too bad after all because, during the event, I got a call to attend a job interview. Anyway, I love photos and more photos.








































Basically what I've learned from this event is the difference between a private cloud and public cloud. It was quite interesting and was helpful enough during my job interview session 2 days after that.