2nd Official Startup Weekend Tokyo even more Awesome!
Just came back from the 1st night of the 2nd official Startup Weekend Tokyo. 90+ people this time! Majority Japanese!! Most of them pitched about the problems they wanna solve!! This is gonna be even more awesome than last time!!
(Damn! No new pictures from tonight! :( Flickr is really letting me down these days.)
I pitched about the idea I had the other day when my friend tweeted about finding food when she’s too hungry. Basically this app will take some of your preferences beforehand, when you use it, it’ll just show an arrow, you follow the arrow to a restaurant the app picks for you! My pitch was fucking awesome! :D
It didn’t get enough votes to become a real project though (which I’m kinda glad actually). Still, a couple of apps developers came up to me and told me to let them know if I’m interesting in really turning the idea into a real app! :P
Meanwhile, I got connected with another mobile developer who’s new to Tokyo and wants to be involved in the local Startup community by helping to bring AngelList to Japan! Hmm… I think I know just the right people to talk to about all this… :)
Almost 2 years ago in August 2009, I moved to Tokyo to work for CUUSOO.com, an innovative “crowdsourced product design” web company. The reason why I joined CUUSOO was because of its vision - users submitting their wishes up front, others declare their intention to buy that product at a certain price, thus creating a market demand signal. Consumers become co-producers to make the perfect products for themselves. I believed that by making this system successful, on a small scale, independent makers and small workshops can produce just the right amount of highly customizable products for the local market, while on the large scale, manufacturers can know upfront the market demand for a product before it’s made, hence lowering the risk of wasting raw materials and natural resources to produce crap that nobody wants! (See event I organized to promote CUUSOO) I wanted to work on something that would make the world a better place and CUUSOO.com had the right idea!In these past 2 years, I had initiated many projects to try to make CUUSOO’s original idea work. When I first joined, after evaluating the legacy system and the company’s goals, I suggested creating the English version of LEGO CUUSOO as a new, simple website (the term “Minimal Viable Product” wasn’t invented yet) using one of the new web frameworks like Drupal, forget about the old Japanese contents and concentrate in the US market. Once we build up a healthy community in the West, we can then migrate our old Japanese contents & users from the legacy site. When that got rejected, (after weeks of persuations and arguements) I started an open source project called Open Hippel. I went out to social events and talked to people about my idea - an open user innovation system, in which CUUSOO can be its first commercial user, but the software is free for all to use. I even started a P2PU course to teach Drupal through building Open Hippel! Pairing the software with a 3-tier business model - a top layer of independent communities using Open Hippel to bubble up ideas, and a bottom layer connecting to my inventor friend in Hong Kong, sourcing the manufacturing to the experts, thereby creating a whole eco-system around CUUSOO and Open Hippel in the middle. It was grand!The friends I’ve made through the Open Hippel project have been truly inspirational! We share the same passion and we pushed each other to work hard on developing the open source platform and the new eco-system. Although the plan to use the system for CUUSOO failed, the seeds we had sewn, the work that we had put in are not lost. My friends continued to follow our common goal and a couple of new startups were spawned! One of which is Makible.com, which I’ll be joining as… hmm… I don’t even know what to call myself! I guess I’m “the guy who connected the dots and pulled the people together”.
▶ YouTube video
星期日檔案：車衣女工 1
▶ YouTube video
星期日檔案：車衣女工 2
http://mytv.tvb.com/news/sundayreport/117624#page-1 (Original - not viewable outside of HK)Wife just showed this to me. Back in the heights of 70’s ~ 80’s, 1 in 10 worked in the textile industry in HK. They learned a set of good skills and even though the businesses had moved North into China, a portion of skilled workers remained in HK to tough it out!These are now the elders who’re passing on tangible, valuable knowledge to the next generation… These are the “Makers” we need to value! (I’ve said so before when I organized this event.) This is what I’m dedicating my time to - helping the “Makers” take back our communities from Wall Street and large corporations!
