It was great fun. I met a lot of great people. It was also my first time to Singapore, our nearest neighbor country, which was a truly eye-opening experience. It's amazing how clean and organized a country can be.

Anyway, back to BarCamp Singapore - I delivered absolutely the crappiest presentation in my whole life.

Thankfully (for the audience as well), it was only a 5 minutes lightning talk. I wasn't prepared. My hands were shaking, and then I realized I haven't speak in front of audience for a very very long time.

Incidentally, the presentation was about 'being crappy'.

I started the presentation with a controversial quote: "Specialization is for insects", then I went on explaining how one person can be a dreamer, coder, designer and marketer at the same time. Here's a quick summary:

Realize that nothing is impossible and don't put a limit on your imagination. Take a notepad with you all the time to jot down whenever ideas pop up.

It's the experiments that matters. If one method doesn't work, try another; if the method works well, also try another, then compare and optimize. I also shared about a real life marketing case study on WPWebHost.

Focus on simplicity. Look for inspiration (Web Creme is a good place). I also talked about the idea of 'Learning by Profitting', supported by my experience when I built ShoppingThemes.

Use frameworks. Blueprint CSS for CSS. Ruby on Rails for web apps. Adopt TDD (Test Driven Development) to build your app. 

I concluded with the quote "Being crappy is not the reason not to do it.". I admitted that despite I'm both a crappy designer and coder (and a crappy speaker, at this point), I still do it for the sake of curiosity, learning and having fun.

The next BarCamp will be happening in KL on 24-25 April 2010. And yes, I will be there! (and hopefully my presentation gets better)