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Pitch your tech to the world’s #1 consumer goods company to disrupt a $4 Billion USD business! Fabric Care P&G pitch contest This is an open innovation competition to develop and pitch your tech to P&G wherein participants have a wonderful opportunity to secure SGD20,000 funds from P&G, partnership opportunity and other prizes. Entire global tech community including external community like developers, innovators and creators are invited to develop technology based solutions transforming laundry experience solving key consumer issues enabling consumers and their fabrics with focus on China and Japan markets. Visit http://pngchallenge.thehub.sg/ for more details and to register/participate

Join the world’s first cross-industry, multi-level global call for innovations which will impact the way we live in Asia to create an aware & quantifiable way of life! TNB Ventures Sensing Cities Call is looking to fuel promising next-gen startups in the areas of AR/VR, IoT, Robotics, Big Data and AI. Aside from receiving seed/Series A funding & incubation, applicants will also stand a chance to be directly supported by successful market leading Ecosystem Partners & injected into their extensive infrastructure & networks. Visit https://goo.gl/Yyt3Eg to apply by 31st December!

The 2nd edition of “Microsoft Biz Talks” occurred at NUS Enterprise on 7th Oct where we were honored to have Pratima Amonkar (Director, Partner Business for Independent Software Vendors and Solution Providers, Microsoft Asia Pacific) where she shared her experiences on digital transformation and how it can help to transform existing business models and accelerate growth. Despite the rain and heavy traffic, the business sharing session still attracted over 25-30 participants from a wide range of experiences (startups, developers, students, and industry professionals). The session was very well received, with numerous participants eager to connect with Pratima and the rest of the Microsoft team members present at the event. During the session, Pratima showcased how organizations are transforming their businesses by leveraging on technologies such as Internet of Things, Machine Learning, and Cognitive Services. When quizzed about the biggest obstacle to digital transformation, Pratima shared that obtaining the trust and commitment of top management to embark on a potentially risky and disruptive organizational change exercise is the first and most important step. After securing the mandate from top management, the change agents in the organization would be able to engage multiple teams within the organization to leverage technologies to transform their existing business processes, enhance customer experiences, and accelerate growth. ...

[caption id=“attachment_22239” align=“alignnone” width=“4032”] Jon and BiTS Team – Professor Ng Wee Keong, Adam Teng, Jonathan Lee, Melissa Lim, Deborah Lee (from left to right)[/caption] 1. Hello! What’s your current role in your start-up, and how did your past experiences take you here? As the company’s founder my primary focus is growing our core team and global network of over 70 consulting professionals. A background in engineering draws me towards building solutions that optimise processes, eliminate waste and generate value. My first start-up was a high-technology water treatment company that went bust in under a year. Working for and with other multinationals, government organizations and start-ups since then has provided firm grounding in reality. I no longer look only for long-term hypothetical value. Revenue and profitability are critical elements of business success - only a handful of unicorns manage to skirt this. Lining near and long-term value up has been an exciting process at BiTS. 2. Which 3 words would describe you best? Form follows function. 3. How did you come up with the idea? And what problem is your start-up trying to solve? Out of necessity. Under a Singapore-Myanmar JV two of our largest clients were looking at multiple seven-digit proposals for enterprise resource planning systems. We used open source tools to deliver a set of solutions for less than a fraction of the cost. BiTS was a natural spin-off from this effort. Moving the know-how and technology to Singapore - a market full of SMEs that desperately need to modernize themselves. 4. How long did your start-up take to finish development? 7 months of sleepless nights to get our SaaS platform up and running. 5. What are your preferred platforms/tools? Azure, Jenkins, GIT and anything that fits in with our agile development philosophy. We use tools that encourage teamwork and accountability. This helps us to scale globally and work with a myriad of full-time and part-time professionals from around the world. 6. Have you gotten any interesting feedback from users of the app/solution? Constantly! Users are always value-adding to the platform with feedback. Many requests centre around making the user experience more intuitive. We do our best to simplify the visual presentation of data, without undermining its integrity or shedding granularity. 7. How do you keep yourself motivated, especially during the low times? Taking a moment to remember why you’re here and where you’re going. A strong vision is like an anchor - it can weigh you down if you obsess but it also helps you ride out the storms. 8. If you could go back in time when you first started, what would you have done differently? Nothing - our team and business are the result of both stumbles and successes. Hindsight is 20/20 but it’s always better to learn and look forward. 9. What’s next for you? Sustainable growth and incremental improvements. Bearing in mind we serve businesses, continuity and growth are their key pillars. Adopting a digital business solution like ours can be challenging for our SME clientele but it is critical to their long-term survival. 10. What’s one advice you would give to budding entrepreneurs? Two things that have helped me: #1 Give your start-up everything you have, it will take nothing less to succeed. #2 Plan but more importantly do. [caption id=“attachment_22241” align=“alignnone” width=“4032”] BiTS at Work[/caption] [caption id=“attachment_22242” align=“alignnone” width=“960”] Jonathan presenting at CodingGirls Event[/caption]

Resources for IT Pros to build their careers in cloud technology. Cloud technology is transforming the role of IT. Building new skills and learning about cloud technology is important for career growth. Microsoft is introducing two new free programs for IT Professionals who want to build and grow their career in the cloud-first world. Join now! Microsoft IT Pro Cloud Essentials A free annual subscription that includes free cloud services, education and support. ...

The first edition of “Microsoft Startup Days” was held on 29th September at BASH (LaunchPad, 79 Ayer Rajah Crescent), featuring the founders of Cafebond, Keyis Ng and Eugene Chen. During the one-hour session, they shared their entrepreneurial journey to build the world’s leading e-commerce portal for coffee lovers everywhere and how they are leveraging on Microsoft BizSpark Program and Microsoft Azure Platform to propel and accelerate their growth. The session was well received by the community as it welcomed over 40 attendees comprising of a mixture of startup founders, students, developers and industry professionals. The audience was highly engaged with the wealth of experience and knowledge shared by Keyis and Eugene, starting from the incubation of their ideas and engagement of industry partners from Australia to launching their platform and tackling issues such as customer service and logistics. Some of the key lessons shared included: ...

23 September 2016 Last Friday, the second session of ACE Microsoft Tech Talks took place at ACE Ideation Centre, Block 79. In this session, I discussed about the latest trending technology in the IT industry, which is Chat Bots. I gave the audience an overview of Chat Bot technologies from Microsoft by using Bot Framework and LUIS. The Bot Framework allows for developers to build a single web service and connect it to the various communication channel such like Skype, Facebook Messenger, Telegram and more. The engine behind which understands natural language is LUIS which allows for developers to build a language model of their own allowing it to understand intents and entities of a user by analyzing the text message sent by the user. Towards the end of the talk, a few chatbots demo were shown and one of them is a Changi Airport Chatbot that i have built. This is closely related to the customer service industry as chatbots could replace mundane tasks of a customer service officer and employers could assign them a much more important or critical task. A link to my Changi Airport chatbot code could be found below. If you would like to read up more on Bot Framework and LUIS. Here are a few useful links**:** For Bot Framework- dev.botframework.com For LUIS- luis.ai For Sample code on the integration of Bot Framework with LUIS- github.com/Microsoft/BotBuilder/ For LUIS Documentation- https://www.luis.ai/Help For BotFramework Documentation-https://docs.botframework.com/en-us/csharp/builder/sdkreference/ For Changi Airport Code Repository- https://github.com/izzkhair/SampleChangiAirportBot Here are a few photos taken during the talk: [caption id=“attachment_22318” align=“alignnone” width=“3840”] Explaining the industrial use cases of Chatbots.[/caption] [caption id=“attachment_22322” align=“alignnone” width=“3840”] Giving a demo on the various Chatbots that I have built.[/caption] [caption id=“attachment_22320” align=“alignnone” width=“3840”] The audience that attended my talk[/caption]

[caption id=“attachment_22356” align=“alignnone” width=“2000”] iNTUition Hackathon[/caption] iNTUition is NTU’s only student-run 24 hour hackathon, organized by IEEE NTU Student Branch in collaboration with NTU Open Source Society. Students of all levels in any educational institution in Singapore & South-East Asia can sign up for iNTUition. If you are passionate about learning new technologies, building awesome projects and meeting like-minded hackers, we want you here! Where does Microsoft come in? Technical Evangelists Shawn Tjai and James Lee will be conducting a 2-3 hour workshop on the 7th of October on the following Microsoft technology. ...

PowerShell Conference Asia 2016 Join us for the second PowerShell Conference Asia, held in Singapore, where PowerShell speakers from Asia and around the world come together to bring attendees in-depth PowerShell and DevOps content. Speakers Line-up Speakers include 4 members of the PowerShell team from Microsoft headquarters in Redmond and a strong line-up of MVPs, well-known international speakers, and community contributors. They’ll cover in-depth topics on the PowerShell language and how you can use PowerShell to automate the technologies you use every day. There will be strong focus on using PowerShell to enable DevOps practices whether On Premises or in the cloud. Event Highlights The main event runs on Friday and Saturday, but we also have a Workshop day on Thursday, where we will have some vendor-led workshops where you will have the opportunity to be introduced to and get hands on with tools and technologies in the DevOps and Automation space. If that’s not your thing, we have a 1 day PowerShell refresher crash course led by one of the best PowerShell trainers from the United States. This is geared up to make sure you get the most from being a conference attendee. At the end of Day 1 (Friday), we have drinks and nibbles at a local bar where you can connect with peers and the speakers in a more relaxed setting. All included in your ticket price. Remember, we still have another full day of content on Saturday though! Resources: ...

[caption id=“attachment_22300” align=“alignnone” width=“1200”] BandLab wins Microsoft Start-up Partner of the Year Award 2016[/caption] Microsoft Partner Award is an annual event which celebrate successes and innovations related to partner competencies, cloud technology, entrepreneurial spirit and sales excellence, highlighting the great work done by our Microsoft partners. This year’s Start Up Partner of the Year Award winner, BandLab, demonstrated leadership in the areas of innovation, market potential, media and analyst attention, investor value creation, and customer adoption. BandLab is a Singapore-based social music platform that enables creators to make music and share the creative process with musicians and fans. With a global community of creators and fans, BandLab combines music making and collaboration tools like the world’s first cross-platform DAW, with social features like video sharing, messaging and discovery. BandLab’s mission is to break down the technical, geographic and creative barriers between creators, collaborators and community. [caption id=“attachment_22304” align=“alignnone” width=“1920”] Bandlab’s Android MixEditor lets you produce your music on the go![/caption] They have been working very closely with Microsoft to integrate various Microsoft technology and services in their product. For example, using Microsoft Azure to build features like Shouts, which enables users to share photos and videos. [caption id=“attachment_22301” align=“alignnone” width=“1440”] BandLab Shouts let you to share your creative moment in a fun and engaging way[/caption] Meng Ru Kuok, CEO and Co-founder of BandLab, said: “We are delighted and honoured to have been selected as the Singapore Start-Up Partner of the Year by Microsoft. This acknowledgement from Microsoft is particularly meaningful, because Microsoft’s philosophy of helping companies around the world achieve more is matched by BandLab’s desire to help creators around the world collaborate and engage with their fans. Microsoft has been a great partner to BandLab, and Microsoft’s technology, services and support have played an important role in helping us to build the products and services that BandLab users rely on every day. Microsoft Azure, for example, has given us a great foundation on which to build features like Shouts, which enables users to share photos and videos. At BandLab we’re very proud of how much we have accomplished in the past year, and simply put, we couldn’t have got this far, this fast without Microsoft’s technology and support." BandLab also recently announced the acquisition of San Francisco-based MONO Creators Inc, to further serve the mobile musician with a range of hardware and physical products. Congratulations to BandLab for winning Microsoft Start-up Partner of the Year Award 2016!