Refresh Colombo August 2011

With the new rules in place it isn't exactly easy to leave office at 5 when you get there by 9, so this time I was a bit late to arrive for Refresh Colombo. Took the 154 because it is easier and only one bus but it took close to 45 minutes to reach Royal from Wellawatta. I could have gotten there faster by walking. I did manage to catch part of the first presentation and it was about

Breaking Down Information Barriers with Technology and Social Sharing

It was done by Charitha and his Twitter handle is @diya_rakusa. I don't know what he said in the beginning but it is probably about SL2College which provided free advice and guidance for Sri Lankan students who wants to pursue higher studies. This is a great idea and and something really useful for any Sri Lankan. There forum section seems to have wealth of information for students looking to study abroad. As he mentioned in the presentation they give data to the students so they can make up there own minds. Useful as it is there website can do with some redesigning. I have no idea whats the purpose of having "Welcome to SL2College" at the top of the website. That seems to me like a waste of prime website space.
The questions after the presentation also went very well. There were some discussions about how Sri Lanka can attract Sri Lankans who go abroad for studies. Quality of life in different countries, mindset and the maturity level of the individuals leaving the country, salary scales offered for individuals and the area of expertise pursued by users all contribute to making the decision to come back. And according to the bold headed WSO2 guy US job opportunities are going down and in the future there will be more and more high tech job opportunities that pays well available for Sri Lankans.

Cloud Computing Facts and Myths

The next presentation was done by Samisa Abeysinghe who is VP Engineering at WSO2. He went on to explain what cloud computing is and the facts and myths about cloud computing. It was a simple and to the point presentation and very useful for someone like me who always wondered what cloud computing is. If you are a Sri Lankan you should be proud that a company like eBay that handles millions of transactions uses WSO2 ESB software for there day to day operations. By the way WSO2 sponsored today's Refresh Colombo and the food was great. I especially liked the roll :-) .

Generating and Selling Tech Business Ideas

Although the first two presentation were great I was really looking forward to the presentation by Adnan or commonly known as kiriappeee. It was a very inspiring and thought provoking presentation about coming up with business ideas. As he said Sri Lankans are very good at finding faults so if you use the same energy to find a solution then you can come up with plenty of business ideas. Ideas are a strange thing, they come to everyone but the problem is most people don't realize it. Even if they realize it they hardly act upon those ideas which is the reason for low number of entrepreneurs. Since I make a living out of writing articles I have my special system to store my article writing ideas whenever they come up. You can read more about that here at my blog. He generously gave away his email address so if you think you have a bright idea you can discuss it with him. If you can find it do try to find his presentation which can be very useful to anyone who thinks he has a great idea.
Then there was a final announcement about the TweetupSL which is happening on 27, August. I got my TweetupSL T-shirt today and it is awesome. As usual Refresh Colombo was great and if you are doing something related to technology or online business then this is a must visit event. Hope to see you all tomorrow at TweetupSL.