In a bit more than a month, the Southeast Asia SharePoint conference is coming back to Singapore. Last year, I wrote about Singapore in general with some useful tips. This year, I'll also provide some information on where to go and what to do.
Note: Also visit the official website by the Singapore Tourism Board.

Places to visit

Walk around the Marina Bay Area (including Marina Bay Sands, Esplanade, the Fullerton Hotel and the Merlion).

Visit the Botanic Gardens and walk in a tropical rain forest

Go to China Town & Little India, walk around and try some food at both
 

Sentosa - there are some beaches, and of course Universal Studios with the theme park. go to a beach bar one evening 

Orchard Road - shopping!

Singapore National Museum - learn more about Singapore and its history

Attractions

Hippo Tours - not bad for visitors! You pay a fix price for 2 days, and you can then use their buses the whole time and hop on and off at many popular destinations in Singapore

Singapore Flyer : one of the biggest Ferris wheels in the world! However, as Marina Bay Sands is just nearby, you may also consider visiting that one with the observation platform

Marina Bay Sands - SkyPark: 67 storeys above the ground, great view over Singapore

Zoo & Night Safari - Both are very good, located directly within the rain forest. The Night Safari shows you nocturnal animals and starts at 7pm

Jurong Bird Park - in case you want to see birds

Tree Top Walk - suspension bridge 25m above the ground

 

Going Out, Eating

Boat Quay & Clarke Quay - both are along the Singapore river and close to each other. Clarke Quay is a good evening hang out place with bars, restaurants, clubs

Eat: just go to any food court or hawker centre, usually there are plenty. Eat, eat, eat! You can choose from too many dishes, no doubt you won't be able to try everything that you want to

Chilli/Butter/Black Pepper Crab: you should have crab at least once, e.g. at http://www.seafoodparadise.com.sg/outlets.html

 

Should you have any additional questions or feedback, or if you want to meet up the weekend before the conference, please feel free to contact me!

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MARK YOUR CALENDAR NOW

November 8 & 9, 2011
Southeast SharePoint Conference
www.sharepointconference.asia

SINGAPORE
Two days. Over 40 sessions from excellent speakers including
internationally renowned SharePoint experts

All for the Early bird price of $350.00!

Why Attend?
.     Best Practices from the last 18 months of SharePoint 2010 will be presented
.     Get to see some of the content from the Microsoft World Wide SharePoint Conference being held in October in Anaheim, California. We will be bringing content and speakers from this event to Singapore.
.     Ideal for BOTH business and technical roles: Tracks will cover Business, Development, IT Pro and Case Studies. We are also adding an Office and Productivity Track this year - ideal for business users! There will be Something for everyone!
.     Based on a very successful event in 2010, this year promises to be even better, with more content and new activities. Even if you are just thinking about SharePoint, this is the chance to learn more.
.     Plenty of free gifts from our sponsors
This is the only event of its kind in Southeast Asia. Don't miss the opportunity, to get such a diverse amount of SharePoint training and learning in one place - network with colleagues, get the latest insights, and come away inspired and energised.

Pre and Post Conference Workshops
Take advantage of the additional training opportunities on Monday 7th November and Thursday 10th November, 2011, with intensive half day SharePoint workshops, including hands on labs!
Registrations Available Now
Group Registrations for 5 or more will receive a 20% discount
Early Bird Registrations of $350.00 to the first 250 delegates who register.
Regular Registration fee is $450.00 (excluding GST)    

Registration rates are in Singapore Dollars and include;
Event  attendance for the two day event November 8th and 9th 2011
Lunch and refreshments throughout both days
Attendance at the Evening Networking Event 5:30-7:30 Tuesday 8 November 2011.
Interested in Speaking?
Click Here to submit your proposed session(s). (One submission per proposed session)
Interested in Sponsoring?

Email: support@spevents.co.nz

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Southeast Asia SharePoint Conference

Tuesday 8th November - Wednesday 9th November, 2011

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This event is managed by SPevents, a division of envisionIT (NZ) Ltd, a New Zealand company specialising in SharePoint Conferences worldwide. http://www.sharepointconference.asia/

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I will be presenting at the upcoming Southeast Asia SharePoint Conference (26/27 October 2010) here in Singapore.

Here are the details of my session:

Stories from the field - Experiences with two AsiaPacific-wide SharePoint Deployments

A SharePoint implementation with a scope targeting multiple countries comes with several challenges. Various cultural differences and technological barriers have to be considered for a successful rollout.

These include factors like different management styles and working cultures, multiple languages ("can my SharePoint be in Chinese?"), distributed locations ("can we have a local server here?"), varying connection speeds ("our SharePoint is too slow!"), and others.

In this session, experiences from two SharePoint deployments in the region Asia Pacific will be discussed.

Consider the following situation:

   Your company is rolling out SharePoint, and you have subsidiaries in multiple countries. This means that your users are spread across different locations, sometimes even time zones, and speak different languages. While your company might have a standard language to communicate with other people (English, usually), your colleagues speak a mix of different languages (Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, Bengal, French, ...), some even only their local language. So when you implement SharePoint, you have to keep in mind that the visitors to your sites might not be able to understand your contents, or that your contents are targeted at a smaller group of people (e.g. only the colleagues in the Paris office) and thus your site has to be in that language.

Considering different cultures is very important as well. The way people in China deal with problems can be very different from the way Americans do it. Project members in India may handle tasks in a very different way than you expected it, and your meetings with members of a business unit in Japan turns not out to be as you imagined. These are just some ways that local cultures can influence your SharePoint deployment.

In addition to that, depending on your network infrastructure and how your offices are dispersed geographically, you need to consider solutions (more servers? faster network? caching?) to make access for employees in these locations more convenient.

I will talk about these topics as well as a few more in my session.
See you there!

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The Southeast Asia SharePoint Conference is coming to Singapore in October, and I thought I'd do a short writeup for any visitors that have never been to Singapore before to give them an idea what to expect here, how to get around, etc.

Basics

• Singapore has a tropical climate. That means, all year long the temperature is around 28-32 degrees celsius, with a quite high humidity (once you exit the airport, you'll notice it!). However, indoors is usually quite cold, aircons keep the temperature at slightly more than 20 degrees. If you plan to stay inside a bit longer, bring something with long sleeves.
• The local currency is the Singapore Dollar. You can exchange money when you arrive at the airport (exchange rate is usually ok) or at your hotel (exchange rate is...well, not that good usually), or at local exchangers all over town (good rates, but might be a little bit difficult to find for tourists).
  Credit cards, such as VISA or Mastercard, are generally accepted in most places (usually minimum spending of $20).
• Singapore's timezone is GMT+8
• While Singapore is a multicultural country and many languages are used, the one connecting language that basically everyone speaks is English, thus you should have no problems at all communication with anyone (unless you have some problems understanding the local accent...).
  
• When you arrive at the airport, don't forget to grab a tourist map!
• Tap water is safe! I think Singapore's water is among the cleanest in the world, it's even safe enough for drinking without any worries.
• In many parts of the island you can get free wireless internet! If you're for example at McDonald's or Starbucks, look out for the wireless@sg network. To find out more, visit the wireless@sg website

 

How to get around

• The easiest way is to grab a taxi, of which there are plentiful! The total cost consists of a base price (usually starts at SGD2.80), a distance based fare, a "waiting time" fare, and of additional charges such as ERP ("Everyday Rob People".., no, wait, Electronic Road Payment, a toll charge that has to be paid at certain areas). There's no need to negotiate the price, all taxi drivers always use the meter.
   
• The cheaper option is to take a bus and/or the MRT (the local train/subway). If you plan to use either a few times, the best thing is to get an ez-link card, which is a small card with a few dollars of value. Each time you enter a MRT station/a bus, you tap your card, once you exit you do the same and the corresponding amount (depending on the distance you travelled) will be deducted. Rides will most of the time be less than $2. Single entry tickets can be purchased at each MRT station.
  A map of all MRT stations can be found here: http://www.smrt.com.sg/trains/network_map.asp
  
  
• Generally, if you want to know hot to get from A to B, visit www.gothere.sg 

 

What to eat / drink

The great thing about Singapore is that you can find all kinds of food here: Chinese (in lots of variations! Teochew, Cantonese, ...), Malay, Indian, Thai, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Western, ...
The cheapest option are hawker centres and food court, in both you'll find many stalls offering different kinds of food.  Price range from $2 - $8 per meal!  Of course you can also go to a restaurant, prices there usually start at around $15. Again, you've got a huge choice.
There is no need to tip in Singapore, if you eat at a restaurant it will be included in the final bill (it will either say so on the menu, or the prices are mentioned as $10++, where the ++ means plus additional GST (7%) plus additional service tax (10%)).

 

 

 Where to go/what to do

  If you have time, you can visit some of the popular tourist destinations here in Singapore. Two options would be Chinatown and Little India, both which reflect a bit the different origins of Singaporeans.
Another possibility is to go to the Marina Bay area and visit the Esplanade (concert hall/opera house/cultural building), the Merlion, and maybe even the Marina Bay Sands casino (including the sky park on top of the building!).
If you have the time, you can also go on a bus tour to visit several different attractions of Singapore (e.g. at http://www.ducktours.com.sg/tours.php)

 

If there's anything else you want to know, please do not hesitate to ask me or write a comment here.

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I rarely visit Singapore's busy shopping street, unless I have a reason to.

Waiting for my girlfriend before dinner, I decided to sit down and drink something, watching cars on one side and people on the other side passing by, reminding me of how busy, active, lively, and fast-paced Singapore is.

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