The world is flat, impact to VN economy and the role of IT in Vietnam

It all started with a simple meeting with Mr. Quang from Vina Consulting about a month ago. He asked Tony and I if we were interested in presenting open source technology at the upcoming Vietnam ICT Outlook Conference. I would represent the Saigon Linux Group and Tony would represent GHP Far East Co. Then came another meeting with the Hochiminh Computer Association where we discussed about the key points of our presentation.

(Meeting at the Hochiminh Computer Association)

Today was the actual meeting for the conference. Yeah, I was a little nervous, giving a presentation in front of businesses and government organizations is not the same as giving a lecture in front of a university classroom like I am used to. A lot of last minute changes resulted in plenty of miscues early on in our presentation but in the end, we got it together. I never got my podium that I kept requesting so I had to fiddle with my notes which created some frustrations. It turned out to be a good thing.

The panel discussion was a great success. We were surprised at the number of questions asked in regards to Open Source. PC World Vietnam and IDC posed good questions as well as some of the other participants. The question and answer component lasted about 40 minutes with the Saigon Linux Group answering the many of the questions.

(Panel: Dr. Le Truong Tung – Chairman HCA, Dang Uyen Phuong – IDC, Anthony Fernandes – GHP Far East, Kevin Miller – Saigon Linux Group, and Dr. Le Net – LCT Lawyers)

(Dr. Le Net – LCT Lawyers, and I talking about open source licenses)

Thanks to Ms. Lan Phuong from the London School of Economics for helping out with some interpreting.

Overall the conference was a success for the Saigon Linux Group. We even convinced Tim Handley, the Marketing Manager for Gigabyte, to finally install Ubuntu tomorrow on his laptop. We will provide him with several Ubuntu Linux LiveCDs at the gala dinner.

Download the Conference Presentations here -> (English) (Vietnamese)

The Saigon Linux Group is moving further ahead into developing as a Linux-based IT company here in Vietnam. We have a Linux Mirror providing both openSUSE Linux and Ubuntu Linux inside Vietnam. Late next month, Patrick arrives at which point we can start some of our pro-bono projects.