The current economic turmoil doesn't do anyone any good. Too much has been said about the Great Greed of Wall Street and I am not going to add anything new there. The interesting point is, while wall street become obsessed with generating more and more money, many Web 2.0 company manage to somehow turn the idea of generating real revenue into yesterday's fad. Shocking! Generating revenue is NOT cool!.

Personally, I have no doubt that this crisis will affect us. Yes, I could be all optimistic and say, "oh, more now people will want to buy our stuff because it saves them money" all day. Not surprisingly,  almost all the entrepreneur that I knew say almost exactly that. We fail to see that entrepreneur are risk taker of disproportionate proportion. With 90% failure rate, optimism isn't worth much.

So, what is the business reality ? Nothing new.

• Revenue and cash flow is king. If you haven't start making any, you better start making some now
• If you are still experimenting with new idea, remember that you are actually running a "Research" not a business. Try not to be confused.
• Watch those access fat. Watch out those costly expenses, keep your operation lean and tight.
• Amplify learning and productivity. Knowledge, skills and productivity need to grow faster than ever.
• Watch our for new opportunities, especially in acquisition, buyout and other areas that enhances company operation.

If you are a big fan of Joomla or wondering if Joomla will fit your needs, this would be a perfect event to attend. In no other event that so many Joomla expert will gather in one place, both commercial developer and developr within the core team. Personally, I am excited to meet up with everyone!

I will giving 2 talks, on component development and using Joomla! as your blogging platform. I will also be giving short presentation on JomSocial, our new Joomla! powered social networking platform.

You can register your seat here . I'll see you there.

The field of quantum physic always amazes me. I remember reading about relativity, and some brain-cracking physics when I was in college. For a short while (very short I must add!) I wanted to be a scientist. I thought it was super cool to grow and carry around some extra neuron compared to the rest of you. But that was a long time ago and I much prefer what I do now.

Is my code offers any value to the user?. Did my commit at the end of each day really make a different in customer's life ?

It is easy for software developer to become obsessed with the technology and code behind their application, which sometimes offer absolutely nothing to the end user. I make this mistakes all the time. As engineers, more often that not, our design is driven by our own persuit of technical glory rather than actual end user needs. 37Signals guys, in a way have mastered the art of giving end user what they want, and keeping out code that offers little value.

How do we give the user what they want?. Unfortunately, this isn't very easy. We need to leave our selfish technical brain, put on a user hat and ask some honest questions. Why do my customer buy my software and what exactly are they looking for? It is far too easy to let the engineer inside us to offer a cool solution to a non-existence problem. Remember that our technical expertise is there to solve user's problem and not to add new problems by cluttering the software with tons of rubbish code.

Joomla Day Malaysia was held on the 2nd Aug in MidValley. This is a community-driven event which main objectives is to introduce Joomla and enable all Joomla enthusiast to meet and exchange their experiences. I had the pleasure of becoming the Project Manager for this event. However, I do think some poeople misunderstood this event, thinking that it is a "training" conference and obviously, they'd be disappointed.

Nonetheless, the whole organizing team, mainly members of azrul.com did a great job and we had a blast!

Yup, we're one of barcamp sponsors.

azrul.com team

"the brickwall is there not to keep us out, it gives us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brickwall is there to stop people who don't want it badly enough. It is there to stop "the other" people."

I love New York! it is a huge huge city. Makes me feel like I've been living in some really tiny kampung all this while. It's sad!. Seriously, I came back a changed man. Believe it or not just being there in a bigger place, really widen your horizon. It completely changed what you think is possible. Everything seems possible.

My last few days later in Chicago were just as amazing. Watching Chicago Cubs play, dinner at Sears Tower, overlooking Lake Michigan. I'll ba back...

My answer is simple. Do less work, get rid of half you task, aim a bit lower and be happy. You might think that you're letting go some good opportunity, but with more time to relax and think, you will eventually think of something better! So, don't worry too much about it. Remember, the more time you spend on "doing" , the less time available for you to think out of the box. Relax, take things easy and don't worry if you're not making your millions yet today, tomorrow is still there...

Bye bye..

Might be too late for you to register for this event, but I will post the slides here soon.
Just to make it easy for the audiance (and for me) , below are the link to all relevant modules/component used in the presentation

• OpenSEF, still my favorite SEF component for Joomla 1.0.x
• sh404SEF, another popular SEF component
• RD RSS, a good rss feed replacement forJoomla built-in syndicate component
• JooFox content title