Jason @ the Future of Web Apps

This past week, developers from around the world gathered in London at the Future of Web Apps conference. There were many great speakers there ranging from Kevin Rose: founder of Digg, Werner Vogels: CTO of Amazon, AOL's Chief Architect, Vodafone's head strategist, etc, etc. Needless to say, a great line-up.

It was great to see the new lineup of innovators outside the traditional big player from companies such as Last.fm who can recommend/target new song ads to your online playlists to the guys at Thinkfree who are building a pretty cool new online office suite to rival Google and Microsoft.

I was asked to speak briefly on the power of Open APIs and Google's approach to the developer community. Although we work very hard to support and create as many tools for our developers to have the power to tweak and modify our products and tailor into their own apps, I'm always amazed by the skepticism by some that think we only do it just to lock people into our technology. I guess people forget about the old paradigm where certain other software makers have kept their platforms closed for so many years and tried their best to stifle competition and innovation.

If only people could spend a day inside our company and see that we really are a company founded by Engineers that want to do whats best for innovation globally and on that same beat, for the environment. Well, here's a link to somebody blogging about my talk:
http://blogs.talis.com/nodalities/2007/02/jason_chuck_open_apis.php

Sports!

Tonight, I was really lucky to get a ticket from one of my co-workers to catch a football match, Greece vs. Korea, national friendly match at Fulham Stadium. It was a lot of fun and the Koreans ended up winning 1-0, but what I realized is that over the past couple of years, I've been really lucky to get to watch a lot of great international sports matches. In the past I would rub it in to my good pal Mike by calling him, but I'll just try to recollect where I've been the past year and send him this post.

Matches Watched:
Sept '07 (Tickets for Rugby World Cup in France, CAN'T WAIT!)
Feb '07 - Greece vs Korea (Football in London)
Dec '06 - Canucks vs. Flames (Hockey!! in Vancouver)
Nov '06 - England vs. Argentina (Rugby at Twickenham in London)
August '06 - Arsenal vs. Zagreb Dinamo (Football in London)
July '06 - Wimbledon (Tennis in Wimbledon)
Nov '05 - South Africa vs. France (Rugby at Stade de France in Paris)
Oct '05 - Real Madrid vs. Valencia (Football in Madrid)
and for ren, I'll have to include our World Cup Football Match in Kobe from '02 just cause we came so close to getting arrested for buying scalped seats! :)

Matches I played (Rugby at INSEAD):
Dublin Tour (Oct '05)
Phuket Tour (June '05)
Kuala Lumpur Tour (Apr '05)
Bangkok Tour (Feb '05)

Excited!

So you're probably wondering why I posted a picture of my bed. Well, actually I spent this past weekend cleaning my room and clearing closet space cause May is arriving this week! OMGosh! I can't even believe it's been nearly 10 months since I left Vancouver. Long distance sucks so it will be great having her in London, hopefully now we can find her a great job. Will keep you posted of all our travels and explorations while she's here.

Happy New Year (2 Weeks Early)

Alright, this past weekend I was dragged to a Chinese New Year party in London full of BBCs (not the TV station, but British Born Chinese). One of my flatmates actually met a guy on Friendster (I won't say which one) and he invited us to check out this party. Holy cow, there are a lot of Asians in this city, and actually, some weren't that bad looking (according to my roommates of course!!) ! (Of course no where close to my g/f... you think that will get me off the hook? Ok, probably not)




Anyways, the night turned out to be not that bad in the end, but right when the club was getting ready to close, a fight broke out with some Triad guys and I watched a guy get stabbed in the head with a bottle, blood everywhere....OUCH! I thought this stuff only happened in N.America and in Asia... Send the guy back on the boat he came from I tell ya!

Well, we're all fine, off to explore a new club next week with less gangsters! :D

Google Ski Trip - Courmayeur Italy

Hi Everybody, Last week Google had their Annual Ski trip (Jan 22-28th) where they flew nearly 2000 of us to Courmayeur Italy (that's right, the Alps!) to going skiing for a week. Ok, technically there was a conference to justify the expense and no snow when we arrived, but luckily for us, we were allowed to stay the weekend and it snowed 50cm just in time!

Before After

As for the conference, I was actually asked to present about Google Maps. It's the first time I've ever been infront of a few thousand people, extremely nerve wracking. Worst part was that I got the stomach flu the night before so spent the morning throwing up. Luckily I held it together through my preso but then spend the next 25 hours in bed and in the bathroom sick. I missed the party, the dinner and most of the fun. However, Lauren, my housemate in London came up on the Friday and I got 2 good days of boarding in. If you ever have the chance, Alps come highly recommended. Plus, if you don't like Italian food, behind that mountain in the pictures is actually Chamonix on the french side! (Click on it to check it out in full glory) If you want to see more pictures from the trip, check out my web album.



Unfortuantely, we had to go back to work on Monday, painful! Back to the 4000 emails waiting...

Night out at 24

My co-workers been telling me for 3 months that she has VIP hook ups at almost all the clubs in London so last night, I finally decided to take her up on the offer as my flat mates and I wanted to catch up after not seeing each other the past month.

However, while walking to the club, I ran into 3 guys from INSEAD and invited them to come along which is a BIG NO NO in London. You see, if you're not a girl nor with majority girls nor willing to go 2 hours early, any good club in London simply will not let you in. Luckily, my colleague came through and got the 6 of us in 'sans the 20 pound cover'. Good times, good drinks and a surprisingly cheap night out!

More pics from 24

Reviving the Blog?

Hi Everyone! I'm not sure if anyone has bothered revisitng this site after my disappearance from it nearly 8 months ago, but after much contemplation, I've decided to bring back my blog.

Much has happend in my life here in London over the past year, and I guess I felt a bit overwhelmed reposting all the experiences I missed so with a new year, a new start! 2006 was the beginning of a new life and career, and upon reflecting my travels, I actually went many places! (3 weeks in San Fran, trips to Milan, Berlin, Munich, Dublin, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Amsterdam to name a few). Now with May coming here in 3 weeks, I hope all my travels will be more for pleasure with her. However, I do plan to drag her along my product launches in 2007, especially if I can swing Russia, Israel, Egypt or Turkey in there somehow.

However, life has been difficult readjusting back from a 2.5 week return to Vancouver over the holidays. It was great seeing many of you but I always fall into a mini boute of depression upon leaving the confrots of Vancity. Now that I'm back, gonna try to re-establish ties and connections with mates here. But work is piling up this week because the entire Google European operations (some 1500-2000) of us are being flown to Italy for our annual ski trip in the Alps (Yes, I won't compain if the snow isn't perfect!).

Anyways, all of you not in London, I hope you can find a way to visit this year! For all in London, lets catch up soon!

Cheers Mates!