Today I spent the day hacking on the WordPress site for BarCampSaigon. I'm no expert on WordPress but trying to hack a theme with it makes me appreciate Drupal so much more. WordPress does have an "API" or at least some documented functions which are used internally which can also be used by developers but it's certainly not designed with developers in mind. Wordpress is great for bloggers. Drupal is great for developers and users who need something more than a blog will have to choose between working with Drupal or fighting against WordPress. :-)

Due to two recent conferences, BarCamp Hanoi and the opening of DrupalVietnam.org, I put together a presentation called "The Business Case for Drupal in Vietnam". I'll blog about those two events later.

I targeted two main groups: outsourcing companies based in Vietnam who want to attract more clients abroad, and any software development shop in Vietnam who is deciding what technology to use to develop websites. There is a third group, who are those companies with simpler website needs who perhaps only need one website and are not in the business of making websites.

I go over a number of common concerns that customers outside of Vietnam might have which Vietnamese companies might not expect. One point is being vendor agnostic when developing what is essentially a CMS. I make a strong point that one should never fall to the temptation of developing your own in-house CMS and as a consumer, you should stay far away from such "bespoke" solutions in the modern age where content management frameworks such as Drupal exist. I also think Drupal represents a strong brand name that is not well-known yet in Vietnam, but we all know how much Vietnamese people love brands.

On the supply side, I talk about why Drupal is a decent choice for Vietnamese developers, similar to any web developer. But the main recent news is that there is finally Drupal training being made available in Vietnam, much like for Joomla, and that PHP is widely known in Vietnam not just because there are books on it in the Vietnamese language, and that there is now a core Drupal community in Vietnam represented by DrupalVietnam.org (which I somehow became vice president of).

In general, I say go with your strengths. If web development is not your strength, then hire someone proper to do it for you while you focus on your core business. If web development is your business, make better use of your developers by using a CMS.

Anyways, here's the presentation.

Curious about Buddhism in Vietnam? So was I. When you look around the country you would just about assume that everyone was Buddhist. Until recently, I was only taking in these "Buddhisms" as just another dish in the realm of Vietnamese culture that makes the country so different from the West. But there are also Christian churches (some 10% of the population) as well as a long tradition of Islam within certain ethnic minorities like the Cham who form Muslim communities in their provincial strongholds as well as in the city. There's also a unique indigenous religion called Cao Đài that basically mixes Buddhism and an Abrahamic God. Still it's clear that Vietnam is a predominantly Buddhist country in both religion and culture and it has been for most of known recorded history (notably, there was a dark and critically damaging period for Buddhism in Vietnam when Roman Catholics controlled the Southern Vietnamese government, more on the issue of religious intolerance in another future post perhaps).

What kind or sect of Buddhism?

When one thinks of Christians, they are a diverse group that identify much more with being Catholic or Protestant or Mormon or whatever else more than just being a Christian. It seems every major world religion has similarly broken down over the years into sects that started believing all kinds of things that weren't there at the founding of the religion, and who differentiate themselves from other sects through these new and unique beliefs. While people in Vietnam seem to just think they are Buddhist rather than any special kind of Buddhist, Buddhism itself, as I've found, has not been immune from such corruption -- or innovation, depending on how you look at it.

When you think of Buddhism as just an aspect of being Vietnamese, you don't think much about how Vietnamese Buddhism relates to Buddhism in other countries but in fact it does have its own characteristics. If you split Buddhists into the two main branches, Mahayana (Greater Vehicle) and Theravada, Vietnam falls into Mahayana along with the rest of China's historical sphere of influence (the CJKV countries, ethnic Chinese countries like Singapore and Taiwan, and neighbors like Tibet, Nepal, and Mongolia). The Southeast Asian Buddhist countries (Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia) are all Theravadin except for Vietnam. What is relatively unknown is that Vietnam does have Theravada Buddhism among the million or so Khmer (Cambodian) population concentrated in the Mekong Delta as well as with a small number of ethnic Kinh (Vietnamese are mostly ethnically Kinh) who have their own Theravadin temples. There is also a third, newer branch called Vajrayana a.k.a. the Diamond Vehicle (Kim cương thừa or Mật tông in Vietnamese), Esoteric Buddhism, or Tantric Buddhism. There are some small centers teaching Vajrayana scattered throughout the country including ones (associated with Diamond Way Centers) run by foreigners. Otherwise, Vajrayana doesn't lie in Vietnamese Buddhist tradition the same way as Mahayana.

But unlike a Catholic or Protestant, a Vietnamese Buddhist might not really identify with any sect of Buddhism. If you ask them, they might not even know. And Theravadin Buddhists and Mahayana Buddhists can actually be Buddhist buddies together in the same places without any conflict. Vietnamese Buddhists are generally some mixture of Pure Land and Tientai for most people (laypeople) which involves mostly chanting, burning stuff, ringing bells, and praying, or Vietnamese Zen (Thiền-Na or more commonly just Thiền), which is mostly for monks and is where meditation is found. The two types of Buddhism live side by side and are mixed into a unified Zen-Pure Land Buddhism and this doesn't seem to bother anyone. Vietnamese might not even identify themselves as Buddhist, although they will still have a mix of Buddhist, Confucian, and ancestor-worship beliefs and practices.

Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật

A common chant or prayer used by Vietnamese Buddhists is "Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật" which is a call (somewhat like seeking refuge) to the A Di Da (Amitābha) Buddha, who was a, but not the, Buddha. By calling out his name it is said you will be born in the Pure Land (tịnh độ) when you die, where you can more easily attain enlightenment. To me, it sounds a lot like Jesus. However, chanting can also be similar to Buddhist meditation practices by instilling a sort of mindfulness. Anyways, that line is just the first part of a longer prayer which is meaningless in Vietnamese but was transcribed (via Chinese) from Sanskrit. You can find it in small booklets found, among other places, in some vegetarian restaurants.

Vietnamese Buddhist laypersons are mostly not vegetarian, but once a month (although preferably six days a month) Buddhists will abstain from animal food products. On these days, which occur at midpoints in the lunar month, many local restaurants especially those near temples will serve vegetarian dishes. Vegetarian restaurants will be packed, but temples will also provide vegetarian meals, sometimes for free.

Thích Nhất Hạnh

The last piece I'll cover in this introduction to Vietnamese Buddhism is the aspect of Vietnamese Buddhism outside of Vietnam. In America, Buddhism came to be known from Asian immigrants and especially from certain Americans going over to Japan after the war and learning about Japanese Zen. [If there are stories of American War Veterans bringing Vietnamese Buddhism back to the States, I'd love to hear about it.] Buddhism in Japan had itself spread from China which had received it from India. Likewise, Tibetan Buddhism has also spread to the Western world after exiled Tibetans fled to India where they came into contact with traveling hippies.

Vietnamese Buddhists have also had their influence around the world although mostly through a single enigmatic figure rather than a school of thought. This person would be Thich Nhat Hanh (random aside: Thích is the "family name" taken by Vietnamese Buddhists when they become monks and it comes from Thích-ca Mâu-ni or Shakyamuni, the Buddha). Thich Nhat Hanh comes from Vietnamese Rinzai lineage, but today he is said to no longer represents any kind of contemporary Vietnamese Buddhism. Sadly, he is also not allowed to freely return to Vietnam despite being one of the world's greatest living Zen masters.

Another Vietnamese monk who came to be known around the world was one Thích Quảng Đức. It was not his teachings that brought him fame but his self-immolation in protest of religious persecution which became a major event in the end of American support for the South Vietnamese government. A large memorial park was recently constructed at the intersection of Cach Mang Thang 8 and Nguyen Dinh Chieu in District 3 where Thich Quang Duc set himself on fire. Today, as Tibetan monks self-immolate in increasing numbers, also in protest of a certain government, they might learn a thing or two about PR from the Vietnamese.

But like other waves of Asian immigration before, the post-Vietnam War flood of Vietnamese into the US eventually led to temples in maturing Vietnamese communities everywhere in the country. I believe these temples mostly serve to memorialize ancestors and as community centers now but some do serve to teach practical Buddhist teachings that can be useful to more than just Vietnamese immigrants. Today they don't hold the cachet that, say, Japanese-style Zen centers have. But I am, with the help of some good friends, gradually discovering the traditions in Vietnam that have been passed down and were able to foster such great masters of whom Thich Nhat Hanh and Thich Quang Duc are only two.

Last night I went to my first Saigon Heat game (thanks Skunkworks!) against the Philippines Patriots (the Philippines actually have two teams in the ASEAN Basketball League). Despite being up by six in the first half, the Patriots swiftly brought nearly 20 points of defeat to Saigon, who seemed to make mistake after mistake. The Heat are Vietnam's only basketball team, have only been around since late last year, and have been trying to promote this rather unknown sport with lots of promotional tickets. There was a decent turnout that night and it really was a fun night out, despite our loss.

Saigon have two Americans on the team (including an ex-Laker, I hear) who tower over the rest of the players, as well as two Filipinos. The Philippines, with much stronger American influence, are relatively big fans of basketball whereas in Vietnam it's really all about soccer (bong da, da banh, football, whatever). But there are small numbers of Vietnamese who enjoy shooting hoops. (A few of us play irregularly on Sunday afternoons if anybody reading would like to join. Preferably, you are not too good.)

Despite regular (English language) TV programming support from the league, I think it will still take some effort for b-ball to take off in Vietnam, and Asia in general -- really, most countries outside of the U.S, although it's certainly gotten a lot more popular around the world. At the moment, it feels more like an expensive hobby for some Asians with a lot of money and a love for sport, but not enough to buy an NBA team proper. It will be a decade before Vietnamese kids who grow up watching basketball will be ready, and tall enough, to play for the Heat. Perhaps the owners of the Heat should invest in battling malnutrition among Vietnamese children - team up with Vinamilk!

Home games are at the Tan Binh Stadium. Tickets are as low as 40k and go up to 500k. Try catching an NBA game for $2 back in the states! It makes for a decent date if you're looking for date ideas. Tickets can be purchased at the stadium (18 Xuan Hong), as well as various Coffee Bean locations around town. See you there this Saturday as the Heat play the Indonesia Warriors (thanks Topica!).

This post is not about basketball.

This post is about staying cool.

During my first few months in Vietnam I sweat a lot. Now I sweat less.

1. Change your genes. If you are Vietnamese, you sweat less. If you are derived from Europeans, you will sweat more at the same temperature. You can "get used to it" and not using the A/C more than necessary helps to acclimate (it will feel a lot more humid if you've been in a cold A/C room all day) but you will never stay as dry as a Vietnamese person. Hmm, we're off to a pretty bad start...

2. GTFO. Saigon and southern Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia can be pleasant during the dry season. In Saigon, that means November to February. December and January are the best times of the year to be here, and also the time most expats are likely to go back to their own countries for Christmas/New Year/Tet. Which is really a shame.

The rainy season from June to October are mixed, weather-wise. But when it does rain, and usually after it rains, the cool winds that created the rainstorms succeed in bringing down temperatures. But it can be quite hot and humid before it rains, or if the skies are promising rain yet failing to deliver.

April and May are pretty awful. Go to Dalat or something.

3. Stop moving. Stop exercising. When the sun is out and it's hot, don't exacerbate the situation by walking around. I used to think walking was normal, or even bicycling. Vietnamese people think it's insane. If you must exercise, do it before the sun comes up or after it goes down.

Riding a motorbike helps immensely. When it's not super sunny, it can be in the 30s and the wind still feels cool. You might think Vietnamese people are crazy for wearing jackets in this heat but a light, airy jacket does serve to keep the sun off. There are also these "nets" for motorbike seats that keep your seat from getting too hot to sit on in the sun as well as slightly increasing airflow to your sweaty arse.

4. Baby powder. If you're male and not Vietnamese you probably have a lot of useless body hair. Fur is great for keeping your body warm during ice ages but it's a gross evolutionary vestige in Saigon's climate. Combined with sweat and trapped under clothes it becomes even more uncomfortable. Use something like baby powder (which Johnson&Johnson have made available to us!).

5. Siesta. Just sleep all afternoon if you can. It's a worthless time to be outside unless you're poolside.

BONUS: Stick ice cubes down your pants.

Did you know that Facebook was tracking all the links you clicked? If you've ever tried to copy a link from Facebook to another site then you'd see that the link always started with www.facebook.com which is how they track what pages you're visiting.

In Vietnam, this is more than just a privacy problem. Because Facebook access intermittently requires workarounds to connect, those links can be useless even if we can see the actual website URL right there. This is because, by showing you the real website URL, Facebook makes you think they aren't doing anything tricky by adding a tracking ID to the URL and forcing you to go through Facebook to browse to the site.

So what can you do to make your life easier as well as private?

Install the Facebook Link Tracking Disabler free from the Chrome Web Store.

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Bonus: Are you tired of people using Facebook apps to post news stories which then require you to install the app to actually read the article? If you haven't already filtered all of those out of your feed then you should at least install the Facebook Article Grabber extension to convert those stories into real URLs.

Today, Wikipedia, Google, and many other high profile websites are protesting the MPAA's Protect IP Act (PIPA, in the Senate) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, in the House), two anti-piracy acts that they're trying to push into legislation in the US, which also threaten internet freedom. Citizens of other countries should be concerned not just because much of the internet each of us uses runs in the US and so abides by US law, but because the wording that eventually passes will likely be copied by governments around the world.

Netizens in Vietnam have joined the cause or at least have spread word in support. Stepping back, doing so is an act of irony from multiple perspectives.

First, that we're protesting at all in a country where public protest is a privilege more than a right, that the Communist Party is seldom willing to confer. In this case, there's little concern for the Party, since the object of protest is in America, and it's specifically an industry (Hollywood) which clearly gets no respect here - it's more convenient to buy pirated DVDs, two for a dollar, publicly on the street at tax-paying (or whatever it is they're paying, to whoever) businesses, than it is to download them online anyways.

Next, we're protesting because we don't want arbitrary websites to be taken down by the law without any due process. If you're at all familiar with Vietnam's legal system, you'll already know that this is the case here. Nominally, pornography is banned and this is why the government can block websites but if there are any porn sites that are blocked I'm not aware. If IP laws were enforced here, Zing would not exist. But some websites are taken down occasionally.

And finally, we're using social media as our protest medium. Social media and web technology make it really easy to join a protest; it only takes two clicks to share something on Facebook. Except that Facebook itself is already "blacked out" in Vietnam. And Facebook is by far the most commonly used form of social media in Vietnam. And the protest is about internet censorship.

The point I want to make is that internet freedom is valuable and is a worthwhile cause for all people. For the people who are just now thinking about internet censorship issues, I hope they also become aware of it in a more immediate context, like a campaign to help starving Africans should also serve to bring about greater awareness of poverty closer to home.

Happy 2012!

Despite one of FPT's divisions signing a contract with Facebook to be a Facebook developer partner in Vietnam, unlike what many folks here in Vietnam had hoped, it did not mean that FPT would keep access to Facebook flowing freely. Facebook isn't actually banned in Vietnam, it just suffers from "technical difficulties" from time to time that nobody seems to bother to investigate for the millions of users in Vietnam. So businesses still advertise and do business using Facebook as a platform. Even the State uses Facebook, with the Vietnam Administration of Tourism stating they will campaign on Facebook. I suppose they don't mind if only people outside of Vietnam can see the ads, even if most tourists in Vietnam come from Vietnam.

There are a number of theories as to why it's sometimes difficult to access Facebook in Vietnam. In China, it's outright banned. In Cambodia, it's just really slow, but otherwise doesn't suffer the same "technical difficulties" despite using the same Internet service providers as Vietnam (as Vietnamese telecoms serve as uplinks to Cambodian ISPs). Some of the conspiracy theories include pressure from rival social networks like Zing Me or the government's own Go.vn, or that Facebook is blocked due to not paying taxes.

As of right now, FPT has started making it "technically difficult" to access Facebook, whereas Viettel seems to be okay, and VNPT is hit or miss (currently it is working on this VNPT connection), Mobifone is a no go. The usual method of changing your /etc/hosts file or your DNS will no longer work. Using apps like HotSpot Shield, VPNs, proxies, and SSH tunnels will always work. You can also use various apps including Seesmic or Hootsuite to access both Facebook and Twitter at the same time.

So if you don't want to play musical chairs with your ISPs as each one opens/closes access to Facebook, be sure to have one of the above in your arsenal of freedom.

If your ISP is blocking Facebook then you must use a general workaround such as Hotspot Shield (spammy) or a VPN like StrongVPN.

BarCampSaigon Winter 2011 was a success by most measures, comparable to the previous one. There were a lot of registrations, a lot of attendees, and a lot of sessions. We fed, clothed, and caffeinated hundreds of people and found sponsors willing to pay for it all. We didn't lose money (making money isn't possible, but losing money is). Yet something about it has been bothering me since last Sunday.

Barcamping is easy; Easy to attend; Even easy to organize.

Yes, it can be easy to organize a BarCamp. But, I think, it's really difficult to organize BarCamps (plural).

For one, most people who like the idea of organizing a BarCamp like the idea exactly once. It's hard to keep the fire going. The first BarCamp Saigon flame nearly died out - some embers turned into a second generation. But BarCamp Hanoi's flame has already disappeared. These are unrecognized failures.

The problem, as I see it, is that this BarCamp didn't necessarily ensure that another BarCamp would happen, and I think just continued to fuel the myth among people that BarCamps will happen magically and automatically, that they will get a free meal and t-shirt again. After some thought, these three distillations occurred to me:

1. barcamp should beget barcamp.
2. barcamp should be the beginning - not the end.
3. barcamp should be the exception - not the rule.

So let me explain.

1. BarCampSaigon should be the genesis of the next BarCampSaigon, and also BarCamps in other Vietnamese cities - BarCampCanTho, BarCampDaNang, BarCampDaLat. People should understand what a BarCamp is enough to organize simple ones in their hometowns, and do it without worrying about significant funding or caring how many people will show up. Clothing and caffeination optional.

2. Things should start at BarCamp. Ideas should be formed and relationships forged out of discussions among people who should have been meeting more regularly but hadn't. It shouldn't be a place to launch or announce your finished product, although if you started from a previous BarCamp that would be thrilling news. Sessions should not just lead to greater understanding, but cause new questions and avenues of inquiry to be developed.

3. BarCamp is the unconference. But it's also become the premier tech conference in Saigon. I think there should be large tech conferences here covering the major topics that are presented on at BarCampSaigon. And BarCampSaigon should be the place for importing new foreign and emerging ideas, which should then one day get full conferences of their own, so that BCSG can be a platform for further more ideas which need sharing.

These three goals aren't officially BarCamp's raison d'etre, nor are they the only important ingredients in a BarCamp. The meat of the camp does matter: the number and quality of sessions and people leading them so that people buzz about the next BarCamp; food and coffee and beer to get people to sit down communally; design of t-shirts and other assets to make the event come off professional; and convincing sponsors to make it all happen. I would like to have more thoughts about how those ingredients can coincide with the above three ideas.

If you missed it, a few weeks ago the global Startup Weekend competition came to Ho Chi Minh City (which we all know is Saigon). There have been a number of such startup idea pitching competitions in both Saigon and Hanoi recently. I was able to take part in StartupWeekend here in the capacity of a mentor. This meant I could walk around to each team while they were working on their ideas and give suggestions. Suggestions were not so much about the core idea, which was already set, or how to legally incorporate, which was too early, but how to strengthen the business case for the idea, improve implementation, create a better presentation (presentation is seriously important), and suggest alternative markets and competitors which they may not have been aware of.

The event takes place over 54 hours (a weekend starting from Friday night) in which first ideas are pitched, then filtered into the most popular ones. In the end there were about a dozen ideas which the initiators could then gather team members from those whose ideas weren't chosen or came just to join a team.

In the end, these teams gave presentations before a live audience (including representatives from the media). I didn't see much coverage of the actual pitches of the event so I'd like to record them here.

This post comes out of a conversation I had with my friend Prithvi, who has years of experience in the outsourcing industry both here and in China and other countries.

Outsourcing is a huge industry here in Vietnam. It solves several problems for Vietnam. First, it brings in much needed income. Second, it does so without requiring a high ratio of expensive imported inputs (compare this to making shoes which are exported for a cheap price, but most of the costs come from materials which must be imported). Third, it helps advance domestic use of technology, which should make all industries more efficient.