NASSCOM Product Conclave 2009

 

 

 

 

I had the opportunity to attended the NASSCOM Product Conclave on the 27th and 28th of Oct at Bangalore. Although the conclave was supposed to focus on Products, it did seem to me and also to a lot of other delegates that it ended up being more of a startup focused conclave rather than being a product conclave. And I am not complaining. Moreover I think it was good that the focus of the conclave was more startup focused because there is still a lot to be done and a long way to go before we can start claiming that the indian software industry is churning out world class products. We do have some good products that have come out of here, but there is still a lot to be done in this space.

I particularly enjoyed the Keynote and the tweetup sessions with Guy Kawasaki. He has the ability to keep the audience involved and interested. The best part being, he never misses out on an opportunity to sell alltop and keeps creating such opportunities every once in a while.

Some of the other sessions that I found really interesting were :

Business Plan session by Prof. Naeem Zafar. Naeem kept the audience engaged and interested in the two hour long session and gave very interesting insights on writing a Business Plan. He brought out the importance of doing proper market research and also suggested some very nice ways of using google tools to go about it. The importance of having a right team and the composition of the team was also well covered in his talk.

Sessions on developing technologies, products and services for the consumers at the bottom of the pyramid and for the rural areas were very interesting. One of the sessions was moderated by Ramesh Ramanathan of Janagraha fame (he has started a micro finance company Janalakshmi) and the other session was moderated by Prof. Ashvin Mahesh of mapunity. It was very interesting to know how companies like Babajobs, Co-options, ITC (echoupal), M Cril, Janalakshmi etc are doing a great job of helping people and using technology to reach out to areas unexplored.

Some of the unsessions that I got to attend were the Mentoring for startups and the evolution of the startup ecosystem in India. The Mentoring for startups session provided good insight on how to go about finding the right mentor/advisor for the leaders of the company and how best to utilize their time and potential. My key takeaway from the startup ecosystem discussion was that, there is a dire need to focus on the educational institutions and groom students well in advance to prepare them mentally and technically to face the challenges of the startup environments. So that the startup and the student communities can benefit the most from each other.

Overall, it was a good learning experience for me and I had the opportunity of meeting a lot of very nice people.

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Jolicloud on virtualbox

Continuing my search for a lightweight OS to be run on my old spare laptop I chanced upon jolicloud and requested for an invitation. Got the invitation right away and downloaded the iso image yesterday.
The initial impressions are good. The installation was fairly straight forward, much like any ubuntu install.
Have posted a few screen shots below.
Now I have two OSes that I want to try on the old laptop this weekend – jolicloud and goodOS.

I do like the new look of the desktop that jolicloud has and also the very nice and intutive interface to install new apps (see last image) makes is easier for people accustomed to other OSes to move seamlessly.

However, what I am not quite sure is how will jolicloud login behave when I connect to the jolicloud webservice from another machine. Since it seems to keep the data of my installed apps on their server.

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Help Flood Victims in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

If you are willing to help victims of the floods that affected Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Please see the information below:

Donate Dry ration, Utility items, Clothing, etc. Pls contact Priyanka(9986043080) or Vivek(9845080313) or send an email to sahayata@pankhudifoundation.org to donate or fill this form:   http://tiny.cc/vcFMa

Donate whatever you can to help the people in distress !

Diwali break

My week long diwali break ends today. It was a nice and relaxing break from work. Parents had come over from Karnal to celebrate diwali with us. Gargi had a lot of fun playing with her grandparents.
We had made plans to visit Kanyakumari and Rameshwaram, but it had to be cancelled as my father had some urgent work to take care back in Karnal and they cut short their trip by 5 days.
I read the latest book by Chetan Bhagat – 2States using the free time and liked it. Will write another post on my impressions of the book.
Back to work from tomorrow !