Product Barcamp

It’s been quite a long time since I posted. This is latest new event I am planning to attend.

It is the first product barcamp in the country (I think!) cuz I have not heard of anything similar before. The aim of this barcamp is to bring all the product companies in hyderabad out into the open so that we can learn from their experiences.

Here is a brief about the event:

March 28^th, 4:30pm @ IIIT, Gachibowli, Hyderabad

Event: Hyderabad Software Products Showcase

Showcase producs from Hyderabad,  demo recent new products/startups, established products from Hyderabad, successful entrepreneurs sharing perspective, discuss the eco-system and support network available

Target: Product companies, Startups, Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Objective: To highlight the strong product traction, successes, opportunities and eco-system available.

:30	Tea
5:00	Anil Jampala, President Hysea, Welcome address
5:05	Ramanathan, CEO, Cordys India- Journey of a Product company- the Business perspective
5:30	Products landscape- Ramesh Loganathan (MD, Progress Software India)
6:00	Case study- internal innovation- Microsoft (Rich Web on mobiles)- Sudeep Bharati, Director, Mobile Developer group, Microsoft
6:15	CEO Speak
	Suheim Sheikh- Founder CEO, SDG Software
	Jay Pullur, Founder/CEO, Pramati
	CK Shastri, Founder/ CEO, Intense Technologies
	Azhar Farhan, Serial tech Entrepreneur
	Mahesh Murthy, Founder CEO Pinstorm & Founder CEO Seedfund Sandeep Bhandarkar CEO and Founder of Fineng
7:15	Panel discussion – CEOs, Academia, Support system & VCs
	CEOs, Prof.Sangal (IIIT), Sateesh Andra (DFJ), Hemir Doshi (IDG Ventures), Unnikrishnan (Sun)
8:00	Eco system- Sateesh Andra;  Hemir Doshi (IDG Ventures), Unnikrishnan (Sun)
8:25	Announce IIIT Innovation lab- Rajeev sangal
8:30	Dinner

See you there! For those who can not make it, wait for the update after!

 

Comapring FOSS.in with TIE ISB Connect

Yes, I attended both this year. Incidentally I was there at TIE ISB Connect last year as well. It’s amazing how there is always a really pretty girl dressed very chic, who is the student coordinator for services

There are a myriad differences. Let’s start with the basics:

TIE ISB has lots more suits, better food, more deserts, more people in general and definitely a much higher net worth per head on average, not to mention age.

The event is purely for profit and reeks of it. It is a very honest, straight forward event. The speakers who come in are top notch in their fields. Most speeches/presentations deserve ovations. It’s professional.

The event has lots of people looking for a few VCs, to corner, and talk about their company and things they do. It is purely networking oriented.

The technology talks involve no code but rather a recount of what has happened in the recent past and a few people playing Nostradamus about the field. More often than not, since they are the guys who are putting money where their mouth is (either as VCs or entrepreneurs), it’s true.

I thought FOSS guys were determined, but I have met certain entrepreneurs with such grit and determination, it’s almost insane. There are people who are working without funding for the last 4 years! From what I hear, the VCs are chasing them now.

FOSS.in that way, for a non-programmer was not all that great. Since I have a tech background, I could understand a few things they said, but that’s about it. I could engage in conversations with the contributors of Mozilla and Openoffice but it was more at a level that looked at what is happening and what will happen to the usage, user-friendliness and such of the products.

Very honestly, it seemed that the event had double standards – one of playing the do-good, open-source promoting kind and the other where large and small corporates promote themselves shamelessly. I will not even spare the open source communities who promote themselves shamelessly. While there was an air of contribution going around everywhere, there definitely was an air of marketing going around too! It’s almost like they were hot and cold currents that kept the system going and the people rotating from one place to another!

Some of the talks were fantastic. Some speakers were phenomenal, but on the whole it was a little too dry for me and I definitely could not contribute anything there!

It was an event where I believe every open source product/project was being shamelessly promoted to attract scores of programmers/users to flock to it and contribute. It’s no different from services marketing except these are free services (obviously numbers matter to them too… their funding is linked to it!).

At the TIE ISB connect, people really did want to connect, meet each other. Entrepreneurs wanted to share ideas, build on each others thoughts. At FOSS.in, I really did not find too many people engaged in thought exchange as such. There was more discourse on other general things rather than idea generation and such. Unless the primary contributors of the project (i.e. employees) asked for and were patient enough to listen to feedback and suggestions, there were barely any exchanged. Several talks were more like reports of what had been happening for the past 6 months than anything else.