On Dec 17th, I’ll be in Mumbai speaking at Infovision: The Knowledge Summit. It’s probably the most prestigious event focusing on Knowledge Management featuring such stalwarts as F.C.Kohli, father of Indian Software Industry, Prabhakar Ragahavan, Head of Yahoo! R&D, Dr.Pandu Nayak of Google.
I’m on the panel discussing ‘Web 2.0 & Mashups’ and my fellow panelists include Arun Ramanujapuram (Director of Advanced Technology Group, Yahoo! Bangalore), Ashok Krish (TCS Innovation Labs), Rohit Agarwal (Founder & CEO, TechTribe Networks) and Jayanta Chatterjee (Professor, IME Department, IIT Kanpur). Coincidentally, Rohit of Techtribe and I were in the same panel at the Knowledge Summit in Delhi last month and we are speaking at the Web Innovation summit on Dec 18th.
I wish the organizers of this event had taken a little more care while putting my profile up on their website. Not only do I have a new title, I’m also working in a new company!!
The very next day, I head out to Bangalore to speak at the Web Innovation Summit. It’s quite a major event focusing on latest web technologies and close to a 1000 members are expected to attend. The event is put together by TFCI (Trade Fairs Conferences International) headed by Bal Tarkad, its CEO.
I’ve put together events and know a thing or two about event management. I’ve been involved in the backstage of the preparations and should say that Bal is the most creative and aggresive guy I’ve seen to push the event to greater heights. Lots to learn from him.
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That will be the crux of the discussion during the CEO Conclave that I will be moderating tomorrow at Great Lakes Institutes’s annual big show. The topic for the conclave is “Entrepreneurial Managers – Making Managers Entrepreneurial”.
The students at Great Lakes have convinced an impressive line up of CEOs for the event.
N.Srinivasan, CEO, India Cements
A.Mahendran, CEO, Godrej Sara Lee
N.K.Ranganathan, CEO, Grundfos Pumps
Abhay Kumar, CEO, Shasun Chemicals
G.R.K.Reddy, CEO, Marg Constructions
If you notice, none of them are from the IT industry and that’s a welcome change. The last few CEO conclaves that I have been moderating have been too IT and specifically Internet centric and I could do with a change. It’ll be interesting to see how traditional companies deal with the aspect of encouraging managers to be entrepreneurial. To me, it sounds like an oxymoron. I’ll make sure to ask some tough sticky questions.
Here’s what their invitation card to the event looks like. I checked with the organizers and I’m told that anyone interested enough to attend the event can come. The venue is Image auditorium, MRC Nagar, R A Puram. The CEO conclave starts at 1:30 PM.
However, you may not want to miss the morning sessions. Once again, an impressive lineup.
Thomas Anderson, Associate Dean from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago
Y.V.Reddy, Governor, Reserve Bank of India
Shailesh Rao, Managing Director, Google India
Mahesh Bhupati, Tennis champion
N.R.Narayana Murthy, Infosys
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Two weeks ago, a dozen of us headed out for a trip to Coorg. Quite a varied bunch. We had amongst us a marketing head honco, Communications Manager, Teacher, Software Guy, Traveller, Pro-photographer, Radio Jockey & Lawyer. It’s the diversity of characters that I loved. The only common thread that connected all of us was that we were all bloggers and travel lovers.
Since we all had to fly in from Chennai, Bombay and Delhi, we chose the Bangalore Airport as rendezvous. Once all of us gathered together, we huddled up in a van and headed on our 7 hour journey to Coorg. Most of the gang didn’t know each other but the holiday spirit helped break ice real quickly.
Having had an insignificant breakfast on the plane, I was hungry. So were a few others but our bangalore friends asked us to hold our appetite until we made the 40 km journey outside of Bangalore for a hotel called Kamat’s. It’s a mangalorean specialty restaurant and it absolutely stood up to the hype and made it worth the wait. We gorged.
It was nightfall by the time we reached the Club Mahindra Resort and had a traditional welcome. The welcome drinks were served and our bags were whisked away in an electric vehicle to our rooms.
The flower arrangements at a small pond amidst the wood carved lobby was a photographer’s delight.
The rooms clearly exceeded my expectation. The room was far bigger than any hotel room that I had stayed in. And much later, I came to know that it’s the smallest category we had stayed in, the Studio. I can only imagine what the other villas looked like. The wooden floors, lovely view from the balcony, the attention to minor details stood apart.
On the first night, we witnessed a traditional dance performance from local coorgi women.
…followed by performance from the Coorgi men.
It’s a snap that I had taken and I love it. I didn’t have my camera and that helped me experiment with cameras from other folks.
The early morning views were to die for. Here’s one atop the highest point in the resort which had a mega chess board.
We had really good guitarists and singers amongst the bunch. After downing enough alcohol, the mistakes in chords and pitches didn’t matter. It took be back to my college day memories.
I must’ve put on atleast a couple of kilos in the two days that I was there. Every meal had different menu and we were really well fed.
The best part of the breakfast was the view. The other side of the building was a drop and it felt like we were afloat amongst the trees.
Our guide was appropriately named ‘Joy’ and boy, were we glad to have him around. The guy had a nice sense of humour and amazing level of enthusiasm. Club Mahindra had worked out a real packed schedule for the three days we were in. Someone out there had done their homework really well.
Sqatting by the Cauvery.
Ever had a feeling your heart was about to burst? Well, I had after a couple of us made a bravado decision to run up the 300 odd steps to a hill near Tala Cauvery in one single burst. I was the first to reach the top, which in a a way was a good thing. I must’ve rolled over in pain trying to assuage the acute burning sensation in my heart. By the time the others caught up, I had time to recover and put on my macho face.
The really cold pool isn’t for the faint hearted. Once we braved the first entry into the pool (the smartest way is to just jump in), we had good fun playing water polo.
I had to return two days earlier to catch my trip to Amsterdam. Reading other’s travelogue and looking at the pictures, it looks like I missed quite a bit. More travelogues…
Arun Nair : The key guy from Club Mahindra is a new found blog enthusiast. Inspired enough to start his new blog and he starts off with a bang on his Coorg travel tales.
Mridula : Hey, teachers are supposed to be docile types, right. Wrong? She made mince-meat of all of us at the game of table tennis. Also a travel freak.
Sudhir Syal : The motormouth and clearly the guy who got away pulling everyone’s legs. The fun guy. A fun travelogue to read.
Anil: What kind of a guy quits software to join advertising? Answer: The interesting and creative type of guy. And his travelogue reflects just that.
Srinidhi : The most vociferous critic of Club Mahindra gets a chance to experience the resort for himself. Quite interesting to read his take.
Anita Bora: The chronic traveller is yet to put her travelogue up. Just a small teaser up. Should be worth the wait, much like the Kamat hotel that she recommended.
Dev Amritesh : My friend from college who now heads marketing at Dominos Pizza. Has the most ‘I care a damn’ attitude in expressing his honest views. Nice read.
And yep, don’t miss the full catalogue of photos taken by the gang from which I shamelessly lifted all the photos mentioned here. Not surprisingly, most folks had high end Nikon and Canon cameras, befitting their tag of travelbugs.
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I’m at the biggest ever event that Nokia has conducted. Over 2700 delegates representing over 100 countries are here at Nokia World 2007 taking place at the RAI Convention centre in the heart of Amsterdam.
A quick disclaimer before I start with the reporting. I’m here on invitation from Nokia in my capacity as podcast host at The Kiruba Show, as the Editor of blognation India and as a longtime blogger. I’d like to play an unbiased role in reporting about the event here. I can see you go “Yeah, right” with a synical smile and that’s totally understandable. Yet, I’m going to try not to suck up and report things as best as I can.
Alright, now on with the show. The first thing that stuck me with the event was that it is billed as “the premier global conference for the mobility and internet industries”. Mobility, I can understand. But Internet? Nokia is absolutely serious about its handsets being the primary access point to the Internet.
It’s already happening here in Europe. A good sampler can be the delegates at this conference. I saw more people using their mobile phone to access the Internet than for making phone calls or sending SMSes. Agreed the Interent access infrastructure is far better here in Europe, but its definitely the way forward. And I definitely see this happening in India.
The classic example are the cameras in mobile phones. They started off as premium attachment but now they have become a standard feature in most mobile phones. So much so that, Nokia is now the biggest manufacturer of digital cameras in the World.
I only hope that the mobile service providers (and there was solid representation of Bharti, Idea..and almost all major players at the event) start ramping up the infrastructure. Infact, I strongly believe that it should be our Government that should take this up as its agenda in earnest. It’s a laughing farce that the Ministry of IT and communications announce 2006 as the Year of Broadband and woefully fall short of their estimated projects. Looking ahead, they have done a downward revision of the target with a modest 20 Million connections by 2010. Bloody hell, we add up around 8 Million new mobile connections per month. Yes, PER MONTH. and we’re well on our way to achieve the 600 million connections on the same year. If the govt officials took their head out of unmentional place, they’d realize that Internet thru mobile is a fantastic opportunity and THE way to go.
Shiv (the Nokia India head) tells me that we have even overtaken China in terms of Nett additions per month. Beating China!! Can you imagine? That’s some serious s#%t.
I guess this is how they say ‘Hello’ in Dutch. The main entrance to the massive rai congrescentrum, the venue for the event. It may look unimpressive here but its a bloody large convention centre.
Here’s Nokia’s VP Anssi Vanjoki, speaking during the first day’s keynote. The photo doesn’t do justice to the massiveness of the hall but its one helluva large hall. Imagine 2700 folks in one hall and more space available for few more.
Anyways, when Nokia’s CEO gave the main keynote, I can’t help but compare it with Apple’s CEO, Steve Job’s keynote. The audience were very uptight and stiff and I could hardly see the kind of passion from the crowd that’d you’d expect from such a landmark event. I expected prolonged 5 minute long standing ovation, crowd growing crazily beserk from some really important announcements. Something that you’d seen either in a Steve Job’s keynote or heck, Steve Ballmer’s speech. Instead, it was a tipid simple clapping.
And boy, those suits. I felt under-dressed in my tshirts and jeans. I probably must be the only guy in causals. Everyone were in suits, even members of the Indian media contingent. The European crowd is so unlike what I’d seen both in India and the US.
A big indication from Nokia is their environemnt responsibility progam that came out as big in the keynote. Nokia is researching on using bio-degradable plastic in mobile phones. They are using the 3110 Evolve as the guine pig. It uses 30 percent recycled materials. Judging by the response, it may be applied to all the phones manufactured by Nokia. Might not sound like a big deal, but they make over 500 million phones and you can imagine how much of plastic gets eventually dumped.
I’m a pro-green guy and this came in as a good move. Hopefully, Nokia will take it more than just a one off measure to show they care about environemnt and really get serious with this initiative.
Nokia will also cut the size of the packaging. Almost by 60%. Apparently, this simple move will save Nokia 100 Million Euros every year in transportation cost alone.
Lots more interesting announcements from Nokia’s biggest event. Will report them later tonight. Now, heading out to my hotel to get ready for a get-together. It’s bone chilling out here with scales dipping to 7 degrees. I’m going to brave the rain and the cold, skip the bus and instead take a long walk to the hotel. More fun roughing it out.
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Will be in Amsterdam for a week. If you happen to be from the city, I’d love to catch up. Please email me at Kiruba @ Kiruba.com . Now, off to catch the flight.
(Photo: Mors )
Photo: Joep
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Email:Kiruba @ Kiruba.com
Phone :+91-44-42733619
Mobile : 98415 97744
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