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Incidentally cameras have been banned from the stadium during IPL matches …hence all snaps are courtesy our mobile phones.

Frankly, given our current traction and focus, we were under-prepared for this kind of an incident, so it has come as a rude shock. But we are getting back to speed (although the site is again experiencing problems as I write this blogpost) and getting prepared for further problems… stay tuned…. will keep you posted.

I feel the following are four distinct way in which Web 2.0 can impact any organisation (and not necessarily technology companies).

- Advertising / Brand-building through social networks & communities
- Social Media/PR through blogs
- Direct Sales (through advertising or lead generation)
- Mediated Market Research

And as the slide deck (below) will show, there’s a fair bit of activity happening in India on those fronts.

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Enterprise 2.0 is another big area where Web 2.0 can have signficant impact on organisations, though it is internally focused on productivity gains through the use of tool/platforms that Web 2.0 has spawned.

Check out the video from this event (its bulky and takes a fair bit of time to download)

As part of the research, EmPower has created an online consumer survey which needs to be filled out by users. This is a short survey and takes app 4-5 minutes (I took it myself). Can I request the readers of this blog to spare a few moments and help them gather some meaningful & actionable data.

Here is the survey link (you can also click the image below to access it)

Working at SlideShare can be a hugely rewarding experience. Building social software is a whole lot of fun: the technical challenges, the high-involvement nature of the work (how often can you show your friends & family what you did at work last week?), the fast changing internet landscape, and the constant feedback from users, make it a different ball-game than the usual technical work.

Benefits include:

- Experience with cutting edge open-source technology
- Working with a team of bright, enthusiastic people in a “No-BS” environment where you can focus on creating great technology that is used by millions of people every day
- Competitive Salary
- Generous Stock options

We are recruiting for the following positions:

Server side hackers

If you’re a open source junkie, and love hacking Linux systems, deep algorithmic work (search, recommendation engines, etc), SQL tuning and optimization, and modifying open-source code to your own twisted purposes, then you might be a good fit for a position with our server side team. Experience in scalability of large webapplications is an advantage.

Front End Developers

We’re looking for web-savvy hackers who know JavaScript and Flash and PHP, and can use them to full effect in creating amazing web applications. Prior experience in application development in a internet firm may be an advantage.

Technologies/Platforms

We work on ruby on rails, linux, freebasd, debian, Amazon S3, MySql etc. Candidates not having experience in ROR can apply- if you have worked earlier on PHP, Python, Perl etc, thats fine as well.

Send resumes to ‘amit AT slideshare DOT net’

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The Speakers: Check out the wiki for the sessions. The noteworthy ones included a very well analysed presentation by Prashant Singh about the state of user generated content in India, a live demo from the Vinsol team on deploying a ROR app on EC2 & a talk by Vineet Tyagi (Impetus) on Agile Development & practises. The Amazon Web Services evangelism team (currently visiting India from Silicon Valley) had an extended session about how AWS was a game changer in the global internet infrastructure sweepstakes, with its battery of services that include S3, EC2, AMT etc, besides lesser know projects such as ‘Grep the Web’. Interestingly enough, this was followed up by a presentation from The Sun Startup program which also is aimed at the startup infrastructure mgmt space, but from a diametrically opposite angle (the talk incidentally was given by a SUN affiliate and not SUN’s evangelist, who had signed up for the event but did not turn up).

The Mood: The mood was effervescent and infectious. Sessions took place amidst the usual self-organising chaos; some first time attendees (rather speakers) were found complaining about the sub optimal presentation set up in one of the rooms- I guess it’ll take them a while to understand the BarCamp culture and how you need to find your own audience rather than depend on the organisers to deliver to them a room choc-a-bloc with an eagerly awaiting, rapt audience.

The Real BarCamp: Once the pseudo one got over, the group headed to Ruby Tuesday at Noida’s Sector 18 for the “Real” Barcamp…pictures on flickr.

iNeed: During the opening introductory session, we realised that many people were there looking for something- possibly employees, cofounders, facilities, incubators etc. To help them get the word out, we quickly converted the whiteboard into a bulletin board dubbed “iNeed” (think apple). By the end of the day, the whiteboard resembled a graphiti wall with people scribbling all over it (check out the slide no 2 in the deck). Some quick improvisation that proved useful.

Check out the long list of blog posts detailing the event.

If you are in Delhi and happen to be a tech professional, startup entrepreneur, investor, media person, blogger or just a curious onlooker, THIS IS the event to attend and network with like minded folks. In true BarCamp spirit, we’ll try to keep the event as ‘unconference‘ as possible - non commercialised, no rockstar keynote addresses, no sales pitches & no audience-only participants.

Here’s how you could participate-

1) If you wish to attend - go to the DelhiBarCamp3 wiki and add your name to the list of ‘campers’ (the site is a wiki, so anybody can edit it)

2) If you wish to share your experience with a talk or presentation - add your name & topic in the section marked as ‘proposed sessions’.

3) If you wish to help organize the event - get in touch with any of the planners mentioned on the site.

We need your help in spreading the word around, so please blog this as loudly as you can; tell your friends, colleagues & acquaintances.

Look forward to seeing you there…

Roorkee incidentally, is India’s oldest engineering school and it was taken into the IIT fold in 2001. Before the talk, I had some time to spare and I spent that time going around the campus and took some snaps with my mobile camera (shared below).

Its great to see how most engineering & MBA schools in India now have an entrepreneurship cell and are making efforts at promoting it. This certainly was not the case a decade ago (when I graduated from engg).

Prof. Hal Varian– Prof. Varian is Chief Economist at Google. He is one of the world’s leading thinkers about the socio-economic dimension of the internet. He is a renowned economist researcher, teaches at the Univ of Berkeley, has written some of the best books about the information economy and writes a monthly column for the NYT.

Guy Kawasaki- Guy needs no introduction- Silicon Valley legend, former Apple think-tank, sharp marketing brain, investor, entrepreneur, A++ list blogger and something else that is of immense importance to us- he is an icon in the field of communications and presentations; his 10-20-30 rule for making presentations is widely acclaimed.

Ross Mayfield- Ross is the co-founder & CEO of Social Text, the world’s first and biggest enterprise wiki company. He is widely respected as a leading thinker about Enterprise 2.0. and has a very rich & diverse background, that includes a diplomatic stint with the Government of Estonia!

We welcome all the advisors to SlideShare. Something that we strongly believe in (and what I have also talked about very frequently on Webyantra) is the role of diversity within your startup as you take critical decisions about your product, strategy, competitive position et al. We have tried to bring that diversity to the board with this team.

Role Description:

The person will be responsible for content realted aspects of SlideShare. SlideShare is the world’s largest community for sharing presentations. It has all kind of presentations that one could think of and its has a highly diversified user base- diversified in terms of geography, professional background, psychographics etc. The role would involve (but not be limited to)

1. creating and driving the content strategy for SlideShare
2. taking ownership of application’s content related sections (which constantly needs upgradation)
3. writing and managing our various blogs- the slideshare blog and another very interesting blog that we are soon launching
4. user engagement: we are from a user research background and SlideShare has been at the center of a serendipitous learning for us- the fact that in an agile development environment, heightened interactions with users can supplant conventional usability testing to a large extent. In that sense, we look upon user feedback & support as a strategic function. Proof of this lies in the fact that till now the job of answering support emails and user feedbacks (something that is usually accorded less importance) has been done directly by SlideShare’s three founders. Unfortunately we have limited time, but we feel the need for a smart, mature individual to take over that role.
5. handle content related aspects of events, contests, promotions on slideshare
6. represent & evangelize SlideShare in the community, media events..

Desired candidate profile:

1. the candidate must “get web 2.0″; he/she will should be living/breathing the web 24 hours/ day
2. “do what it takes” attitude with regards to work
3. be prepared to work in a small but fast growing, global scale internet company
4. ability to work alongside a hyper-agile software development team (bordering on extreme programming)
5. excellent written & oral language skills
6. prefer somebody with a strong interest/inclination in blogging, new media, social media etc (people authoring a popular blog are at an advantage here)
7. educational background: we’re not hung up about education, so this could be anything, though a degree in mass communication, new media, design etc might help.
8. experience: not more than 3-4 years, candidates with zilch experience are also welcome

Compensation will not be a constraint for the right person. If interested, please ping amit@uzanto.com

The participants in the discussion included Alok Mittal (who heads the Indian arm of Canaan Partners, an early stage venture capital firm), Prerna Gupta (who is the CEO of the social networking website, Yaari.com) besides Rajesh and my own insignificant self. You can read the transcripts of the discussion on blogworks.in. The discussion is also slated for getting published in the Impact magazine.

Something worth noting is the different backgrounds that the participants came from. Prerna runs a pure social networking site, my own experience is from a content oriented community site while Alok in his role as a VC, is the person who writes the cheque to fund tech startups. You can easily make out how each person’s background influences his/her views on the issues discussed.

The First Prize was bagged by ‘Shift Happens’, a superb commentary on the emerging socio-economic position in US as a result of the flattening world. In fact there is a bit of history to how this presentation was created; if you are interested, read that story here. The person who created this presentation runs a professional presentation design company in the US.

The Second Prize was bagged by a freakingly brilliant presentation called ‘Meet Henry’. It demonstrates a very refreshing communication style. This has already inspired a bunch of wannabes– check out this, this & this. Meet Henry also comes from a professional presentation design company.

The Third Prize went to a thought provoking (and intense) presentation titled “‘Sustainable Food Lab’” about the world’s food shortage situation. This was created by a non-profit sector worker, who lives in the US.

As Guy Kawasaki remarked, something common amongst all three winning entries was big fonts, big graphics and a storytelling orientation. In fact, one is tempted to question whether these are powerpoints at all. They are almost like a completely new medium for mass communication.

Apart from the three top awards, there were some honorable mentions as well. Check them out …

Translation as vocation: a primer for newbies
I Am The Media
Flickr
Winner, PowerPoint Live Conference 2006, “5 Killer Slides”
The 25 Basic Styles of Blogging … And When To Use Each One
Unlocking Cool - By Jeremy Gutsche, TrendHunter.com

We are elated by the response to the contest. SlideShare has gained significantly in terms of traffic & attention. And its been a great experience working with the likes of Guy Kawasaki, Garr Reynolds etc. Stay tuned to more SlideShare contests in future.

Here are the slides for my talk shared via slideshare.

Other speakers at the workshop included Ashmeet Sidana from Foundation Capital (a Silicon Valley VC firm), Manish Vij from Quasar Media and Kunwar Sachdev, CEO of Su-Kum (the invertor company).

Also take a minute to go through a few snaps that I clicked using my camera phone. The photographic quality is not great, so bear with me on this.

Users will vote on the contest entries and the top entries will be judged by the panel for the Best Presentation Awards. There is also the People’s Choice awards for the entries receiving the most user votes. The prizes for the Best Presentation Award (Alienware laptop, X Box) are sponsored by Microsoft. The People’s Awards prizes (Ipods) are sponsored by SlideShare. If you have a killer slide deck, do enter it into the contest (in fact, you can enter upto five) and get it reviewed by these luminaries of the presentation world. You can learn more about the rules here.

The idea behind the contest is to shine a spotlight on well-designed presentations and to highlight the creative and effective use of PowerPoint. Powerpoints are often blamed for brain dead presentations, but the software is hardly to blame. As Guy Kawasaki says in the press release – “A craftsman doesn’t blame his tools. We expect this contest to show exactly what PowerPoint ‘artists’ can be do with clear thinking, concise text, and cool graphics.”

And here’s some insider news. While we always had a SlideShare contest in the back of our minds, the idea for this one was thought of by Guy Kawasaki himself. He has been involved in the working out of the basic concept and its modalities. Its been a very learning experience for us all along the way.

p.s. - YouTube also launched their 2006 Most Popular Videos Awards yesterday. It was sheer coincidence that the day they chose was the same as ours.

Technologies (or platforms) involved are Ruby on Rails (ROR), AJAX, JAVA, PHP, MYSQL, XML, HTML, CSS, Amazon Web Services (like S3 & EC2), Linux, FreeBSD et al. Its great if you have prior experience in these, but that’s not necessary. We are happy to teach you, if you ‘get’ the web and want to make this your career.

We care about bright & enthusiastic folks, with zeal to explore and learn the latest technologies. People who have demonstrated the ability to undertake innovative, independent projects & assignments (outside the purview of their academic or professional work) are preferred. We specially care for people with interest in open source technologies.

Preferred candidate profile - BE/BTech in Computer Science; 0-3 years of web development experience; bright freshers are welcome; people with special interest in Web2.0, blogs, RSS et al are welcome.

We offer attractive salary, a work environment that is geared towards shared learning and the opportunity to play a significant role in creating/running world class web products .

If the above positions interest you, ping me at amit@uzanto.com

The first presentation is titled – ‘Everything you need to know about Venture Capital‘. It was delivered by Ben Holmes from Index Ventures at the Future of Web Applications (FOWA) summit at London last week. The presentation is stunningly clear and straightforward. It explains the how, why, when, when not, etc of venture funding in all of 22 slides. DON’T MISS THIS.

The second slide deck is titled ‘Sex & the Investor‘. It is from John Wilson of Folio Partners and he delivered it recently at BarcampLondon2. He talks less about the VC jargon and more about the underlying motivations behind getting venture funding. This is great as well.

I recently gave a talk on funding options available to Indian technology startups in front of a gathering, consisting mostly of MBA students and academicians. Of course, my own slides would pale into insignificance compared to these two presentations. Wish I seen these beforehand.

” In the beginning, there was MP3 sharing. Then came friend sharing (MySpace), photo sharing (Flickr), and video sharing (YouTube). Now it has come to this: PowerPoint slide sharing.

The site’s “decks,” as the slide shows are called, are diverse: conference presentations, classroom lessons (”Let’s Learn Colors!” from a middle-school Spanish class), and PowerPoint satire (Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address famously summarized in bullet points, created in 2000 by Peter Norvig, Google’s research director). ”

Unfortunately, you might not be able to see the article since BusinessWeek’s online version is a paid subscription (and they have no trial account as well).

This is great news for us and we are really kicked by this coverage. Let me thank all users of the site.

Here are some tid-bits about the event –

- The event was attended by about 65-70 people, which is the same number as last BarCamp at Delhi. Overall there were some 15 sessions.

- The heartening thing to note was that there were lots of first time participants; also the representation from the developer community was much larger this time around.

- The venue was Impetus Infotech, which is a medium scale Indian software company; that’s an encouraging sign as well- the fact that such organizations are seeing a value in associating with unconferences. A sincere thanks to them for sponsoring the event.

- We had a presentation from a fairly senior level TCS person, so that’s great as well- the fact that the big Indian software services companies are beginning to turn up as well.

- Something that disappointed me was the pool of presenters; it did not expand as compared to the last edition. The sessions included multiple presentations from the same company (including my own), which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it would have been better if there was greater diversity amongst the presenters.

The quality of the presentations and the ensuing discussions was great- no complains on that front.

Here are some snaps from the event shared via SlideShare.

Here are all the BarCampDelhi2 presentations that have been uploaded to slideshare-

http://www.slideshare.net/tag/delhibarcamp2
http://www.slideshare.net/tag/barcampdelhi2

.

Here’s hoping to more of such events in Delhi. The snapshots of the event are shared via slideshare.

The event is still gathering momentum. Since its a one day event, the number of slots available for presentations are likely to be limited. Hence if you plan to make a presentation, you should book your place NOW.

If the previous Barcamp (held in March05) is any indicator, this one should be well attended as well. I am looking forward to any product demos, live code-in sessions etc as they tend to electrify the proceedings rather than plain powerpoint style presentations.

This is the wiki where all the action is folding out.

See you there!

.

Just add your name to this wiki, so that we can budget for space, chairs and off course, food.

Here are a couple of brilliant articles on funding strategies for startups-

ValleyWag - How funding works:Startups are abandoning venture capital.Why?
NYT - For Start-Ups, Web Success on the Cheap

While the above articles are US centric, the essential dyanamics of funding remain the same even in India, hence they are definitely worth a read.

Mingling with the academic community was a welcome change from my normal routine. Something I realised was that when you have to speak publicly in front of a knowledgeable gathering, you are forced to rationalize and think through. This brings about greater clarity in your own thought process. I must confess that my own understanding of funding strategies is far better now than before.