business management, marketing, technology & entrepreneurship in a 365X24X7 world

Here’s some SlideShare news that I would like to share with readers of this blog. We just announced the constitution of our board of advisors. Joining that board are Guy Kawasaki, Hal Varian & Ross Mayfield, all of whom are widely respected thought leaders in their respective fields. Actually, all three of them have informally been involved with SlideShare for a while now, but we thought this is an opportune moment to make the association formalized. They bring different perspectives and experiences to SlideShare. We look forward to their suggestions & criticisms as we try to drive SlideShare to the next level. Here are their brief intros-

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.

Slideshare is looking to hire a content manager. This is a full time position based out of our Delhi office. Here’s a brief description for the position:

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

I was recently invited to participate in an online discussion about emerging trends in India in the fields of social media, user generated content & social networking. The discussion was initiated (& moderated) by Rajesh Lalwani, who is a Delhi based marketing communications professional and who writes Blogworks.in, a social media strategy blog.

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.

I am happy to share the results of the World’s Best Presentation Contest that recently concluded on SlideShare. The contest ran for a month and was judged by some of the superstars from the world of communications and presentations - Guy Kawasaki, Garr Reynolds, Bert Decker and Jerry Weissman. The idea behind the contest was to shine a spotlight on well designed presentations and the winning entries that emerged are REAL GEMS. You can check Technorati for hundreds of blogs that have blogged the winning presentations and people are really moved by the top winners.

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.

I was invited as a speaker to Conquest2007, an entrepreneurship focused event at BITS Pilani, one of India’s top engineering schools. I was part of the session on ‘Challenges in Globalisation and Scalability for a startup‘. My talk centered on the slideshare experience and the kind of challenges we are facing as we scale up. The audience consisted of engineering students, faculty members, participants from industry, venture capital firms etc. It was a great experience to be back amongst engineering students and one cannot help feeling nostalgic about your own educational institution. The event was organised by CELBITS, the entrepreneurial club at BITS and was sponsored by SAP.

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.