Personal Branding and Evangelism

After covering the key traits of a technology evangelist and why technology evangelism matters, I want to discuss personal branding in the context of evangelism. Before the interweb took over the print media, I grew up reading the tech. columns written by Yashwant Kanetkar, Dr. Nitin Paranjpe, Dr. Vijay Mukhi in Express Computer. In the mid 90s, I found the articles written by Atul Chitnis and...

Why Technology Evangelism Matters?

A decade back only a handful of folks carried the title of an ‘Evangelist’ on their business cards. This role was predominantly found within software product and developer platform companies. It is Apple, Microsoft, Sun and Google that made this title sound very cool. Today it is common to find Evangelists in the corporate world. I have also seen a few companies giving the title of...

FOSS.IN/2009 – A Brilliant Event!

I have been following this event every year for the last decade (I still remember the very first event where it was called Bang!Linux). I managed to present at foss.in in 2002 and 2003 (It was called Linux Bangalore at that point). Since then this event has become a phenomenon and raises the bar year on year! Kudos to Atul Chitnis (@achitnis) and his team for turning this into a cult. My first...

Business Technology Summit 09 – Trip Report

Today I delivered my talk on Cloud Computing and Open Source at the Business Technology Summit 09. I reached the venue just before my session. JN Tata Auditorium at Indian Institute of Science is my favorite venue to present. I delivered many of my talks here in the last 10 years. Particularly, Hall-1 is very special to me as I happened to deliver some of my best sessions including the talk on...

NASSCOM Product Conclave 2009 – Trip Report

I attended the NASSCOM Product Conclave 2009 on 27th and 28th October. Here is my trip report and key take-away from the conference. The only reason why I decided to attend this conference was Guy Kawasaki. I admire him for more than one reason. I like Guy because he paved the way for the new profession in the complex world of IT – Evangelism. He set industry precedence for software...

7 Signs That You Are an Evangelist

I love the term ‘Evangelist’. I have tremendous respect for the folks who carry a business card that reads ‘Technology Evangelist’. For the last 15 years or so, I have been living an evangelist life and enjoy every bit of that. How are evangelists different from other folks who sell and market stuff? Well, first of all, evangelists have bundles of conviction in what they believe in. They...

Jani & GTUG?

I was actually questioning myself on what made me take up this? First & foremost, I am a technologist at heart and brands come next. While I was working at Microsoft, I have never shied away from admiring a competitive technology or an offering. I have always taken a neutral stand and spent considerable amount of time getting my hands on non-Microsoft technologies. I burnt midnight oil...