I am excited to share that my blog is now featured on AllTop under the Cloud Computing section. AllTop is founded by my favorite evangelist, Guy Kawasaki. His goal is to make AllTop as a one stop destination on the web for all the top content on popular topics. Getting featured in AllTop is a dream for most of the bloggers. Getting on to AllTop will motivate me to post better content more often.

So, it’s confirmed that my blog kicks ass!

Janakiram MSV is a Cloud Computing Strategist specializing in industry's leading Cloud Computing offerings. Whether you are a developer, architect or an entrepreneur, he can help you get started on the Cloud Computing strategy. Janakiram comes with 10 years of experience in engaging with businesses on architecting enterprise solutions.

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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 evangelism. I heard about Guy way back in 2003 when we were in process of forming the budding evangelism team at Microsoft. One of my managers pointed me to Guy Kawasaki’s blog and that’s what laid a strong foundation for my passion for evangelism. Since then, his books and blogs always inspired me. I follow some of his tips to deliver impacting presentations and compelling demos. Even today when someone argues with me on the value of evangelism, I point them to the book – “Selling the Dream”.

As I expected, Guy Kawasaki did a great job as the keynote speaker at the event. It was quite refreshing to see a keynote speaker in an informal dressing, casual and relaxed body language and finally a keynote that made sense for the audience. Guy’s message was clear – use the current technology trends and economic conditions to your benefit.

Here is a summary of the key points:

1. Think like your customer and build a product that you use. This is so obvious yet many startups miss this point. His example of Ice 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 is very apt. Look at the slides to get some context.
2. The OS, development platform and tools are absolutely free and there is no point in spending money on expensive tools and technologies. While my friends at Microsoft will vehemently disagree with this fact, I partially agree with him. LAMP + Eclipse are a great combo to deliver pretty powerful and real world products.
3. The next point is huge – Don’t over spend on your marketing! By leveraging the social media and social networking appropriately, you can reach to a customer who wouldn’t care to watch the most expensive ad campaign that you are running on the TV. His AllTop.com is a proof that this model works. All you got to know is the right way of using them.
4. Suck Down and Suck across – I had to jump out for a quick call and missed his explanation for this
5. Make Twitter and TweetMeme your platform for market survey and analytics. He explained a scenario how TweetMeme can help you get deep insights into the market and customer mindset. Incidentally, I put the TweetMeme button just a day before I attended this keynote.
6. Again, this is a well know fact. Some of the college interns are the brightest and have the caliber that can put certified professionals to shame. Hand-pick those interns and enthusiast students who enjoy working for a very nominal salary.
7. The next point is my favorite and I had a wicked smile when I saw that – Put everything in the Cloud. He gave my favorite example of the development team at a startup using inexpensive notebook PCs to develop the next killer app for the web. He very clearly articulated the Pay-By-Use model. I was thrilled to hear that!
8. Ship then Test – According to Guy, the current generation of users are impatient to wait till you stabilize your product. He advocates the crowd-sourcing model where you treat the world as your beta tester.
9. Next point is a clear dig at the VC community. With the free tools, cloud, and a bunch on interns, do you still need a VC?
10. The last point is all about niche. You and your startup got to spend enough time to identify what you are good at and how your product is different from competition. Once you figure that out, use all the above tools to conquer the world!

I agree with most of the points that Guy made in his keynote. A disclaimer here – before you debate, argue and flame me, these are not my views and I am only summarizing what I heard from him.

Right after the keynote, I had the opportunity to be a part of the Q&A session with Guy. This was covered by ET Now channel. My question was how do we separate evangelists from fanatics. There were few instances where I was branded as a fanatic rather than an evangelist. Though I toned down my aggression, I still feel sometimes I am more of a fanatic than an evangelist. I absolutely loved his answer – An evangelist puts the customer first and empathizes with him whereas a fanatic is all about I, me, myself and my product. That was a very hard-hitting response!

Right after the Q&A session, I had a photo op with Guy and I got my bible of evangelism, ‘Selling the Dream’ autographed by him.

Guy & Jani - Selling The Dream

I was also a part of the Bangalore TweetUp that few passionate folks like @amnigos and others organized. This was at 7:30 PM and Guy was still as energetic as he was for the keynote.

I went back for his workshop on ‘Evangelism through Social Media’ on the second day. The hall was overflowing but surprisingly most of the attendees were not on Twitter yet. He demonstrated some of the free tools built on Twitter that empowers entrepreneurs to track, monitor and monetize their products.

Apart from the sessions by Guy, I attended the panel discussion on ‘Telecom Innovations for Emerging Markets’  in which my boss, Vishy Poosala, Head, Bell Labs India was a panelist.

Overall, I found the event to be good but my feedback to organizers is to include a track on technology. Though this was meant for startups and entrepreneurs, a dedicated track for technology to discuss the latest trends would have been extremely useful to the attendees.

I want to conclude this post with a great quote by Guy Kawasaki – “An evangelist who cannot give a great demo is an oxymoron….”

Janakiram MSV is a Cloud Computing Strategist specializing in industry's leading Cloud Computing offerings. Whether you are a developer, architect or an entrepreneur, he can help you get started on the Cloud Computing strategy. Janakiram comes with 10 years of experience in engaging with businesses on architecting enterprise solutions.

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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 don’t hesitate or get tired of driving the point across.  They do this with a lot of élan and elegance. They fight for a cause and don’t focus on tactical, short term, transactional ‘deal’ that they can close. Evangelists influence the people around them without sounding arrogant or selfish. They instantly gain the respect of the folks around them and lead the monotonous conversation into an interesting dialogue.  They set the bar high for themselves and typically don’t live within the boundaries that are defined by mundane job descriptions and routine success metrics. Evangelists always use the term ‘we’ and ‘us’ instead of  ‘I’.

For an evangelist, the world is the customer. Once when I was traveling in a train, I demonstrated the accessibility features of Windows XP to a person sitting next to me who had difficulties with his vision. The spark that I saw in his eyes when he found that he can do his job more efficiently and quickly was the biggest motivation for me. I enjoyed the applause that I got when I showed how to build a data-driven website on ASP.NET in 10 min. to a bunch of students. I enthusiastically demonstrate the capabilities of Multi-Touch trackpad of my shiny new Apple MacBook Pro. I proudly show off what magic a Media Center PC can bring to your home theater and living room. I believe in just one religion and it is called Technology!

Here are some words that are typically associated¹ with the traditional sales folks and passionate evangelists:

Once you are an evangelist, you are evangelist for life. It’s very hard to separate the evangelism DNA once the strains are found within you.

Are you an Evangelist? Here is a checklist ² that you can use to ask yourself :

1)    Do you have a desire to make a difference?
2)    Do you fearlessly believe in a cause?
3)    Do you work for a cause for the intrinsic satisfaction that it brings?
4)    Do you give up other things to make a commitment?
5)    Do you enjoy fighting the mediocre, the mundane and the status quo?
6)    Do you get accused of being driven, showing chutzpah, or having more guts than brains?
7)    Does your spouse threaten to leave you?

Did you ever meet a passionate evangelist who made a difference to you? Please do share your stories.

Janakiram MSV is a Cloud Computing Strategist specializing in industry's leading Cloud Computing offerings. Whether you are a developer, architect or an entrepreneur, he can help you get started on the Cloud Computing strategy. Janakiram comes with 10 years of experience in engaging with businesses on architecting enterprise solutions.

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