The irony to note is that the conference website is so NOT Web 2.0. For example, where are the slides that people can download? These guys can learn a thing or two from the foss.in website and conference. Again, for a web innovation conference, why is there no wifi? How are you supposed to access the websites?

On the other hand, this conference has been surprising to me in the sense that it actually turned out to be interesting. I think the quality of people who have come to speak here is high and that’s probably because these people are high up in the decision-making chain and they have come to talk about what they do best – websites and business.

Of course, the other half of the speakers are doing just boring sales pitches but that didn’t deter the audience from asking tough questions and seeking their value from it. They even directly questioned how their company lives up to what was described in the presentation.

Continuing Day 1′s trend, here are the transcribed notes:

• Jayabalan (CTO, Netmagic) on “Building scalable and resilient infrastructure for web applications”

  • Users, Connectivity, IT infrastructure, Application infrastructure
  • Challenges – Growth (number of concurrent users), Hardware failure, Software bugs, Security threats
  • Management and maintenance, Connectivity/routing issues, Secure connectivity, Cost
  • Failures can’t be avoided
  • Features and functionality alone not sufficient, Performance also required
  • Difficult to get people with end-to-end knowledge
  • Recommended setup – Storage, SANSw, Web + App + DB, Switching, Accelerator, Firewall
  • Develop for future – scalability in all layers
  • Performance optimizing techniques – Compression, TCP multiplexing, TCP optimization, TCP buffering, Caching, CDN, Load balancing, URL/content/cookie switching, Content modification, SSL offloading, Surge protection
  • Please outsource parts of these infrastructure to experts who have good infrastructure and service
  • Netmagic caters to all of the above (can it get more blatant than this?)
  • jb at netmagicsolutions.com
  • Replies to audience that Yes, Providers in India do have such infrastructure now. Power and Connectivity are major issues that you can’t scale in-house, so outsource it.

• Rohit Varma (Founder and CEO, Techtribe) on “Delivering Value through Social Networks”

  • (Unfortunately, missed this session in the business track because the session in the other tech track was long)
  • Get into the press, only way, do not depend on viral marketing

• Pradeep Gupta (Chairman, CyberMedia Group) on “Media Incumbents embrace Web 2.0 to survive and thrive”

  • Internet reaches only 4% of India
  • 90% of internet users on 9-10 websites
  • Touch and feel has to supplement online activities
  • Cross-media strategy a must (such as Miss India contest using online polling to sms to TV)
  • ciol.com – 1 million unique users per month
  • All major Indian sites including rediff and indiatimes have big traffic but have flat growth now
  • pradeepg at cybermedia.co.in

• Kiruba Shankar (CEO, Business Blogging) on “Business Blogging”

  • Examples of Club Mahindra on how a bad user’s blog post can have detrimental effects on your popularity even though the actual product maybe good. Once they asked that person to visit a Club Mahindra resort, he went back and changed the post to a less negative-minded one and actually listed pros as well.
  • Audience says lots of company internal blogs, but very few external blogs
  • Corporate blogging hasn’t taken off because people are afraid and no one wants to take responsibility
  • But Kiruba reminds people of Robert Scoble and Microsoft
  • Very interactive session, lot of views from some people saying it’s about credibility to others saying that only people with no work actually blog.
  • Kiruba said it’s a double-edged sword, if you don’t think it’s right for your company, don’t do it. But if you do, if you have to dive in and there’s no turning back.

• Varun Singh (CTO, Web18) on “Scaling Web 2.0 Infrastructure using Open Source software”

  • (Too much info on slides, font size too small to read)
  • Services – Apache web service + HAProxy load balancing
  • Code and volatile cache – PHP/Perl applications, memcached
  • Nonvolatile and Managed data – MySQL DB and GlusterFS storage, Cache Logs

• Manas Ranade (TIBCO) on “Four Quantum States of Ajax”

  • (three-fourth people already said they use Ajax frameworks, so why explain the history again?)
  • 4 quantum states
    • A, J, X – all communication
    • DHTML widgets – enabled with asynchronous communication (maybe)
    • Multi-widget libraries – shared underlying services
    • RIA frameworks
      • Common GUI, data, communication frameworks
      • Ability to visually author GUIs and more
  • Framework
    • OO JS foundation
    • Data Cache
    • Communication
    • Data Bindings
    • Pub/Sub event
    • Logging and Debugging
    • Out-of-the-box GUI components
  • There are > 45 Ajax frameworks out there, including ones by Adobe (I assume he means Spry)
  • TIBCO General Interface available both under BSD and proprietary licenses
  • Says it doesn’t require client-side plugins ( )
  • (I think we take all of these features for granted in Adobe Flex, so I personally didn’t see the novelty)
  • mranade at tibco.com

• Darpan Munjal (CTO, eCommerce, Indiatimes) on “Future of eCommerce”
  • Not tech, not features, but business i.e. transactions and features for this activity
  • Evolution: Transact -> Involve (implicit community) -> Engage (explicit community) -> Empower
  • Evolution: Sell products and services -> Build relationships with customers
  • Crowdsourcing
  • Future – Moderators, Community Managers, PM, Sales
  • New game : Community -> <- Corporation
  • Right incentives are important for the community
  • Many examples of this new game on how the community has taken over aspects of traditional companies
    • Category Management : Zlio
    • Content Editing : Kaboodle
    • Marketing : ThisNext.com, SellABand
    • Technology : Amazon web services allow you to build stores sourced from Amazon
    • Product Design : Threadless.com (where you can upload T-shirt designs)
    • Support : woot.com
  • All good but what about India?
    • About building trust
    • About transparency
    • About empowerment
    • About understanding barriers in ecommerce and leveraging communities to overcome
  • Opportunities for India
    • Assisted eCommerce (affiliate based communities)
    • Human filters for finding better products and better prices
    • “Geek Squad” for service market
    • A/B testing -> A/B/C testing where C is for Communities
      • For example, DellIdeaStorm.com
  • New ecosystem
    • Mashups such as social shopping or niche vertical sites (using web services) and they focus on communities (say cooking community, etc.)
    • Base is Indiatimes Shopping, etc. who are horizontal shopping portals
  • Key Considerations
    • Popularity is becoming popular i.e. Minority view is getting lost, so provide alternate methods of navigation to make “long tail” accessible
    • Tagging may reveal good, bad and ugly
    • Offer incentives for community to contribute, example epinions.com
  • I asked what kind of community participate in such websites, I would think wannabe artists will put their T-shirt designs on Threadless, but not professional artists. He said that’s where incentives are important.
  • darpan.munjal at indiatimes.co.in
  • Presentation available on his blog commercewiki.com

Lots of food for thought here.

Point to note for wannabe-entrepreneurs : Really think about what is the value that you are giving to people. Relatedly, I liked the ‘stadium’ analogy by Sandeep yesterday.

P.S. Cold weather + Cold AC + irritated throat + cough + slight fever + just out of horrible traffic + rain = bad.

The first half of the day was quite useful, but the latter half turned out to be pure marketing pitches by the sponsors.

First and foremost, I think the title of the conference is a misnomer. Although it says “Web Innovation 2007: The Nextgen Web Technology Revolution: 2.0 & Beyond”, it should have been “Web 2.0 : How can India catch up” – the discussions were really about the ‘current’ situation of things rather than ‘innovation’ or ‘future’. By ‘current’ I mean, the internet products and services market in the western world and how India can catch up.

The No.1 and possibly only gripe that most speakers mentioned which is a barrier for internet and Web 2.0 to become omnipresent is that broadband connectivity is pitiful in India.

I agree to this as far as locality reach, reliability, and pricing is concerned. However, let’s compare it to mobile phones which is the second-most discussed topic, on how it is booming and all that. Why did mobile phones take off and not broadband? I think it’s because mobile phones had a killer application – communication. That too, communication any time, anywhere.

Similarly, let’s take the case of computers in many shops and distributors – accounting solutions whether it is by the local software shop or well-known ones like Tally, they bought computers just so that they can use these software. Just like Lotus 1-2-3 for Apple Mac I in the history of computers.

Unless we have killer applications that people in India want to use, why would anyone want to buy a computer or a broadband connection? And if there are killer applications, won’t there be demand for broadband connections, and won’t supply follow? Just like the mobile telephony market today?

Maybe I’m completely off on this one, but I still don’t yet see killer applications on the web today for the common man in India, let alone Web 2.0-style applications. Forget common man, how about the educational aspects of things, if there are products and services that can be beneficial to school and college students, that alone is a big deal. As B V Naidu (one of the advisors in the Karnataka IT committee) said, 54% of the Indian population is below 20 years!

Naidu also mentioned that there are 7 million new phones being bought every month, you won’t find such a high number anywhere else in the world. Yet, there are a meagre 1.6 million mobile internet users. Again, what are the killer applications for them? At least, I never felt the need for internet on my mobile phone. (As an aside, getting it working for the first time is a pain which is another major factor).

Kiruba Shankar (of Kiruba.com fame) was the moderator for a panel discussion on what is Web 2.0. The panel gave analogies, for example, Mohit (Times Internet) said it is a two-way street and KK (MindTree) says it is “content + commerce + community + context + personalization + vertical search.” Phew.

Jaspreet (MSN) asked Kiruba on what was the name of his upcoming book and Kiruba replied saying “Unconferences: Where the audience is more intelligent than the speaker”. Jaspreet gave a “right” nod and was about to hand over the mic to the next speaker… But he stopped to say that the difference with Web 2.0-style applications, people are converted from an object to a subject.

Dr. Madan (Frost & Sullivan) gave some of the best insights, such as that most successful Web 2.0 ventures appear to appropriate social welfare without looking illicit and have three factors : 1. Resources for something, 2. Branding, 3. Institutionalization by externalizing.

Kiruba, being an unconference guy, got the audience to interact and there were some useful discussions such as “Are people making money?” which had a huge range of answers. Dr. Madan said if you expect your website to survive on advertisements, don’t expect revenue for the first 18 months. That too, only Singapore has a 3% success rate on ad-supported websites, other APAC countries don’t have a single success! He went on to recommend that don’t be just an infomediary, but be transactional, make meaningful communities and lock-in users (in a good way).

Then, there was the question of what can go wrong in India, and KK said that Indian mindset of one-upmanship, diversity of languages, and lack of community ability to create engaging content are some factors. Dr. Madan said sociologists categorize Indians as users, not contributors, most communities that are successful are transactional, and don’t expect community contribution in India.

What I liked about the panel session was seeing how these people high up in the decision-making process think about these issues and go about working around them or towards them. And they’re very frank in their opinion and make no bones about saying which situations are bad and which are not.

There was more of the Web 2.0 explanations (user-generated content vs published content, text vs visual, contextual, social networking, interactive, personalization, ad-funded business models) which went on ad-nauseum, but I’m trying to put my thoughts here on the more non-obvious things. Not to take those things lightly but executing the above concepts/aspects is very hard and getting it to click is very situation- and community-specific, so no point in discussing about it.

This is the part where I got tired of writing, so I’m going to just transcribe my notes from paper, on the sessions that I attended:

• Jaspreet (MSN) on “Web 2.0 in India”

  • 3 screens : Mobile, TV, PC
  • 18% of global population will be in India in 2025
  • Three categories with wide open spaces : Education, Entertainment, Communication
  • We are in a consumption boom, whether literature or television or careers.
  • Global players will win in services, local players will win in content. This situation in India contrasts with rest of the world because we are a western-mindset country (English-speaking, and even think in English).
  • Ceiling of 75 million users – the no. of English-speaking people in India.
  • Get into niche services or content, not global services.
  • Don’t follow same local search models as in USA, be India-specific since global players will easily adapt
  • Indian ‘Facebook+MySpace’ will flop miserably; we already have Facebook and MySpace.
  • Indian social network is already there but not online, be mobile-out and not around boy bands or alumni
  • Mobile is super-important, everyone knows ‘why’, but no one knows ‘how’
  • Bollywood and cricket are ‘it’, but no main website, still wide open spaces. Also education.
  • Software + services will win
  • Without reaching the 10 million households (and hence 40-50 million people) on broadband, the Indian internet hype will far exceed reality. Right now, only 2 million.
  • The Web -> My web. Personalization and Identity is ‘in’.
  • Advertising is a huge business model as ‘our competition’ has shown, so we’re getting into it.
  • jbindra at microsoft.com
  • jaspreet at jeeves.in

• Mohit (Times Internet) on “Web2.I”

  • Glocalisation from dating to matrimonial sites
  • What about mobile WAP sites that speak out RSS feeds in Indian languages to the booming cellphone population?
  • Stormhoeks became unofficial wine of Silicon Valley because they shipped wine free to any geek dinner and everyone blogged about it
  • mohit.hira at indiatimes.co.in
  • Audience asks what about using TV for broadband and not wait for PC? Mohit says will your mom give up watching Kyunki so that you can surf, even if it is productive.

• Naresh Gupta (Adobe) on “Rich Internet Applications”

  • More devices -> explosion in digital content -> personal publishing and social networks
  • Forms of engagement changed over the years : publishing -> electronic documents -> interactive media -> websites -> RIA.
  • RIA characteristics : Rich controls, Separation of data and UI, use of client side computing power to deliver richer UI, mash ups and custom user interfaces.

• Naushad (Times Internet) on “Designing for and with community”

  • Emphasized importance of market research and idea conceptualization – that too much longer time than actual website development
  • Content (choose niche), Commerce and Gifts, Connect and Share
  • Revenue Points : advertising, ecommerce, subscriptions
  • Explained window2india.com conceptualization and how it is Web 2.0 for NRIs.

• Sandeep Shrivastava (Yahoo!) on “Web 2.0 Applications: Give me my 50 million users”

  • Build a stadium
    • centre stage – match
    • stands – audience
    • That’s how you get business + audience
  • What do users want?
  • Common motivations
    • Creation and maintenance of relationships with other people (non-transactional)
    • Sharing, keeping in touch with friends
    • Pursuit of knowledge, recognition or accomplishment
    • Promotion of views (political, aesthetic, social, personal)
    • Having fun
  • Best motivations are translated offline -> online
  • Is your app fulfilling the user’s motivation?
  • Emphasis on market research to find/validate idea, but does not guarantee success
  • You have to really mean it when you want to fulfill the user’s motivation, not thinking of only the money.
  • Business is all about 1. Products 2. Money.
  • Only a tiny number of people care about ‘cool’ or ‘technology’.
  • Fail fast
  • Speed to market is critical
  • Understand what creates loyalty
  • Don’t think numbers while looking to create a critical mass of users (some users are more valuable than others)
    • Flickr targeted only passionate photographers in the initial phase
  • Make it super-simple to interact with the product, but this does not mean lack of features.
  • The product should be its own marketing – viral, open, reusable, remixable, portable
  • Think international – internet is global, your product should also be, if it is possible
  • Takeaways
    • Never ever take your eyes off the motivation of the user
    • Make things “massively multiplayer”
    • Create an ecosystem, not just a distribution channel
    • Content/media objects become the locus for interaction, rather than things which are “passively consumed”
  • sandeeps at yahoo-inc.com
  • Audience asks is sharing fancy or useful? Sandeep says go back to user’s motivation – is it transient or ongoing?
  • The network (user activity) is the platform (fulfillment/purpose)

• Upen Roop Rai (Times Internet) on “Business Models in Web 2.0″

  • Gave a broad overview of the market and drilled down into the numbers comparing them vs US numbers
  • For example, there is no real main classifieds site in India, what is being used is CraigsList. Compare that to US where the offline yellow pages and classifieds market is worth $37 billion, and the online share is $5 billion and growing fast.

• Parmider Singh (Google) on “Maximizing market effectiveness”

  • Turned out to be a pitch for why you should use Google Adwords (you realize that when “moment of relevance” is mentioned)
  • Talk was aimed at marketers who don’t understand internet very well.
  • Statistics in India
    • 1+ billion searches in India
    • 70+ searches per user per month
    • Search sites reach 64% of internet population
  • Google is in the “connections” business

• Prof. M P Ranjan (National Institute of Design) on “User Driven Web 2.0: Design Opportunities for India”

  • Better described in his own blog post.

Phew.