Panel discussion on Design-Led Innovation

Sitting from L to R: Sashank, 

Sandeep, Greg, Rachel and Steve

TiE Silicon Valley organized a panel discussion on "Design-Led Innovation: Key to building successful Products" on Tuesday, July 23rd. The topic was clearly of interest - as there were 100+ people in attendance.

The panel was moderated by Sashank Deshpande, Co-Founder of Clarice Technologies. Being a graduate of the premier National Institute for Design, Sashank was most certainly qualified to lead this august panel. Sashank offered some brief opening remarks that laid the foundation for the discussion:

• Designs that bring meaning to our lives
• The importance of talking to users
• How do you measure the impact of UX (User Experience)

Sashank went on provide a historical perspective of Usability and Human Computer Interface (HCI) - right from the first compute systems in the 1950s. The initial focus was on B2B systems and the evolution of the Design aspects moved from Usability -> HCI -> Interaction Design -> User Centered Design. As the world started shifting attention to B2C transactions, the center of gravity for Design moved from Visual Design (What is your first impression) to UX or User Experience (is the product triggering the right emotions).

Sashank offered a theory on how product design affects us intrinsically. He used the following diagram to explain his point.

Greg Petroff, GM for User Experience at GE spoke next. He encouraged everyone to make products that are meaningful for everyday people. "Always look at the bigger picture," he said.

Rachel Powers, Senior Director of UX at Oracle spoke about the importance of having engineers go out and talk to people that they are building products for. It could completely change the perspective of what they create.

Steve Portigal of Portigal Consulting, who has written a book on  "Uncovering Compelling Insights by Interviewing Users", talked about the importance of talking to users. This leads to mindset changes and allows you to discover and act on new insights about your customers and yourself.

Sandeep Datar, Senior Director of Design, Yahoo provided a Metrics perspective to Design. 

Sandeep mentioned the ASERT framework to measure the impact of design:

• Acquire / Onboard users (sign them in with a single click)
• Surprise / Wow / Amuse / Intrigue (you get one opportunity)
• Engage and Retain
• Revenue (convert the user from free to paid)
• Task simplification - through out the product

The panel was very informative and offered some deep insights from folks who have spent 20+ years in the business. There was 100+ person years of User Design experience amongst the speakers. I felt that having a startup CEO on the panel would have helped invigorate the perspective.  I am sure Tony Fadell or Jonathan Ive would have had a completely different view point. I believe that products should be centered on design. While the panelists were talking about how UX has "turned the corner" and is now an integral part of every product team, Aaron Patzer may have said product teams should build the designs created by the UX team!

At one point, Greg Petroff said, "Jeffrey Immelt does not know me by name. He knows of me as the UX guy". I think that is a problem. Steve Jobs (and I am sure Tim Cook now), on the other hand, would talk to his UX guy every day. Companies like Apple, Nest, Mint and several others have proven that design-centered development can win. 

I am not a designer, but I think designers should be forced to better communicate their thoughts to other team members. They should think more about the problem, rather than opting for the first thing that pops to their mind. This is harder to "enforce" in a Facebook "Like" button world, but it leads to better communication and therefore better products.

TiEcon 2013

This year, TiEcon 2013 will be held at the Santa Clara Convention Center on May 17th and 18th. As in the past, there is an army of volunteers working round-the-clock to deliver a successful conference.

Last year, I was the Co-Chair for the MentorConnect event - where Mentors (who are VCs / successful entrepreneurs / high profile Corporate Execs) were paired with Mentees (conference attendees). We had a semi-automated way of pairing the Mentees. The feedback that we heard was unanimous. Mentees wanted a more "intimate" setting and, most importantly, to have more control on who their Mentor is.

My role in this year's TiEcon (at MentorConnect) is to steer on the systems side. The co-chairs are two highly accomplished, excellent Charter Members - Sanjaya Kumar and Ravi Amble. Early in the process, the TiE Silicon Valley Systems Lead, Deepak Bhagat, and I evaluated MentorCloud as a possible solution provider.  In order for MentorCloud to work, there was a list of changes that needed to be done to the platform. Understandably, the CEO of MentorCloud, Ravi Gundlapalli, was not keen on doing "one-off" tasks for TiE. Nevertheless, he was quick to see the potential benefits (to MentorCloud) of working with TiE. Ravi and his team worked tirelessly with us to roll it out successfully. The proof, of course, is only in the pudding and I don't want to "declare success" before the event. I will certainly blogging about the "on-the-ground" experience after the conference. Nevertheless, the user experience is undoubtedly improved from last year.

Given the availability of this platform, the TiE Silicon Valley team, led by Venk Shukla, mobilized some very high profile mentors to participate. I am really happy to inform that we have 100+ eminent Mentors registered and available to Mentor TiEcon 2013 attendees during lunch on the days of the Conference. The list of Mentors include Vinod Khosla and Kanwal Rekhi. This is a unique opportunity to meet these folks and learn from them. They have all been successful in building public companies or having substantial exits.

TiEcon offers so much more than the MentorConnect opportunity to the attendee. Here are a few more reasons to attend TiEcon.

1. Inspiring keynotes from Jeff Weiner, CEO LinkedIn, Manoj Bhargava, CEO 5-Hour Energy and more! See the full list here.
2. Discuss the latest trends and meet the hottest companies, entrepreneurs and VCs in these high growth tracks - BigData, Mobility and SW Defined Infrastructure
3. Meet some innovative companies in the Expo Hall.
4. Listen to 18 lightning round startup pitches and meet the TiE50 winners

With prices starting at $275 (using discount codes) TiEcon certainly offers best value for your money. I believe the prices go up on May 1st. So, register today to what promises to be an exciting conference. When you register, be sure to check the "Interested in MentorConnect" box. In case you are already registered, and did not check that box, you can back and do so. This will allow you to participate in MentorConnect and get mentored by some awesome Mentors.

An evening with Kapil Sibal

[Disclaimer: The views expressed in this posting are entirely my own and are not, in any way, representative of TiE or the Govt. of India]

On Wednesday, January 30th, TiE Silicon Valley hosted a reception and talk by Kapil Sibal, Cabinet Minister of Communications and Information Technology with the Government of India. He had come to the Bay Area with a delegation that included the Secretary of Technology, J. Satyanarayana and the Joint Secretary of Technology, Ajay Kumar. Their mission was to communicate their vision of  embarking on a very ambitious agenda to develop the Electronic Systems Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) industry in India. There are a number of incentives being made available by the Government of India to the right entrepreneurs and companies. They expect that India’s ESDM demands will be in the order of $400 billion by the year 2020.

Kapil Sibal was everything that I had heard of and read about - erudite, articulate and humorous. He started by talking about the current state of the GDP in India where the service industry accounts for 57% of the GDP; Agriculture is 14% and the balance is Manufacturing. "If India is going to survive as a Global Economy, the shift from Service to Manufacturing needs to happen. We need to move from Software to Hardware," he said. Getting there needs a change in mindset. People in India tend to live in the "glory days" of the past - how India's GDP was the highest in the world during the days of Emperor Asoka. They rue that all the wealth was looted by East India Company. "The past," he said, "is an impediment to the future." By 2020, they would like 65% of all electronics products to be manufactured in India

Next Ajay Kumar gave a presentation on the policy initiatives for promoting this vision. This presentation can be viewed here. The subsidies and incentives are very impressive and the plan seems to be very well thought out to allow them to reach the objective.

Kapil Sibal now took the stage to answer questions. The audience (of ~ 150 professionals in the Bay Area) did not hold back. I have attempted to paraphrase (to the best of my recollection) some of the questions asked and answers provided by Kapil Sibal.

Q1: We attempted to set up a manufacturing facility in India and shipped expensive equipment to Chennai. These machines were sitting in Customs for many months before we decided to scale down our operations in India and move the manufacturing to Singapore.

A1: I am not aware of any issues with importing machinery to India. People are doing this every day without any problem.

Q2: I tried for many years to set up my IT operations in India. It is just too frustrating because of all the red tape we had to face. While the presentation I heard today is very encouraging, my experience is telling me is that it is far from reality.

A2: I don't know the details of your specific problem. People are successfully setting up IT operations in India by the thousands.

Q3: What will it take to get subject matter experts to take on the important decision making roles in the Indian Government?

A3: Why don't you relocate to India and stand for the elections. We can talk after you win the elections.

Q4: Can you talk about the status of the UID project. I have read reports that this has resulted in Identity Theft and abuse of power.

A4: UID is very successful. It is merely a number. It is not possible to abuse it for anything. Don't believe everything that you read.

Q5: We are a Venture Capital firm with an India fund. We had funded companies in India due to some favorable laws. However, the laws changed and were applied retroactively. This resulted in unfavorable conditions for us. We are now skeptical about investing in India.

A5: There was just one law that we changed to be retroactively effective. This has happened numerous times in the U.K.  - where changes were applied retroactively. If you don't chose to invest in India, there are plenty of others who will.

At the end of the session, it seemed to me that Kapil Sibal was not used audiences who spoke to him at his level. It is not as if the questions were "hostile". They were genuine issues and concerns that people faced. I would have preferred if his responses were more along the lines of, "Your issue of grave concern to us. We have a grievance council set up. I encourage you to follow up with them - so that not just your specific issue is addressed, but we have a process and a knowledge base for handling similar issues."

I was reminded of an episode from BBC's "Yes PrimeMinister" (which I had seen many years ago) when Sir Humphrey Appleby rationalizes a significant pay raise to civil servants (in the wake of severe budget cuts in the Government) by simply moving civil servants from one pay category to another and showing that even after the pay increase, because of the reduction in staff (euphemism for lateral movement of staff) the actual salary budget for civil servants got reduced :)

Conferences are all about Networking

In my role as co-chair of the TiEConnect program in TiEcon 2012, I posted a guest column on GigaOm. Since there were restrictions on the number of words, etc. I could not include everything that I wanted to say. I am posting a longer version of the blog here. Hope to see many of you in TiEcon next week at Santa Clara Convention Center.

If you were at the Santa Clara Convention Center for TiEcon2011 on May 13th and 14th, 2011, you could not have missed a familiar figure in the registration area for almost the entire duration - talking incessantly to a panoply of people. When I asked Rohit Chandra about his motives, he said, "I registered for the conference to meet people, pitch my idea, find talent, hear other ideas, identify interesting start ups, pick up on the state of the art, etc. I may not get 30 minutes here for a full pitch with Investors. If I can pique their interest to garner a follow up meeting, it was worth it." When I asked him if it was working, he pointed me to a pile of business cards that he had collected.

While Rohit’s case may be an super-charged example of networking at a conference, it goes to show the immense value of meeting a diverse group of people at a single location. TiEcon provides for both structured and unstructured means to connect with leaders who would, otherwise, be unavailable or inaccessible. MentorConnect provides all TiEcon attendees

 provides an opportunity to meet with an industry stalwart in a scheduled session during lunch. Attendees looking to validate their idea, or want to know how to move their ventures forward can avail this program and meet with folks who have been there and done that. InvestorConnect provides access to VCs and Angels on a 1:1 basis to get feedback on your business plan. This program is available to anyone that registers for a TiE Expo booth. This is an unparalleled opportunity to present your business plan to get feedback and/or seek investments. Finally, TiEcon is also offering AttendeeConnect this year to allow for AdHoc interactions at the conference.

Unlike other conferences that cost in excess of $1500, TiEcon costs less than $500. We are able to keep TiEcon prices affordable since it is run entirely by volunteers (yours truly being one of them) in a not-for-profit organization. While the focus of this posting is Networking at TiEcon, there are other benefits to attending this year's conference on May 18th and 19th at Santa Clara Convention Center - outlined in this blog post by Jai Rawat, Convenor, TiEcon 2012. Register now to avoid missing out! You can use the discount code "TIEFOV" to get $75 off the conference price.

Panel on Cloud Security

I had blogged earlier about the TiE Panel on Software Defined Networks. I did not realize that I had not posted a blog after that! I have been really busy :( More on that in a future blog post.

TiE Silicon Valley organized a panel on Cloud Security on Thursday, Feb 2nd. 2012. This panel was also very well attended - indicating the popularity of the topic and the opportunities presented to entrepreneurs and large companies thereof.

The basic premise of the problem / challenge / opportunity is that there are well documented data breaches that have taken place. In fact, the OnLine Trust Alliance (OTA) has dubbed 2011 as the "Year of the breach". The 550+ breaches in 2011 cost U.S Businesses alone $6.5b+. The FBI has said that cyber attacks are the top terror threat to the country.

Tim Mather, of KPMG and author of a book on Cloud Security and Privacy led with a provocative commentary on the state of the industry. The slides he used can be seen here. There are typically five kinds of security breaches that take place:

1. Cryptographic key management
2. Data Loss Prevention
3. Data sanitization
4. Federated Identity management
5. Security Incident management

In terms of products that are available that address some of the Cloud Security issues, he highlighted Virtual private SaaS (which was introduced by Navajo Systems - recently acquired by Salesforce.com). The provocative part of his talk came when he talked about the upcoming "food fights" in the industry:

1. Telcos are becoming Cloud Service Providers
2. The initiative led by Viviane Reding to regulate Cloud Computing and update the Data Protection Directive
3. The ITU-T meeting in Dubai in November - attempting to bring ICAAN under UN Control (and regulate cloud computing)
4. Upcoming CALEA II (Communication Assistance for Law Enforcement Act) - which attempts to regulate any messaging over the internet. This will make SOPA and PIPA small in comparison!

The next speaker was Becky Swain. Her slides can be seen here. Given her background in CSA, she spoke about Cloud Security from a regulatory and emerging standards POV. One needs to constantly balance compliance and risk management in the cloud.

Caleb Sima spoke next. His thesis was the, somewhat simplistic, viewpoint that the Cloud is more secure. The surface area for attack is wider if you manage everything on your own. Going to the cloud could potentially mean a "loss of control". While this may be viewed as a vulnerability by some, others (himself included) do not see it that way. However, according to a Ponnemon Institute Survey, ~ 1 in 3 people have not adopted Cloud services because of concerns over security. This IW article states that security concerns is one of the biggest barriers to Cloud adoption among Federal IT professionals.

Ratinder Ahuja of McAfee was the next speaker. His slides can be viewed here. Naturally, his talk focused on how the McAfee Cloud Security Platform helps businesses leverage cloud computing services and solutions securely. The future, Dr. Ahuja said, holds tremendous opportunity in delivering Security as a Service.

Ryan Floyd of Storm Ventures was the final speaker. He said that he agreed with Caleb Sima in that the Cloud is more secure.

When Ryan stated that PCI compliance was the first standard that was adopted by the industry to improve the security of payment transactions, Tim Mather tore that to shreds. "PCI is worthless," Tim said. "It is merely the payment industry shifting the burden to the merchants." They tried implementing SET (Secure Electronic Transactions) first - and that was abandoned due to the onerous cost of implementing it.

Tim went on to say that there is a technology solution proposed by IBM's Craig Gentry - using fully Homomorphic Encryption. It has been debated that this is not ready for prime time. In fact, Microsoft published a paper with a contrarian view point proposing "somewhat homomorphic encryption".

At the end of the panel discussion, it was apparent that there is a lot more that was left unsaid. I expect that we will soon see products coming out in this space that will disrupt how we perceive and interface with security.

Panel on Software Defined Networks

TiE Silicon Valley organized a panel on the next wave in networking - Software Defined Networks (SDN) on Thursday, November 10th. This was well attended (with an audience of over 150) and was easily one of the best panels that I have been to (TiE or otherwise).

Networking has not evolved much in the last 20+ years. Since the first packet switched network in the late 1960s, companies have basically been improving the same architecture and basically improving line speeds and port densities. All that changed with the PhD dissertation of Martin Casado at Stanford in 2007. His thesis was based on the Ethane project, that allows one to build a secure enterprise network with a powerful, yet simple management model. This led to OpenFlow and SDN. Suddenly, there is innovation in networking and there is a lot of excitement around the plain old network!

The first speaker was Stanford's Guru Parulkar. He defined the problem - how networks are vertically integrated, complex, closed and proprietary. By separating the data plane and control plane and having a protocol between the OS and the forwarding devices, it is possible to build network control management applications. He waxed eloquent about the talk given by Verizon's Stu Elby at the Open Networking Summit on Service Provider Networks.

Dan Wendlandt of Nicira spoke next. Dan provided his perspective on SDN - how it is possible to describe high level policies that the system "compiles" down to individual devices. So, a VM can migrate all through the data center and have the security policies follow it.

The next speaker was Anshul Sadana, VP Customer Engineering at Arista Networks. Anshul spoke about OpenStack. He also talked about how virtualization sets networking back one step and how Arista's VMTracer bridges the gap between physical and virtual networks, thus simplifying network operations.

Stuart Bailey of Infoblox was the next speaker. He likened the value (in networking) moving from custom hardware to software to the end of the mainframe era. We are, indeed, at a huge inflection point in the evolution of networking. Infoblox solves the problem of managing pervasive networks.

The final speaker was the host of the evening - Allwyn Sequeira of VMWare. He talked about the trends driving the evolution of the DataCenter:

• New Application architectures - stateless and scaling out
• Lower Hardware costs
• Virtualization of all Hardware components (by 2014, an average server will run 320 VMs)

There is a need to enable dynamic, workload aware networks that has

• Forwarding plane
• Control plane
• Management plane - which abstracts the network and presents the abstraction to the upper layer for logical networks

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the session. Each speaker on the panel was an expert and has deep knowledge in their subject matter.