What’s special at the NASSCOM Product Conclave 2010

Kishore Mandyam, CEO, PK4 Software, and member, Organizing Committee, NASSCOM Product Conclave 2010

In the following post, Kishore shares the special aspects of the NASSCOM Product Conclave 2010.

Community driven conclave - The program agenda, conference marketing and even sponsorship of this Conclave has been driven entirely by community members on volunteer basis. Startup CEOs and senior executives have taken time out from running their own companies to attend to every detail so that the Conclave content is world-class. They believe in the product story. But they also know of multiple problems/challenges in our developing product ecosystem. It is this powerful mixture of mission and realism that brings unmatched insights to this Conclave.

Highly curated program agenda – Each session and topics have been carefully selected to be relevant to different segments of product entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs. Around these topics, the program team has pulled together world-class speakers to share their personal stories. This time the speaker lineup is truly outstanding with significant international flavor. Finally, the program team has insisted on having several preparatory discussions among the session participants to align the speakers to the attendee profile and expectations and focus on actionable takeaways. This type of intense curation has not been done for any NASSCOM conference earlier.

Connections with CIOs, SIs and Press – Several special platforms have been created for product startups to have structured interaction and open discussions with CIOs, SIs and Press. Over 30 top-tier CIOs, 7 SIs and many members of the mainstream press have made themselves available for these special sessions. To make these sessions impactful, we have pre-selected (from among a large number of applications) 31 startups that are are most ready to benefit from this interaction. Over time these platforms will become significant enablers for the product launch, product demo and early customer adoption programs.

Unprecedentedaudience enthusiasm - The early-bird registration numbers broke all records for any NASSCOM event ever! The Conclave itself was sold out weeks in advance (forcing the program team to create a special half-day Open-House session for those unable to attend the Conclave). The discussions on EMERGE blog have been intense and have shaped the program agenda. All this enthusiasm is a result of the close partnership that NASSCOM has forged with several grassroots organizations like OCC, HeadStart, MoMo, and others. With over 650 startups attending, it is clear that the entire Indian product ecosystem has come together to make this Conclave a landmark on this journey. This collaboration is an example to the rest of the world.