TiECON KERALA 2012 - REFLECTIONS FROM THE CHAIR : PROGRAM COMMITTEE

WHAT IT TURNED OUT TO BE:

• Largest ever gathering of entrepreneurs in Kerala
• 1000 delegates  of which 85% were entrepreneurs,  90 speakers drawn from many parts of the world
• Presence of Kerala Chief Minister, TiE Global Chairman, TiE Global Founder Chairman, TiE Global CEO
• 4 parallel knowledge sessions running simultaneously, 4 plenary sessions, one long distance videoconferencing
• 2 days of exclusive Mentoring & Venture Fund interactions
• Excellent takeaways, so much positive feedback, many grateful delegate
• TiECON KERALA 2012 rocked

EARLY STAGE DELIBERATIONS: 

At best hazy, continuously shifty, dynamically evolving, opinion going from south to North Pole, doing – undoing, actors come in, disappearing and appearing months later. Truly entrepreneurial, chaotic, ego centric, opinionated… Questions of will it ever happen? ……….
 

THE D DAY:

The delegates took us by surprise. When we had only 430 delegates registered till the eve, the spot registration exceeded  400 people, enabling us to cross 1000 registrants by the EOD. What does it show? Yes, things are changing in Kerala – hitherto a predominantly entrepreneur unfriendly state, in favour of entrepreneurship.
 

THE NETWORKING DINNER:

The Gala dinner was a huge success except the Attakalari dance performance which, to me was damp squib. I met so many people, particularly youngsters there. So many of them shared their business cards with me with a request for a meeting later. Hope to add some value to these guys in the course of time.
 

THE PERSONALITIES:

John K Paul: TiE Kerala President

• Determined, ambitious, got a buy-in from a diverse group of CMs, initial spade work done correctly with TiE Global Chairman by participating in different TiE Global Retreats.
• Loosely holding the pack, no tight leashes on anyone
• To come in where it matters (sponsorship, TiE Global connect, interface with Chief Minister & Industry deptt.  etc.)
• Works in detached mode, soft touch- never comes down heavily, ‘go ahead-let it happen’ style
• Turned out to be the most successful model of leadership of TiE Kerala for TiECON to truly explode……

NR Panicker: Charter Member

The person who made all the difference. He made it happen. Thought it out through his mind many times over.  Did travel a lot between Cochin & his place of work (Chennai) for deliberations. Got the main entrepreneurship track organized single handedly by connecting with eminent speakers and panelists and bringing them to the show that delivered high value, high quality knowledge output.

Person with eye for details, high on self-confidence, little rigid at times nevertheless an action man, completely different from other TiE:Kerala CMs
 

KC :  Executive Director

The man who held the embryo inside growing for solid one year, undergoing all the pangs of the labour and delivery. Age did not wither him and the military discipline held in him in good stead. With a frugal office, to plan and executive TIECON, was a tall order. He pulled it thru so very well, in spite of handling so many ego centers simultaneously. He should find this as his point of salvation.
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V K Mathews: Charter Member

Did not indulge much during early deliberation. Travelling & business priorities kept him away. Single handedly took charge of the Information Technology track of 3 hours on the second day, bringing in high quality speakers and panelists and delivering excellent value for the track.  A person who finds himself different from the rest, someone who knows that he is destined to go places………
 

Ashok Rao  : Chairman TiE Global

High decibel, high visible leadership of TiE Global. Very articulate and humorous. Recommended the Chief Minister to constitute a Ministry of Entrepreneurship. Delivered special address at inaugural and valedictory functions, both going down well with the audience. A man of strong likes and dislikes.  His “Ashokism” was a hit. I liked his “Don’t push the river, let it flow’ as the best…………….
 

Kanwal Rekhi : Founder Chairman TiE Global

Must call him the grand old man of TiE. Many came and went but he gives TiE the permanent look.  Very sincere person, he wants things to happen now and is impatient with the deliberate slowness that is happening around. His story of pushing the NDA Govt. to open up the Telecom sector was an eye opener. Good person, may he live long to deliver very high value to Entrepreneurship!
 

Arjun Malhotra : Former Chair TiE Global

Knew him early, he was our Vice Chairman in HCL where I worked at the HO as Product Manager, of course, long back. Founder of 3 large IT enterprises including HCL. A person always of high spirits, he was hugely popular with youngsters. This former TiE Global Chair added tremendous value with his very open, straight remarks. He inspires!
 

Sam Pitroda: Adviser to Prime Minister of India

He got up very early in Chicago to take part in the Video conferencing session chaired by Vijayaraghavan. An advocate of entrepreneurship, his words went well with the audience and he got rapt attention for close to two hours even though he was away and available only on the screen. He made interaction with the audience, answering their questions. A person of genuine intent and an earnest empathizer of BoP!
 

Sam Santhosh: Charter Member

Sam came out as a genuine story in TiECON. He took part in two deliberations, one on the entrepreneurship track and the other at the Life science manufacturing session. For an engineer/MBA, Sam had metamorphosed well into a Life science domain entrepreneur. The newspapers covered him well. I am happy for him.
 

THE WOMEN AT THE SHOW:

Sramana Mitra:

The Bengali beauty, now purely an American who runs this 1 Million/I Million virtual company on the Net, had a paid outing at TiECON and a plenary session to cap with, right on the day 2. A sales & marketing person, she communicated well and struck a chord with the youngsters in the audience. I did not find anything new in her presentation and I am increasingly more convinced on how hype & associated glamour wins, whether meritorious or not. Her comments on TiE did not go well with the Charter members and it turned out to be a question of getting beaten by the stick we provided
 

Aruna Sunder Raj - IAS:

As the Chair of the session on Social Entrepreneurship, I was a little apprehensive on what she will deliver about “Kudumbasre” mission of Kerala Government at the session. She acquitted herself very well and delivered a very touching presentation and partook very well in the panel discussions. I am happy to see Aruna maturing herself into an excellent bureaucrat. I could see high level of self-confidence in her, compared to her earlier stint in Kerala.

Roopa Purushottaman:

I did not want to waste my time and page on her but though I must let you know how an organizer can get deceived by sheer good looks. During deliberations, I had my reservations about bringing her to speak but some charter members prevailed. This twenty something was suddenly catapulted to being the Special speaker at the Valedictory function and whatever she delivered put the entire audience to complete sleep and it needed all the wits of Ashok Rao, Chairman TiE Global, to bring them back to wakeful mode. She had no idea of what TiECON was and she simple didn’t care to know. Her presentation was totally unconnected; showing some crazy demographics. Earlier she had rubbed senior reporters of Manorama & Asianet channel wrongly by refusing to give interview. I was a witness to it, she was highly immature and extremely arrogant with them. She spoke with disdain to them and gave me dirty looks when I told them that bot channels are the leading Kerala Channels. With a pucca Mallu name like Purushottaman as a tag, where will she run to escape her malayalism which she is now trying to hide in her put-up accent? May be she could change call her name Roop Pram and go back to US to get treated a second grade citizen of that country, as is being experienced by so many expats there.

EATING HUMBLE PIE:

Some of the charter members who tried to push in names like Mitra, Roopa etc must be eating humble pie for having brought in agenda centric speakers despite advise from some experienced members. I do not blame them fully for what happened but I am sure, this will stay with them as a good experience. What matters for speakers are experience, content and good stories that add value to the audience but if we go by sheer look or hype, we could land up in a mess. However, I am glad that such instances had been very low at TIECON Kerala 2012 and notwithstanding these sessions, TiECON Kerala delivered huge value to the participants
 

THE PRESS and MEDIA:

The press coordinator did not come thru well in the early stages and we were feeling jittery of the poor coverage. A personalised attempt and NR Panicker and self directly with the newspaper & media persons opened them up and suddenly the coverage increased multifold. After being convinced of the importance of the event, they never needed the directions and there were big stories every day about TiECON Kerala 2012 and that built up the tempo.  The credit of surge in spot delegate registrations is totally attributed the press & media. Thank you press and media, you have truly served a just cause very well.

THE EVENT MANAGER:

It was based on the recommendation of one of the Trivandrum based Charter members of TiE that M/s. Stark became the event manager of the show. Though I had my doubts in the beginning, Stark came through wonderfully well in the management of TiECON Kerala 2012. I must put on record the efforts of M/s. Jayesh, Nirmal and Renjini of Stark for the event that delivered rich dividends at the end.

THE AUDIENCE:

From the body language of so many participants, I could see that they were genuinely delighted to attend TiECON 2012. Here was a show that was meant for entrepreneurs, covering all main successful business domains of Kerala. The content being of high quality and personalized, gave them plenty to take away. For many of them, it was a first time pleasant experience. They networked well, interacted with speakers and even had opportunity to get mentored and see VCs exclusively. I was personally approached by many delegates with the message that they had enjoyed TiECON Kerala 2012 immensely. With TiECON, TiE Kerala’s responsibility has more than doubled. I am sure the members including old and new, could be very demanding now. Good for entrepreneurship!