Netting People

India Internet World'98 was held in New Delhi recently.

Hailed as the largest Internet event in the world, it was for the first time this show was

held in the country, courtesy Mecklermedia in association with Microland.

The event that was held in Pragati Maidan between August

25-28 was jointly organized with Mecklermedia, an international publishing house which

already has expertise in organizing such shows. The company enjoys the credit of

organizing over 30 such events in 25 countries in the last 18 months. Its core competency

in the organizing arena, combined with Microland's experience in organizing such events in

India, proved to be an ideal mix, and everything went off smoothly.

The event consumed 3,000 sq ft, and saw 40 exhibitors

participating. There were a total of six keynote speeches, an equal number of panel

discussions, and 60 conference sessions under five headings, namely, Intranet/Extranet,

Internet: The New Medium, Business on the Net, Content World and ISP World. The timings

were divided into three slots: special hours, business hours and public hours.

The organization of the event was typical of Microland. The

publicity brochures were neatly thumbed and well colored, and they held, typical to

practice, parallel sessions which made it so difficult to choose between what sessions

should be attended. They got good speakers who spoke well-but again, in quite a few cases,

some of the sessions got a little too company-specific and marketing-oriented as opposed

to being truly informative.

Quite a few speakers spoke to DATAQUEST, and the feelings

were mostly similar-yes, India has a good chance of making it big in the Internet web

place, but for that, connectivity and telecom infrastructure need to be improved. Many

also spoke about the various strategies available for leading from the front on the web,

and expounded their own favorite ones. And then there was the usual talk about their

companies, and how they were involved in developments that were changing things.

By far, the biggest attraction of the show was Sabeer Bhatia

of Hotmail fame. Hotmail, while probably not the best example of an ideal web mail

solution, has two very enviable badges-it was the first, the pioneer that everybody else

follows, and it was the one selected by Bill Gates to come under the Microsoft banner.

Sabeer Bhatia was so much in demand-there were supposedly over 35 requests for one-to-one

media meetings with him-that he could only spare a small 20-minute slot for a mini-press

conference. He spoke of the openness of things in the US, and how the environment there is

highly conducive to bringing out the entrepreneur in him.

Again, like most other people, he opined that the Government

of India should ideally leave the Internet alone, because the worst thing that could

happen to the web was over- regulation. He also discussed Hotmail's own future strategies

and said that they were now looking at targeting business users. He also claimed that at

Microsoft, he had the freedom of running things his own way, though admitting that he

misses the entrepreneurial spirit. Bhatia also said that there were no revenue plans for

the next two years, and also that one of the key strategies would be customized,

personalized content.

Among the other speakers, the prominent ones included Bill

Melton of Cybercash, Gene DeRose of Jupiter Communications, Chris Moore of iPass and

Mellanie Hills of Knowledgies. Between them, they kept the knowledge waves running at high

bandwidth, and spent their time either talking to journalists or briefing visitors to

various sessions.

Among Indian speakers, the cake goes to Chandrababu Naidu,

the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, who has taken so much trouble to understand what IT

can do, in terms of foreign investments as well as in terms of being a key enabler, both

from the perspective of his own state as well as from the national context. In fact, it

was Naidu who gave the inaugural address at the glitzy event. He said, "IT enabling

the Government will free it from many evils like corruption, incompetencies, indifferences

etc. This will make the Government more transparent and accessible to the common

man."

Naidu, incidentally, was not the only prominent political

figure who attended IIW'98. Former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao also came, but he was

not among those who spoke, instead contenting himself with visiting various stalls.

Microland being a company that believes in business and

pleasure going together, presentation of India Internet Awards was hardly a surprise.

Again, considering that it was an Internet fair, it was hardly surprising that

Internet-based communication was much in vogue, with the panel of judges too meeting

virtually, over the web, through email. They gave away five different awards under various

categories, namely the `Most Useful Website of the Year', `Most Popular Website of the

Year', `Best Website Design', `Best Web Designer', and `Cyber Corporate of the Year'.

Rediff on the Net was the most popular site-walking away with two

awards. One for being the `Most Popular Website' and second, for `Best Website design'.

Homeindia.com got the `Most Useful Website' award, while the National Stock Exchange and

ICICI jointly walked away with the Cyber Corporate of the Year award. The `Best Website

Designer' award went to Malay Nagda. The Awards ceremony was organized by Microland along

with The Economic Times and Computer Associates.

All in all, it was an excellently planned show,

professionally organized, and well attended. True, much more needs to be done to make the

Internet itself prevalent in India, but this show is definitely a good step in the right

direction.