So, Whats New?

"So, how was Nasscom?," asked a friend from an IT services firm, who could not attend the NASSCOM India Leadership Forum (NILF) this year, but otherwise is a regular at the forum. Nasscom, in his question, of course, referred to NILF.

I wish I could have given him a very articulate answer. Not that he was expecting it. He apparently had asked the question to a couple of more attendees-his colleagues-but was probably expecting a more analytical and reflective answer from an editor. Business as usual, not too enthusiastic, not gloomy-I replied, the 140 character restriction of a tweet still trying to play somewhere in my mind. I guess I had tweeted the same words some time on the first day and as the event progressed, my conclusion was not proved wrong. The answer, of course, was neither reflective nor catchy. But more importantly-it was not about the event itself, which was his question. It was about the mood prevailing. And even he was perfectly okay with that-maybe, he too was expecting that. He seemed a little relieved. Our conversation moved seamlessly to the global business environment and not to the content of the NILF.

For years now, NILF has become-more than anything else-the barometer to measure the mood of Indian offshoring industry. It is an event you attend to see where the mood lies, validate your mood against that of the fraternity, and make corrections/create benchmarks in your mind. For that reason alone, NILF will continue to remain the most important event in the Indian IT. That is why every outsourcing company worth its name ensures that some senior execs attend the event, even though they keep complaining about not enough buyers coming in, not enough attention to the small and medium companies, and so on. The media and analysts complain about the lack of enough good sessions, but no one gives it a pass, unless there is some strong reason not to be able to attend.

Some of the criticism, per se, is valid. People go to NILF to validate the mood and do some networking. But there is some expectation from the largest such event in the world: That it would provide a direction on where things are going in the next few months and the next few years. As an organizing body, Nasscom is doing a pretty good job. There are innovations in the format; there are new features that are getting added; the event has embraced social media and so on.

But the newness in content is missing. It is the same issues, same faces from industry, taking the same stands. Not that they are unimportant, irrelevant, or uninteresting. But the discussion is rarely about new trends. It is rarely about hypotheses. It is all about what companies are doing, and worse still, have already done-by definition, the present and the past.

Remember when a Tom Friedman enthralled the audience, with his take on outsourcing? Not only he talked about what he had written in the first edition of The World is Flat but he actually gave a glimpse of what he was going to incorporate in the second edition. One can still remember an injured APJ Abdul Kalam on video leaving a lasting impression on all foreign delegates ("Well, now, we know why India is what it is") by elaborating what he wants the IT industry to achieve, in clear terms.

All that is missing.

It is easy to point fingers at the organizers and shy away from the real issue. Isnt the lack of newness in an industry forum a reflection of lack of that newness in the industry itself? Is the IT industry serious about experimenting, about debates? The problem with a B2B, horizontally spread industry like IT services is that lack of enough newness would not impact it immediately. But ultimately, it would. And that is not a very comfortable thought for any of us.