TIEcon 2000 Generates Hope

The premiere annual business event of the South Asian Diaspora in Northern California (if not the United States) once again left us dazzled by it's technological glitter at the TIEcon 2000 Conference at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, California on May 6th and 7th.. The IndUS Entrepreneurs also known as TIE made "Entrepreneurship in the 21st. Century" it's theme for this millennium year 2K. Here in "Silicon Valley", considered by many as the Hi-Tech Capital of the world, this event also proved to be a continuing breath of fresh air in Indian-Pakistani community relations as the keynote speech at the banquet was given by Karachi born and Lahore raised English writer Bapsi Sidhwa.

A conference of this size, with multiple simultaneous events, is impossible to

cover by a single reporter. So what will be presented here a handful of highlights and encounters with a purposeful Pakistani community twist. The point is to encourage more membership from non-Indian South Asians who could learn a great deal from these mainly Indian and some Pakistani success stories in the United States Bipin Shah and Kanwal Rekhi of TIE kicked off this event after breakfast on Saturday morning. The first Keynote speech by Dr. Jim Clark set the pace for the kind of class gathering that this was to be. Dr. Clark has founded Silicon Grahics Inc., Netscape Communications, Healtheon/WebMD, my CFO Inc. plus Shutterfly.com.

The South Asian Community getting pointers and accolades from him suggests that we are off to a good start. And to have Dr. Gururaj "Desh" Deshpande follow up with the second opening keynote was like icing on a cake. Dr. Deshpande is Founder and Chairman of Sycamore Networks Inc. and has also been the founder of Cascade Communications. In his memorable speech he stressed that in the "new economy' both "good and bad news travels very fast" and " as information flows freely, "the consumer rules". Concluding with his spiritual side Dr. Deshpande reminded everyone that in life we all have to juggle a lot of balls and it is only the work ball which is made of rubber and can bounce back. In other words, he said that one need not get too carried away with work and forget about the other non-bouncing balls that cannot be ignored such as friends and family. Coming from a person of his stature, such words made quite an impact.

As this reporter next walked through the conference, let me mention that here TIEcon this year was fortunately not under South Asian news pressure. In 1998 TIE had to face the nuclear test fallout in South Asia, and in 1999, the war in Kargil. TIE has kept it's business chin up through many a crises and has continually shown us the ability to succeed in a much more positive realm. So many well deserved kudos to them. The "K" word of Kashmir will thus remain absent from the rest of this report because TIE has thus far been able to successfully transcend it.

The first person who sought me out to talk amongst many on May 7th was G. Iyer of WinVision.com a applications service provider. He talked at length about how he always makes it a point to come to TIEcon every year because at each conference he gets a few business leads out of which at least always pan's out and becomes a real customer. And that is what this conference is all about.

Next I ran into corporate attorney Mukesh Advani who was promoting his services and making a few friends along the way, as was Waseem Shaikh CTO of aexXchange.com in Palo Alto (and originally a Lahori from Pakistan). Raghvada Tadavarti of World Online (WOL.com) was extremely interested in Pakistanis. Many Indians at the event asked me how the IT industry was doing in Pakistan and as to why more Pakistanis are not in software?

Alex (Sikandar) Naqvi President and CEO of Luminous Networks Inc. was in his element, and along with Subash Iyar, Tom Dyal and Surya Panditi, he sat on a panel on how to take a company "From Plan to Resources". Collectively they thoroughly addressed the secrets of dealing with venture capitalists and how good employees can be attracted in this very tight labor market, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area. At an earlier panel Hatim Tayabji, Rajiv Grover, Nat Natraj and Christopher Kidd dealt with the topic of "It's People, People, People" giving the attendees quite an insight.

Throughout the day Safi Qureshey of Irvine Ventures was spotted talking business with various people and the media (the BBC in particular). He also took the time to talk to talk to this scribe on a variety of issues including the promotion of education in Pakistan.

One most interesting conversation I had was with Binni Rana, President and CEO of Kahani.com Inc., a world of children's stories on Indian culture. She

wanted to encourage writers from other parts of South Asia to be a part of her venture too. And along with a company called Arzoo.com, which caught my attention, kahani.com gets my vote for most originality in company names.

The elegant evening Banquet turned out to be a special surprise. By chance I got seated next to brothers Mihail and Humayun Lari of Electrifier Inc. All three of us turned out to be graduates of Karachi Grammar School. So the dinner conversation was interesting. Their business was to be a part of the TIE Company Showcase the next day. It is unfortunate that I could not see their presentation and the closing keynote speech by Professor Amar Bhide on May 7.

One has to hand it to TIE for its originality in inviting Pakistani writer Bapsi Sidhwa to give the banquet keynote speech at TIEcon 2000. Bapsi Sidhwa Novelist and Teacher, "From the Indus Valley To the New World, A personal Journey" was an accurate introduction for her. Because as Bapsi has expressed in some of her writings, she is certainly very close to that river and the people that inhabit the area around it. So it was no surprise that she started her speech with it. And once one went beyond the graphic content of some of her work (Bapsi does not hold back on being descriptive), the intimacy in her books "The Crow Eaters" and "Cracking India" spilled out. Movie clips of Deepa Mehta's "Earth" which was based on "Cracking India" really moved the audience with Bapsi narrating her experiences while shooting the film in India. The 1947 partition of British South Asia into India and Pakistan was painfully revisited this evening but the tone was one for the need reconciliation beyond the sadness. Bapsi Sidhwa deserves a hand for approaching TIE with such a difficult subject and even making it palatable.

And on this note one ends this report. The message that this scribe came away with from this conference was one of hope. Let us hope to have more TIE's and not nuclear rivalry. Let us have more TIE's and no Kargils.. And let us find a collective success in business because South Asians need to fight poverty much more than each other.