Bar Camp Anyone ?

A bar camp is being organized in Noida. When I first heard about it, it souded more like a self organizing conference that Martin Fowler talks about. Also it happens to be on Web 2.0 and similar cool stuff. Though i am not qualified enough on either web 2.0 or open spaces, I am keen to attend this one & hopefully it turns out to be as exciting & vibrant as it sounds.

Also hoping to learn a lot, meet like minded great people and figure out how these concepts can be levaraged in my organization. Will update on how it went.

Beyond Bullet Points

One thing I have realized over the past few years is that creating an wonderful technical design - architecture is fun & important for a successful techie project but more important & tricky is to be able to present it to not so geeky management people and get them excited about it.

This is where all of us end up working & cursing powerpoints: the necessary evil. & unfortunately create it like Gates does instead of adopting the Jobs style. Read this blog to figure out who are you closer to atleast in presentation styles. after reading it, i certainly need to re-visit my presentations & think beyond bullets !!

Starting a Start-up - III (Software Infrastructure)

Continuing from my previous post on why we are seeing more and more start-ups these days, I mentioned the fact that lower entry barriers are also due to host of software infrastructure needs that can be addressed by open source or very economical but mature options.

So here is my list of softwares (mostly collaboration ones) that any start-up should consider:

PBX:

• asterisk: complete telephony solutions including conferencing, call queuing etc

Voip:

• skype
• babble
• teleo of course is now part of microsoft empire (the kind of acquisitions they have made recently makes me excited about what their vista will have to offer

Document Sharing:

• instalcoll: sabeer bhatias latest brainchild
• writeboard & writely: more like collaborative writing offering "software as service"
  
• shinkuro & dropload

Wiki:

• loads of wiki engines are available but no wiki talk is complete without mentioning confluence & jotspot (2 of my favorites.... jot being more like a wiki farm)

Full Collaboration:

• different teams & cos have different collaboration needs but if one is looking for a suite .. then one should look at zimbra and qnext and of course erstwhile groove
  

Let me know what kind os softwares you find useful in a startup.