Silicon Bangalore!

Just a couple great days in Bangalore, at a Forum Nokia Developer event.  

 

Looking around, I had to blink a few times to remind myself I was not in Silicon Valley. Actually, I had to blink a few more times to remind myself I was not in Silicon Valley circa 1999. The last time I can remember developers this pumped was during the Internet boom! These uber-geeks were literally cheering!

 

Occasionally, people confuse the per capita GDP of a nation with the per capita innovation of a nation. If anyone makes this mistake in tech-infused Bangalore they're missing the point completely. I met entrepreneurs reinventing the sms platform, entrepreneurs turning Bluetooth into a boon for the disabled; collected business cards from all over world; and saw more hustle than I've come across in a long time. Ideator Iqbal Quadir has spoken at length about the radical technology innovation he has seen first-hand all over India. It's precisely this kind of excitement for technology and its possibilities that I experienced first-hand at the Forum Nokia event. A great vibe!

 

I also spent some of my time in Bangalore on the other side of the mirror; observing focus groups in order to understand developer needs a little better. As always, I am as struck by what is the same all over the world as I am by unique regional differences. We may speak different languages (well, in India, everyone seems to speak at least six), live in different climates, and rock out to different tunes, but when it comes to technology, things seem to be pretty universal: we all value unfragmented, stable platforms; take joy in awesome tools; lust for sexy hardware, and respect the killer app that no one had thought of before. 

 

Next stop, Beijing. http://www1.forum.nokia.com.cn/DeveloperSummit/NokiaChinaDeveloperSummit2009_Agenda.pdf

Forum Nokia: (http://www.forum.nokia.com/).

Valerie Buckingham, Bangalore