proto.in - Event Report

Hi guys, I'm back from this amazing event called proto.in :D and being part of the organising team did a lot of good to me.

The Event
The whole day consisted of demonstrations of 30 different products from 30 different companies. Many of them did manage to finish up in the stipulated 8 minutes. There was no Q & A session after the presentation. It was left for the audience to network with the guys doing the presentation. For most of the companies, it was the first time they had to present their product within 8 minutes, something that Atul Chitnis calls, "The elevator pitch", and many of them did a good job at it.

Some of my favourite presentations were SEraja, spoteazy, desicrew, tracbac, deeprootlinux, novatium and some more companies whose names I'm unable to remember right now. Those companies who did well answered some questions like, "What problem they are solving with the product?", "What is the differentiating factor of the product?", "What they are looking for from an event like proto?". Precise answers for these questions and a quick demo was all they did to capture the attention of the audience.

Good Things about the event
Met a lot of good old barcamp buddies, some of whom turned out to be angel investors :D. Arjun and Arun, who soft-launched Taazza at BarCampChennai last March, now have a kick arse full fledged news product. Good going guys! What's a bit surprising though is that there is no support for IE, which is still the most popular browser :-)

Got lots of inspiration to start working on some of the crazy ideas that had been occuring off late. Also realized that, there are lots of people ready to fund your product. But then, one thing to remember is to answer the "Why?" question before proceeding to build the product.

Overall, its been an amazing experience to be a part of the proto.in team. This event will return soon in all its glory, only getting better than this next time.