I particulary like Nikhil’s initiation to the session. Its interesting to see a real guy out of the crowd! Sharing his point of view on how social trends are happening in B2b space! Generally when I have interacted with people, the implementation of Social Media in the B2b space has always been a greater concern as compared to the B2c space.

Nikhil has come as a breath of fresh air for the audience here. After listening to some very interesting thoughts by Kiruba and others on Social Media’s impact and how can we classify consumers and look at their behavior, having Nikhil open the session with some very thought provoking 1.5 joke(s) makes an impact which I can sense and see in the audience. The ease with which Nikhil puts across his point and clarifies the clutter around Social Media for a business is worth your and your businesses’ while

Showing the audience the need for being there where your consumers are, Nikhil not only is forcing out of people the urge to know, how they can best leverage Social Media for their business and how can they really create a successful strategy around it, but he is also sharing some real practical insights, which can be modeled and shaped to suit your business requirements and create a successful Social Media presence.

Since much emphasis has already been given to the traditional methods of Social Media and how and why’s of its importance to business, giving a practical outlook to the entire game makes the entire talk a much intriguing affair. Now we have Nikhil giving a practical display of a dummy site and how his company makes Social Media, accessible to their cleints on their web sites, and hence the clients’ client does not have to really go anywhere else on the internet to talk his heart out.

The first engagement touchpoint happens on the web site itself

I am personally much interested to know, how Nikhil and his team decide upon the information flow and how dealing with different business verticals, they decide upon the site design? Is there a standard template, which proves that the visitor to your site would interact in this manner, if the content is made accessible right at the web site?

Proving his point to the audience, who is listening with much interest, Nikhil’s demonstration of the site is surely giving many a ideas to the audience present. I am sure we are going to see some really interactive sites coming up in the near future! Talking about Web 2.0, I am quite amazed with the way Nikhil has made content accessible to the client where he lands up on your web site. With all what I want present to me in different sorts of content, white papers, Videos etc, I would surely be able to hold onto my visitor onto the right section of my web site, for a good time, hence the probability of conversion increases!

I personally am very much on the similar page as Nikhil, and surely appraise of the ideas that he has shared, in the manner that he has! Way to go Nikhil!

The session is now wrapped up, within time and we are open to QandA offline.

After an amazing talk by Kiruba Shankar, we now have kamal krishna talking about Consumer 2.0, an interesting insight he is going to provide about how consumers perceive, how their moods change, their interaction and all what a business would want to know about the onsumer behavior on the internet. Way to go kamal

Before we reach out to this so called consumers on the internet out there, dont we need to know who is this guy whom we are targeting as a business?

How web 2.0 is changing moods, metrics and monetization!

Kamal surely is touching a cord here! Interesting to know how to know your consumer! Kamal talks about the ProdUSER!! According to Kamal the ProdUSER consumes more content than he looks at advertising. He pays more attention on content. You are getting this guy on the content! Content is the king as they say, and Kamal very precisely enforces the point to the audience.

Bite that chirp!!

Kamal is making sense,  comparing traditional advertising at social media does not work, people out there do not get the noise. On the internet kamal says its not the traditional advertising which works! You dont interrupt someone at their faces and make them see your content. People on the Social Medium are more interactive, they measure your content value, they see value! And I agree to kamal no less, its not about point blank messaging, its about intelligent messaging focused at the relevant market segment on the internet.

The consumer or producer the hero!!

kamal shares an excellent example of a kid site customizing the stuff for kids. Now kids love seeing their superheroes, this site allows them to become one! And wallah its engaging for them

He (the consumer) relishes the niche

There’s a capsika maggi…well did you know that? How brands are utilizing the need for niche and building communities around the same. kamal gives the example of Claseo a clothing line, which I can access only through invitation.  Honestly Kamal, I never knew there is something like a capsika maggi that exists.

We are now discussing word of mouth marketing with an example of a cosmetic company, which kamal shares by giving an example of how social media sites are helping this happen. I particularly like the way kamal’s manner of suffuciating with examples, its interesting and makes the right impact!

When I buy = I own!

I can twitter that I hate my Sat TV and I can hash to TV lovers.

So ProdUSER and ProdUSAGE is what the audience have been made to look onto now.

Niche is new and niche is going to be bigger, noise wont stand a chance. Utility is the new acceptance. that brand which is there, is no longer yours!

Money, Money money…we are all ears Kamal

Ahaan now we are discussing monetization, and wallah we are all ears! Kamal shares some common ways of monetization on the internet.

1. Contextual
2. Behavioral
3. Value
4. Devpay launhced by amazon is a recent one,
5. Widget and applications - branded applications
6. Engagement advertising - rate \ comment \ like ads

Measure the consumer behavior

Discussing how best can we measure the consumer behavior, and I can see the entire room getting suddenly interested in the happening! This is highly relevant, the basis of it all!

1. Identity - understand it better - Behavior \ relationships \
2. Journey will be more important than the purchase - comma \ exclamation \ ugly smiley
3. Focus on what we should measure and not just what we can - WOMM \ ProdUSERS as advertisers \ attention

With such a stimulating session, kamal leaves the session open to Q&A and I am sure there are many people who would be catching him offline!

Dominos is 49 year old company, present in 62 countries around the world. Two people got their brand down to its knees.

And now kiruba is sharing all what happened to dominos brand that day!! If you went to twitter and searched, you would see the moods of the people. The folks in the online world found out who was the offender, what did she do, and they found she is a convicted person.

Interesting to see  now we have a role play happening here with kiruba interacting with the audience and the audience are giving solutions to the issue. I am particularly liking the style in which kiruba is taking on the show! Great work

Well, Domino’s saw that the entire thing is happening and catching fire on twitter and

Domino’s who never had a twitter account, had a corporate account and they responded back to every nasty comment out there.

They also realized that they didn’t have a YouTube/facebook page at all, and surprise surprise…they never even knew they had a fan page for Domino’s pizza with 2lakh + numbers in fans…

Walking the Talk - Kiruba Shankar

And now kiruba asks, is your brand, your company following these things, its so easy to give gyaan, but walking the talk is difficult!

The mantra always should be- go where the people are!

Kiruba now shares another example of an incident which happened with an Indian company which goes as - Club Mahindra and how a simple 19 year old guy, who had never in his life had any experience of a Club Mahindra holiday was ruining their brand and people were catching onto it.

If you search for club mahindra on google.

The first link is theirs and the second link is a superb post which says never never never go to club mahindra. And club mahindra soon began to realize, that when someone pays 5lacs for a holiday why would someone go to google and search, and this had them started a blog.

Kiruba ends, leaving the room charged up with the power of social media, ohh Kiruba good words, being a Social Media Evangelist, I am on the same page as you!! Kudos!

Pradeep starts by acknowledging the audience and promises a sharp and crispy session! hmmm..

An interesting thought Pradeep has kept in front of the audience in terms of a quick poll, as to how many people in the room have SEO as part of the technology function in their company? And wallah, we do have a few hands raised here!

Pradeep quickly jumps onto the conventional SEO paradigm and how it is generally percieved and the typical purpose with which businesses employ SEO for Acquiring website rankings and traffic. I completely agree to Pradeep and so do many participants in the room.

Interestingly Pradeep, takes the discussion to the level of execution, discussing the general SEO implementation process sharing about keyword research, ranking, On Page optimization etc.Okay, so I know all of this, and am sure most of the people in this room would agree to me on this.

What results can you expect? Pradeep shares his thought leadership on the topic

What I am particularly intrigued with is the level to which Pradeep took the assumption, i.e. he says even after doing all of the above, the results listed can be expected only assuming search specialists were involved.

Has the business met its objectives yet?

Asks Pradeep to the audience and I can see people suddenly being thoughtful in the room. And well, we have the next slide which reads Doubtful! Not really, but surely I would like to know what comes next.

Pradeep is sharing the current reality of the generic difference in approach for marketing and online marketing, creating an interesting distinction for the audience present, for the same he also shares the required approach to provide better clarity to the room.

Good, to see the doubts being clarified with the example on screen now!

The SEO - New Paradigm

Pradeep shares with the room the new paradigm for SEO. How really the various elements in a good SEO implementation conjoin together to form the right execution strategy for SEO for your business. The presentation ends with Pradeep sharing how Online marketing Strategy can be really implemented to deliver to the right business objectives with the right set of metrics for measuring the business ROI.

We now break out for lunch and well, Pradeep is already being gheraoed, by the audience on a congratulatory note for a great presentation!

1. Consumer Internet
2. Mobile
3. Enterprise and Managed Service

• Search portal, is dominated by global players but there are a couple of local startups, but they have to bring a lot of innovation for it to stand out.
• E-Commerce is an area which is underdeveloped. There are challenges like payment and logistics, but this market has to take off in the next 3-5 years eg. Fabmall
• Travel which was a nascent space a few years back has developed and winners are standing out. The market is large so there are scope for innovations and possibilities for companies to stand out. Some big players Makemy trip.com,yatra.com
• Online financial services are another area which has huge scope.
• Advertising is growing slowly in India, not sure
• Video and social media sites are growing in terms of usage but not so fast in terms of monetization.
• Education is an interesting space for entrepreneurs to look at as there are no big players.

• Mobile penetration is far higher than internet penetration
• Internet growth coincides with the consumption growth
• Demographic curve is tilted towards young population
• Cheap labour costs
• Deregulation

in India the biggest job search company and biggest travel agency is online while they are offline companies in the US context

The session is about Web 2.0 - Evolving Business & Technology Paradigms, and we have Parminder Singh, business head, Google India. Interestingly Parminder is interacting with the audience and we have a small audience profiling being done here and interesting questions being raised by Parminder.

Innovation is what Parminder is talking about and well, he is sharing Porters model creating a context for innovation and how can companies innovate.

Innovation cannot be talked of in isolation, your customers have to be included along.

There was a time when consumer was the King, Consumer is GOD today, and he is getting more and more ruthless! So we have some real amazing statistics being shared by Parminder. Considering the kind of information overload that the customer is subject to, its important that you undertsand what game you are in!

3 imperatives of innovation

1. Know what game you are in
2. Reach them where they are
3. Don’t let go

So Parminder would be talking about hoe Obama used the web to reach out to his end customers and hence achieve his objectives.

Problem statement: you cannot VOTE online, which means the fulfillment was not online, it was offline

The behavior ultimately is offline.

Obama campaign had specifically targeted Google ads’. The message of the ad kept changing with the presidential campaign. Relevant ad targeting was what Obama very intelligently used.

Parminder now shares a relevant example, that of Mr. LK Advani and how Google is working with the BJP to take Mr. Advani’s brand further. Parminder is hitting upon the people in the room, with some very interesting data from Google insights on how the people perceptions are changing. how brands are getting created each second on the internet.

Reach them where they are

Parminder shifts the conversation to Mobile and shows the opportunity which Obama campaign targeted. How a simple Application contributed to the Obama success.

In a context back home, Parminder is now talking about how social networking sites are impacting business and how they did campaigns for Nokia and Airtel.

Dont let go

After the elections were won by Obama, they created a YouTube channel and hence they made sure that they are not letting go of their target consumers. Interestingly Parminder shares some amazing search results which people are looking at in these times of recession.

People’s outlook may be breached and the morale may not be that high, but once the brand sticks, you can really create a world of possibilities around your consumers.

So Now we have Jaybalan S, CTO and Co. founder Netmagic solutions talking about True Cloud: Build your IT Infrastructure on the cloud

Jay talks about that innovation should not just be talked about, but practised. And with this Jay is now demistifying Cloud Computing for the participants in the room.

Jay now talks about how Cloud Computing can really help businesses in virtualizing their physical infrastructure, hence allowing the management to gather key information and reporting to end users. With the architecture being discussed, I think the entire concept of Cloud Computing is getting clearer. Jay is now discussing the various contexts which people relate to when they talk about Cloud Computing.

• Public cloud
• Private cloud
• Hybrid cloud
• SAAS - highest layer
• PAAS - Middle layer
• IAAS - Lowest layer

Jay, creates the context with the audience and is now talking about how cloud computing have been in use on the web since the times of the mail, and how new innovations are coming on the cloud. Interestingly collaborative tools as Webex run on cloud.

SaaS is a good thing for any new company who is starting out and does not want to invest hugely into a heavy IT infrastructure.

The benefits of virtualization

• Reduced or no capital expenditures
• Datacenter cost reduction
• Lower power usage/cost
• Space savings
• On-demand provisioning
• Accelerated cycles
• Increased agility
• Evertything available as a managed service
• Disaster recovery / Business Contunuity
• Reduced operation costs

What are the benefits from a customer standpoint?

• No hardware costs
• No costs on software licenses
• No new employees or consultants
• No facilities to lease
• No capex of any kind
• Web 2.0, startups/research projects/ Niche Players - Low cost way to load and Go

Interestingly I see cloud Computing as a pretty scalable model.

Jay is now talking about how Cloud Computing can really be leveraged. For businesses in such times a Cloud based offering really does make sense. How can you really utilize the cloud, jay is sufficiating the same with examples.

Cloud revolutionizes the time to service

Jay also talks about the various challenges which are to be adapted to while we accomodate this new concept. Summarizing the talk, Jay says more and more the recession prolongs, more and more people will start to use Cloud Computing! Interestingly, Jay gives a green picture, saying that such a technology would really help you save on electricity and infrastructure, surely Cloud Computing is the way to go.

So we have a corporate video being presented by Jay from Netmagic, well a nice video made is all I can say