alt="Chandrababu Naidu, chief minister (or CEO, as he calls himself) of Andhra Pradesh, in his inaugural speech at the India Internet World."
align="left" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4">None needs to
be convinced about Internet as a big opportunity. How to make it happen and the means of
achieving it are the talk of the town. At a time when the all round mood over Internet is
upbeat and with an Internet policy expected to be announced any day, an exhibition (event)
dedicated to Internet furtherance is like icing on the cake. India Internet World 1998 was
one such event.
alt="Knowledge is power. In quest of which, the ex-Prime Minister, PV Narasimha Rao, visited the show."
align="right" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4">Organized by
Micromedia in association with Mecklermedia, the exhibition-cum-conference was held during
25-28 August in Pragati Maidan, New Delhi. Mecklermedia is an Internet publishing firm
which has organized over 30 such events in the last 18 months in more than 25 countries
around the world.
Micromedia is the Indian networking
company Microland’s Internet media division whose main charter is to increase
Internet awareness through trade shows, conferences, on-line information services, and
research. India Internet World was the division’s first event.
The idea of organizing such an event had
been cooking for several months. One of the main factors which triggered it was the
opening up of Internet services to private companies. The show space, the topics of the
conference, the speakers, the media centre, and several other components of the event were
meticulously planned.
alt="The milling crowds at the show."> |
alt="The milling crowds at the show."> |
The event showcased 40 exhibitors covering
3,000 sq. ft., six keynote speeches, six panel discussions, and 60 main conference
sessions spread over five streams—business on the Net, Internet—the new medium,
intranet/extranet, content world, and ISP world. The Internet show took off with the
inauguration by chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu. The exhibition timing
was divided into three parts—special hours, business hours, and public hours. The
whole event evoked a lot of responses in the form of media participation, discussions and
debates, excited crowd of public visitors, and business queries. It would not be wrong to
describe the four days of the show as hi-tech madness. Only that, there was a method in
the madness. The agenda of the whole show was to spread awareness, and the orientation of
the conference was 40 percent business-to-consumer and 60 percent business-to-business.
alt="Sabeer Bhatia: The star attraction." align="left" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4">
face="Times New Roman">Though at the end of it, the picture that one gets is that the show
generated a lot of excitement. Youngsters literally cramped the exhibition hall to
experience this new phenomenon called Internet. Seldom was an Internet kiosk or an
Internet terminal in the various cyber cafes free. Many were seen registering their names
in various web-based E-mail sites.
The presence of Net experts and
celebrities like Gene De Rose, William Melton, Chris Moore, and Sabeer Bhatia added spice
to the conferences.
At this nascent stage of the Indian
Internet market, India Internet World catered to two types of audiences. One, the Internet
curious—those who are aware of the Net but a little sceptic about it—and two,
the Internet committed—the ones who already know the benefits of Internet and want to
actually use it better.
MS Rangaraj, vice-president and chief
technology officer, Microland, who played a major role in planning and managing the show,
says, "The success of this exhibition will be measured in two ways. One, by finding
out if the four stake holders in the show—sponsors, delegates, exhibitors, and
speakers—have derived value out of it. Two, by tracking the kind of visitors to find
out whether it really created awareness". If one is to take up the first parameter,
then the exhibition was a fair success. Many of the industry exhibitors agreed that the
exhibition was really good as far as spreading brand awareness was concerned. When it came
to value in terms of real customers, many were not sure. Delegates feel that the show was
well-managed. And many speakers noted their surprise that the audience were more informed
than what they had expected.
Assessing the spread of
awareness is a far more complex process. As of now, it looks from the large number of
visitors, that the exhibition-cum-conference was a grand success. However, to look at it
from a more appropriate perspective would be to find out whether the right audience came
to the show. Although this would involve tracking visitors which may take a long time it
is the only way of finding whether India Internet World has accomplished what it had set
out to do—speed up the use of Internet in India.