I’m in Delhi for a few days, recuperating from the intensity of TED India. I met dozens of people who blew me away, slept about 12 hours total over 3 days, and somehow ended up giving two talks!  More on the talks (with video, hopefully) later, but right now, here is a recap of some of the TED experience.

The People

Due to writing/rehearsal time for my talks, I ended up missing more than a few TED talks, which was fine with me: I’ll catch them online, when they’ve been edited and produced for maximum enjoyment. Instead, I prioritized the time I had for meals and parties, where we got to sit down with people like Tony Hsieh, Nandan Nilekani Rohini Nilekani, Jacqueline Novogratz, Scott Cook, and others.  Many of those conversations were better than most of the TED talks I attended (especially an illuminating sourcing discussion with Scott Cook, CEO of Intuit).

Infosys

Most of TED’s attendees were whisked by bus (with police escorts) from the modern Bangalore airport to the Infosys campus in Mysore.  Those who left the country directly afterwards are going to have a very skewed perspective of where India is at.  The Infosys campus in Mysore is spotless and organized like a gated community in Orlando (it even features an Epcot Center dome).  You get this nagging sense you’re on the Indian IT version of the Truman show. While this was a great venue for TED (parties at palaces in Mysore, a beautiful outdoor Greek Theater, and fantastic venues for talks), it often felt contrived.

Sunita Krishnan

Sunita Krishnan is about 4 feet tall, which surprised me when I later met her in person, given her gigantic stage presence. She spoke of her work rehabilitating thousands of sex slaves and her own personal experience being gang-raped by eight men at the age of 15. Sunita’s talk was devoid of self-righteousness; instead, she touched the audiences with simple stories of joy and assimilation that she encounters every day in her work.  Make sure you catch this talk when the video is released.

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At some point during a challenging project, you inevitably find out if your project manager actually cares – could be during a looming deadline, a malware attack, or just an intense phase of development.

If you’re working with an offshore team, the distance doesn’t make your team leader’s concern (or lack thereof) easier to fake.  You’ll know if she cares – it’s unmistakeable.

Leaders who don’t care hide behind contracts, jump too quickly to “that’s impossible”, or question (inappropriately) business need.

You can increase your chances of success immeasurably by finding out how much your project manager cares before you hit that first fire drill.

One way to figure this out: create an intense deadline early, before the project is anywhere near its critical phase.  In most cases, you’ll learn something about the character of your team.

One of my favorite Monsoon projects of the year just went into Alpha.

Yea.

That’s all I can tell you right now.

We’re working with one of our oldest clients to rethink the way the businesses track and manage sustainability efforts.  Here’s a sneak peak.

I’ll be speaking on a panel held by Stanford professors Richard Dasher for his course “Technology Strategies in Asia Business” on October 1st.

The panel is titled “Managing outsourced R&D in India”, and I’m excited to be joined by Avinash Agrawal (Sun/Stanford) and Bill Ihrie (Intuit).

The class is open to the public – here’s what I know so far:

October 1, 4:15 – 5pm

I’ll update the exact location as soon as I have it.

I’m thinking about rocking my Jahvid Best jersey to the panel. Go Bears.

Make no mistake: a well-qualified offshore IT team can save your startup thousands of dollars and speed up product launches.   All you have to do is find the right partner.

Easier said than done.  It’s hard enough to find good employees and vendors in your own country; how do you find a good team abroad?

It isn’t difficult to figure out where to look.  These days, websites like oDesk and eLance connect you to independent contractors around the world; simple Google searches and directory sites like IndianBusiness list thousands of IT companies in a wide variety of niches.

But knowing how to look is much more important.  So, here are five rules to keep in mind when searching for the ideal offshore IT partner.

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Video from my conversation with Lakshmi Pratury at the Aicon Gallery in Palo Alto last year.  We discuss how Monsoon Company got started, innovation in India, and Thomas Friedman.

Monsoon Company collaborated with US News and HP to create a touch-centric Adobe AIR application for America’s Top 100 Colleges. The application provides a fun, interactive way to discover the best National Universities and Liberal Arts Colleges.

Being a boutique consultancy that is focused on touch software, we are always excited to see how touch is evolving in education and e-learning amongst other verticals!

Get the US News app here.

Until recently, I often wondered if the cluttered, loud websites that dominated Indian cyberspace were indicative of a cultural difference in design aesthetics.

Although I knew that the average Indian consumer doesn’t want every pixel on their screen to be blinking or covered with Bollywood gossip, I thought that maybe they had more of a tolerance for it.   In making Indian websites louder and busier, perhaps Indian designers were reacting (or overreacting) to what their audience wanted?

This was exciting to me, because it meant that a competing design sensibility could emerge from talented agencies in Mumbai and Bangalore.   Indian web design could emerge as a wholly distinct movement and compete with the current standard of minimalism synonymous with Web 2.0.

Alas, I was wrong.  With the clean, sensible redesign of the Hindu, it seems that Indian brands are moving towards the Western standard.  There will be no Indian web design movement for now.

On the bright side, reading Indian news no longer makes me want to hide under my desk in fear of clashing colors and flashing banners.

This is the first post in a series about the advantages of global collaboration (beyond the obvious cost advantage):

A few years ago, I coined the following statement to encapsulate one of the many things I love about virtual work:

You work. They sleep. Reverse. Repeat.

When global teams work efficiently, they can move with a speed that is impossible for a single-office team to match, no matter how much Blue Bottle coffee is involved.   After cost, it is the single biggest advantage of global work.

Yet, for the past decade, most literature on global collaboration has focused on the negative aspects of 24-hour work cycles.  The party line has been that time zones are a handicap we must overcome, and global teams will always struggle to manage communication, iterate quickly, handle disconnects, and clarify scope.

This is with good reason.  Few global firms have reached a level of efficiency where they reap the advantages of 24-hour work cycles.  Inevitably, the baton is  fumbled, dropped, and stabbed into the hearts of unwitting customers.

Passing the baton is a discipline and an art form.  It is what separates talented teams from stellar performers.  It is a ninja-level skill, and after 10 years, many teams are beginning to show us what is possible when the baton is passed smoothly, day ‘n’ nite.

Because of how important the baton-passing process is, my statement actually needs to be revised:

You work. They sleep.  Everyone talks.  Reverse. Repeat.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be demonstrating how Monsoon handles baton-passing for design and development.  

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