by Victor Karamalis Photos Courtesy of AAMA and ORIENTED on Flickr
On Wednesday December 12th , the Asia America MultiTechnology Connect 2007 Conference was held in Santa Clara at the Hyatt Regency. It focused on China’s rising influence in Asia and the rest of the world. This event brought near legendary personas as keynote speakers. With the likes of Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures, John Chambers of Cisco Systems, and Guy Kawasaki of Garage Technology Ventures, the event was an environment of not only gathering information, but an event of gaining sound inspiration.
The concurrent sessions throughout the day were extremely helpful and informative for anyone wanting to do business in Asia. Specifically, China has become the economic juggernaut of the twenty-first century. With session names that included Digital Media, Leading Innovations in Wireless, and Vietnam: Asia’s Rising Tiger, had all lived up to my expectations. In addition, there were sessions on the basics on VC funding, and particularly funding American businesses in China.The organizers of this conference (who executed the entire day flawlessly) carefully selected both non-profit and for profit entities. The Asia Foundation, Deloitte Consulting, ORIENTED, and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati all met passing attendees and elaborated on their services. The sponsor booths are excellent ways for businesses to get recognized. This demonstrates their commitment via ‘grassroots’ efforts in order to grow their businesses.
Vinod Khosla and Guy Kawasaki separately gave their take on the state of funding startups and ideas that were ‘Green’ oriented. John Chambers, Chairman and CEO of Cisco gave an incredibly personable keynote speech while weaving in and out of tables at the packed convention hall. His keynote began with the productivity experienced by the U.S in the last ten years. He also gave a glimpse on how today’s businesses will need to change into a more collaborative nature for doing business tomorrow in the growing global theatre as opposed to the traditional command and control management style currently in place in most companies. He plugged how Cisco is directly tied into this approach through the use of real time, life size video conferencing secure high definition panels able to span the globe for making big deals and intra-company meetings.
The ORIENTED Team and myself
Another great benefit to being at this AAMA event were the introductory meetings that take place between attending VC’s, angel investors, and budding entrepreneurs. These prequels to impending funding deals are happening in between and during the sessions. This conference brings together all the big players (check out the panelists) with bootstrappers that are working on making their dreams a reality. What I have taken away from the AAMA CONNECT 2007 conference is that with all the technology in this world that facilitate people and business interactions, there is no greater feeling of connecting physically than with face to face dialogue.
Tags: AAMA John+Chambers Vinod+Khosla Guy+Kawasaki karamalis ORIENTED
{ 1 trackback }
Comments on this entry are closed.