It has been a busy year, and I have cut tried to cut down on the number of data center conferences. I am sure many of you are tired of seeing the presentations repeated, the same vendors slightly modify their pitches with little innovation, and you do get to run into people you know, but it is the same people too many times with too few end users.
This year I started to going GigaOm events, and went to Structure, Mobilize, RoadMap and Net:work.
The same presentations are not repeated, vendors are rotated through with quick 5 minutes to discuss their company (3 -5 during the day), and many of these companies are start-ups. Yet, their will be CEOs, CTOs, and other executives presenting.
One of the pleasant surprises at GigaOm events are the people I have run into. One of the people who I run into all the time is CEO of Moprise of David D’Souza. I wrote a post about Moprise.
Turns out one of Mobile entrepreneurs I follow was at Mobilize and we hadn’t chatted for a year or so. And guess what, his app iscalled the “FlipBoard for the Enterprise.”
Moprise Is Launching A
“Flipboard For The Enterprise”
Moprise is launching a new iPad application it’s calling a “Flipboard for the Enterprise.” The app is a tablet-optimized version of the company’s currently available Coaxion iPhone application. The Flipboard analogy isn’t quite right, however. Flipboard is about reading news and articles, browsing photos and viewing updates from your social networks in a magazine-like format. Coaxion and Flipboard are only similar in that they both have easy-to-browse, touchable, swipe-friendly user interfaces. But Coaxion’s content is corporate documents, not news or tweets.
Actually, I have know David D’Souza for way too long, back when we worked on his work on Win3.1, Win95, and IE.
Public Company; 10,001+ employees; MSFT; Computer Software industry
May 1995 – June 1998 (3 years 2 months)
Software engineer & lead on Internet Explorer 4.x and 5.x focused on performance, shell integration, Active Desktop & Channels, and “push content” web delivery systems. This work was integrated into Windows 98, Windows ME, and Windows 2000. [Dates approximate]
Public Company; 10,001+ employees; MSFT; Computer Software industry
September 1992 – April 1995 (2 years 8 months)
Performance architect & lead for Windows 95. Ensured Windows 95 and it feature set (32bit api, protected mode kernel & drivers, OLE32, new UI, Plug & Play etc) ran well on 4MB systems and scaled appropriately up to 16MB systems. Ensured the right scenarios were measured, the right tools were created, broader teams understood and lived performance, and targeted appropriate changes in the code base to meet goals. This position required multidisciplinary management and team creation across dev, test, and PM.
Public Company; 10,001+ employees; MSFT; Computer Software industry
July 1990 – August 1992 (2 years 2 months)
Lead software engineering on Windows 3.1 responsible for user interface development, UI performance, and application compatibility. Key work included rationalizing internal versus external APIs, removing heap limitations for window objects, adding parameter validation to increase reliability and prevent corruption of OS state, and developing the application compatibility infrastructure within Windows. This work served to keep Windows the market leader despite heavy competition from IBM OS/2 Warp.
Many of our conversations are regarding entrepreneurial opportunities, enterprise, and mobile. David was commenting on how many Macs he sees at GigaOm. I snuck this shot in of the audience at one of the events.
Now this picture is not the media table which is of course Mac dominated, but the audience watching a presentation at RoadMap. Can you spot the Windows Laptop?
Two ex-Microsoft guys hanging out where the Mac is the dominant computer, start-ups looking for how to grow, and the established players looking for innovation it makes so much sense to attend the GigaOm events if you are looking for thought leadership people. I attend often because I am a GigaOm Pro Analyst so I have lots of other conversations with GigaOm Pro, but I still attend mainly as a blogger.
I am an ex-Apple employee (1985-1992) so it is reasonable for me to be a Mac User again. It turns out David D’Souza has an Apple developer background before his Microsoft days.
David has worked on productivity software since he had an Apple ][+ in junior high.
…
David received a BSc from MIT, experience with Unix, a startup on Route 128, and heavy use of an Apple Macintosh before becoming a PC and joining the Microsoft Windows team out of college.
…
…I purchased an Apple iPhone 3GS. That’s when I left to cofound Moprise and build scalable, mobile productivity software.
After discussion last week with David I suggested he get know the GigaOm Pro staff to discuss a research project, so I introduced him to a few of the executives. One of the people I mentioned David’s background to is Skip Hilton, VP and GM of GigaOm Pro. What was quite surprising was Skip knew the complete employment history of David. Why? GigaOm Pro was studying some of its loyal users, and David was an example of someone who attends events often, subscribes to GIgaOm Pro, and is a thought leader.
David and I had coffee before running into him at GigaOm events, but having conversations at the event, discussing presentations, and discussing new ideas works well. I think it works before the GigaOm events setup interesting discussions. For something different you may want to consider attending a GigaOm event. I still go to a few data center events, and go to GigaOm for more innovative thinking.
