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TiEcon 2001 off to a bright start

Sukhjit Purewal
India Abroad Correspondent in Santa Clara

TiEcon 2001 got off to an enthusiastic start on Friday night as convention-goers participated in lively discussions on trends and opportunities in various high-technology areas.

The eighth annual TiEcon, dubbed 'Entrepreneurship -- Back to Basics', will swing into high gear on Saturday with Cisco president and CEO John Chambers and Hewlett-Packard president and CEO Carly Fiorina starting the day with keynote addresses.

Companies will put themselves on display in the hope of impressing venture capitalists into giving them cash to turn their visions into reality.

As entrepreneurs mingled with venture capitalists and other professionals at the Westin Santa Clara Hotel and Convention Centre, doing the ritualistic business card exchange, the dotcom downturn seemed almost forgotten.

"They know the downturn is only temporary," said Subramanyam Dronamraju, a TiE volunteer and vice-president of business development with Intoto, Inc. "Indians are very resilient."

Five different discussions were offered during the abbreviated opening day. Discussion topics were wireless, semiconductors, software and hardware development, software and services, and life sciences.

These topics had been selected by TiE organisers through polls it had conducted of its members and individuals who attend the monthly networking meetings.

Perhaps the most popular of the discussions was the semiconductor talk moderated by renowned chip giant Vinod Dham.

But it wasn't just Dham's star power that drew spectators. It was also the opportunity to pick the brains of Danial Faizullahbhoy, a venture capitalist partner at Walden International, Arnab Chanda of Lehman Brothers and Prakash Agarwal, CEO of NeoMagic Corporation.

Convention-goers weren't afraid to speak their mind as evidenced by one man who offered that perhaps the bragging companies do about the capabilities of their chips was just "a lot of hype".

Dham agreed and added that he wasn't sure whether it was worth the financial investment to overload chips with operations that weren't yet easily deliverable. He asked rhetorically, "Are we getting the full bang for the buck?"

Dham, who oversaw the innovation of the Pentium chip with Intel, wears the title of 'father of the Pentium processor'. Last year he became vice-president and general manager of the carrier access unit for Broadcom Corporation when it acquired Silicon Spice Inc, where Dham had served as CEO.

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