Inside the mind and heart of Venkatesh Sridhar

I had an opportunity to be at the DemoCamp Dubai held on 27th May 2008. I thank Magnus Nystedt and facebook for actually notifying me of this event via his facebook newsfeed.

What is DemoCamp? - DemoCamp is a participant-generated social event for designers, developers, entrepreneurs. It is free. Participants sign up to demonstrate software they have been working on, or to give a presentation with the goal to inspire, educate or challenge the audience. Presentations and demos are 15 minutes in length. For more information about DemoCamp in general, click here.

DemoCamp Dubai is inspired by DEMO conference that’s been going on in the US successfully for more than a decade, a gathering of venture capitalists and corporate high-tech investors watch as demonstrators are present their efforts at breakthrough technology worth investing in. Demo has witnessed the unveiling of some great companies and impressive technologies. It’s so critical an event that companies plan their whole year around that event to make it in time to launch the next big thing.

DemoCamp Dubai is a more open event, trying to maintain the same excitement around innovation and technology without being commercial and exclusive.

[NOTE: Those interested to learn more about DemoCamp Dubai or doing demo(s) at DemoCamp can find more info at their about page on their website]

The format was that presenters presented for 10 minutes and followed by Q&A for 5 minutes. The following were the demos chosen to be presented:

• Darrb: a marketplace for delivery services, it will be presented by its co-founder Murshed
• Logta: a one-stop-shop on promotions for all sorts of products, to be presented by Hisham Baker
• Wasfati: the first dedicated Arab portal for food, recipes and nutrition. It will be presented by Fouad Masoud
• SwalifCast: is a Arab portal for digital learning, to be presented by Mohammed Al-Fares
• Zeid Nasser will present mediaME, a user-generated content website for advertising and media professionals

We only had the four demos from the first 4 presenters, there was no fifth demo. So, I will be talking about each of them in an order of my preference.

1. Wasfati: This was the most liked presentation at the event as it was about food , something everyone loves. It is a website which allows people to share recipes online in Arabic. It started out as a way to share recipes amongst university students. Though many asked for the site to be multi-lingual, I believe that the uniqueness of the site lies in the fact that it is Arabic. There are many recipe sharing or recipe websites that are available in English. But, there are many Arabic speaking and reading population which is more comfortable on an Arabic site. So, I believe it does not make sense for the guys behind this to expand beyond Arabic. The future plans includes a way to make it different by incorporating an idea where one can search for recipes by ingredients - how this would work is let’s say you have only potatoes, carrots and peas in your fridge and you want to find out what you can cook using these then you head over to the site and you will be able to then search for recipes based on what you have and then you can go ahead and cook. I suggested that they should allow trade of food i.e. someone can ask for help/food like let’s say I am hosting a party and I am looking for Arabic food I should be able to post an ad and people could bid for it and then I can get it picked up - with the site just acting as a medium and not selling it on their own.

2. Logta: Logta, roughly transliterates from Arabic to mean a ‘quick deal’ or a ‘hot deal’ and that is what Logta is, it is what I call an online deal aggregator aimed at the Middle East. I believe they have the potential to be highly disruptive in their model, why do I say so? Their current model is that they go to retailers and talk to them and find out deals from the various promotions and publish it on their site. I feel that and I told the Logta team that they can and should move away from being just a deal aggregator to a sales platform, where they can provide media buyers in various companies a very easy way to measure ROI on their ad spend. They could do that by assigning an offer code unique to Logta and Logta gets credit for sales for those who use that code. This would mean that the media buyer’s risk is reduced and he can safely buy ads from Logta.

3. Darrb: Darrb is a cool site which allows people like you and me to post an ad online asking for someone to either pick up or drop something anywhere in a given geographical area. It is based on the idea that let’s say I am going to point B for work and there is someone who wants something to be dropped off at say point A which is on the way to point B, I can then bid for it and then if that person decides to accept my bid then I will pick up the stuff and drop it off at point A and I can charge for it. There have been some surprising things happening, where someone transported a pet and also someone who transported something across 570 kilometres. The founders have not found a way to monetize this as yet and they are working on a subscription model - I am not sure about the subscription model though. Plus, there are issues with respect to reliability, traceability of goods in transit. Maybe it could grow into the Middle East’s own variant of the craigslist.

4. SwalifCast: SwalifCast is an online educational video sharing website. Though it looked very similar to YouTube and there are already numerous video players online, I am not sure whether they will be able to create a niche in the marketplace. Plus, the presenter too much time espousing the advantages of a simple design and dishing Logta. I always believe that when you are presenting your demo maximize talking about your demo than waste time talking about other competitors. Because of this, I honestly lost track of what the entire thing was all about and I cannot comment much on this as I personally failed to see what differentiates it.

Overall, it was a fun event, I had a great time as I felt that this was a good way to ideate in a group and of course network. I met a lot of interesting people and I feel that many more DemoCamp’s should be held and I am sure I will be there. Though I would prefer if the presenters viewed it as not just a promotional presentation but as a place for ideation with a lot of opportunities to improve their offering either in terms of features, revenue model or raising money.

I would certainly recommend those that are in the Web 2.0 or generally in the IT business in and around Dubai to take a look at it atleast once - I am sure it will be worth it.