New Delhi To Barcelona: From Workstreamr To World Mobile Congress

I am sitting in Charles De Gaulle in Paris, after missing a connecting flight from New Delhi to Barcelona, headed to the World Mobile Congress (courtesy of Nokia) to fool with cool gear for a few days and hear what’s brewing in the mobile world. I will also be experimenting with some new mobile blogging tools from Microsoft, although I haven’t figured them out yet: that’s for later today.

I was in New Delhi for almost a week, and it was — on one level — an assault on the senses. The zig-zag driving, with endless honking of horns, and a streaming chaos of bikes, pedicabs, motorscooters, cars, trucks, and semi-immobile sacred cows makes for a harrowing experience.

Jitney, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.

But I wasn’t visiting Delhi for a vacation: I was there with my partners in Workstreamr, Ben Schippers and Sam Huleatt, to kick off the engineering development on the product, which will be the first real workstreaming application. We are working with Global Logic’s newly formed Version 1.0 group, and the progress we are making is extraordinary. We have been working with Saumitri Chaudhury of Global Logic for several months on the conceptual design, and he has become an invaluable partner, especially to me, in my role as designer. Workstreamr is truly my baby, but the Global Logic folks are doing a great job of playing midwife. An amazing bunch, and the level of their expertise will be obvious when we roll out the beta in a few months. They showed me the first working demo on the first day of our meetings: wow. It took my breath away.

new delhi stowe, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.

We also overlapped with Global Logic’s first annual Partner’s Conference, where I met several dozen partners and the executives from Global Logic.

Here’s Peter Harrison, the CEO, who I have known over five years. I first worked with Global Logic — then known as Indus Logic — in 2001, when the company was only 16 employees: it is now almost 3000. Peter announced raising another venture round of $30M from a groups of firms, including Sequoia and Draper Atlantic. Lots of growth ahead.

peter harrison, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.

I really enjoyed the dancing at the Partner party.

dancers 02, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.

While New Delhi challenged me in very fundamental ways, there is a dynamic explosive feeling there. I can understand why Peter said to me at the party that he considered moving to New Delhi, to be right there in the center of that economic revolution.