Proto.in 2008 roundup

So another edition of Proto.in comes to a close. This edition of Proto.in is special because it's going to be the last one in Chennai. The next edition will take place in Delhi (or maybe Mumbai) in July later this year. Since the event will be moving out of Chennai, there will be a new set of volunteers based out of Delhi/Mumbai to take this event forward.

Now that Proto.in is done, what is everyone saying about it? In this post, I'll collect various posts on the event from around the blogosphere.

To start with, head over to ReviewSaurus. Mayank, who writes the blog has reviewed a bunch of presentations with videos. So far, reviews of The Viewspaper, Antya, At One Place, Instablogs, Hover.in and Deskaway have been posted.

Next, Rajiv and friends over at WATBlog cover a number of talks from Day 1 of the event. Take a look at the overview of talks by Samir Sood, Atul Chitnis, Rajesh Jain ( and another one), and Surojit Niyogi.

Gaurabh Mathure gave a talk on Day 1 titled "Sexy. Trendy. Design. Technology." Read about his experience in this blog post.

Sujai of Sloka, one of the companies at the first Proto.in (and selected for this year's Headstart) came back to give a talk on Day 1 about how unglamorous a startup really is. In this post, he gives his views on events like Proto.in and Headstart.

Leonard Badi from Mundial Communications (a South African startup) was one of the presenters this time. He has a blog post on his product to follow up from the presentation at the event.

Another presenting company perspective, Arun of Hover.in, a company that presented this time, gives his take on the event. He's also got Vijay's "The One Percent" presentation on his blog.

Coming to the audience reactions, Vamsee has some hard criticism of the event, saying that it has lost community focus and is charging too much (i.e. become too commercial). Well we did have many long discussions on how much to charge while planning the event, and ultimately it comes down to whether the companies are getting the value for which they are paying. Finances are extremely tricky to manage for an event like Proto.in, and we constantly have to balance sponsorships and entry fees to make the event viable.

Dorai gives his views on the event in this post, saying that it was difficult not to get infected by the enthusiasm and optimism.

Soham Das has blogged about Day 1 at Proto.in and Day 2 at Proto.in.

Srinivasan, a blogger who came by bus all the way from Cuddalore to attend Proto.in takes us through the event in pictures.

Finally, here are some photos of the event put up by various people. Srinivasan's blog post has a lot of photos in it. Apart from that, Swami has put up some photos here and Vijay has uploaded more pics here.