Personal Thoughts on Outsourcing …or Why I need your vote at SXSW

I love attending the SXSW Interactive conference every year. It’s my favorite conference of the year, a chance to learn, catch up with old friends, meet new ones, and of course have a great time.

Last year I pledged to myself that I would try to get further involved and organize a panel for this 2009. So I put together a panel submission covering a topic that I have a little expertise on and I think people are interested in hearing about.

Let me start by saying, my goal for this post is that you will click on over to the SXSW Panel Picker and vote for our panel and even leave a comment about how much you want to see it. OK, so now that that is out there, let me tell you why you should do that.

Our panel is called: Outsourcing 2.0: Is the World Flat or Not?

The topic of the panel stems from a discussion I had last year with Sandeep Sood of Monsoon Company, a fellow oursourcing firm, about the challenges of outsourcing web development work, whether the pain of working with a team thousands of miles away is worth it, and how to develop personal relationships that bridge cultural and geographical borders.

I am fortunate to have rounded up some great co-panelists for this discussion all of whom bring a different perspective to outsourcing and each of whom run a successful development firm:

  • Sandeep Sood – Sandeep runs Monsoon Company in Berkley with teams in India. He authors the Doubsourcing comic (recently featured in WSJ) and sends his apologies to Thomas Friedman that he believes the world is not yet flat in Forbes.
  • Qasim Mueen – Qasim is in Pittsburgh with teams in Pakistan. He is the co-founder and CEO of Zigron.
  • Andrea Azdril – Andrea is Los Angeles with development in Beijing, China. She is the CEO of StarTech Global and frequently travels back and forth from China.

Some personal thoughts on this panel that I’d like to share:

Submitting a panel topic about outsourcing web development work to a conference full of web developers feels a little like trying to sell ice cubes to eskimos. It definitely is a topic that may be somewhat taboo, certainly considering these economic times and what you hear in the media about jobs going overseas.

Along the same lines, I sometimes feel challenged talking about our business structure, and our Flatsourcing team with colleagues in New Orleans. I am friends with talented web developers locally who are looking for work, is it parodoxical to be passionate about supporting the local community while taking my work and having it done in Russia?

I think reconciling these feelings is a lot of why I believe this panel topic to be so important. There are real tensions and preconceptions about outsourcing, and the controversial nature of the topic is exactly why I believe we need to discuss it.

I fully expect to have the question thrown at me “Why are you hiring guys 3000 miles away instead of guys in this room?” And that will be a tough question to answer.

When I think about that question, it boils down my personal feeling that the world really is getting smaller. Imagine a world that truly was flat, so a business partner or employee on the other side of the world was as easy to work with as your neighbor across the street. Collaboration tools, broadband, and common language of software means you can work with whomever you choose.

In 2001, I met three guys over eLance because I needed someone to build a website for me, and I couldn’t do it, and I didn’t know anyone personally who could. They did a great job, we continued to build our partnership, and a few trips to Russia and eight years later we’re in business together. And asking me why I’m working with them over someone local simply boils down to the fact that this is the direction I have chosen, it is working, and the value of our relationships is not something that I measure in terms of how far away they are.

This may be the case for you, Chris, but what about if I am evaluating outsourcing now, with no personal history. I’m working with a clean slate?

Well, this is the discussion I have almost every day with clients. Outsourcing exists because there is global demand for talent and there is a global marketplace. Release the bonds of locale, and your hiring pool is global. Wouldn’t you want to explore the opportunity to hire top talent, anywhere in the world?

That is the reality of what you can do today.

It’s not about low cost, its about value. And value is driven more by quality than cost. Web development in particular is a marketplace that is fully globalized. It opens up a world of opportunity to build new “virtual” companies that transcend borders.

So, that is a sneak peak at some of the thoughts I am looking forward to sharing on the panel. I’d love you hear some of yours in the comments. Ask me the tough questions, I hope to be able to answer them.

I genuinely hope that we have the opportunity to discuss this at SXSW. You can help by voting for us here.

Thanks.

Russia Rising: What I saw on my trip to Kazan

I just got back from visiting my partners in Flatsourcing in Kazan, Russia. This was my third trip to Kazan, and by far the most exciting. This stems from both the growth we are experiencing with Flatsourcing, but even more importantly the changes that are taking place right before my eyes in the city.

On arrival in Kazan, one of the first things you notice is that the whole city is under construction. Since last year a major road repair program has taken place and pot-hole lines streets have been replaced with paved, widened highways. Soviet-era block houses are being replaced by new apartment buildings. I was fortunate enough to stay in a new apartment that Oleg’s family has purchased. In the last three years mortgages have become commonplace in Russia, and cars and apartments are fast becoming part of the middle-class lifestyle. Speaking of cars, as we drove to work each morning, we passed dealerships for Honda, Toyota, and Hyundai as well as Mercedes and BMW. Word is that the Chinese auto manufacturers will be invading next year. They already have their fleets on the road in the form of big beautiful city busses. Just last year the city bus fleet was ragged, its been upgraded by Chinese manufacturers like Golden Dragon.

Shopping malls are all over the place. Kazan actually has more shopping malls per capita than Paris. We ate lunch at a shopping mall food court at a Russian fast food chain ironically named CCCP (translated as USSR). I asked the guys if this was offensive or threatening to anyone. Nope, they said, they Soviet era has been relegated to nostalgia by modern capitalism that is fueling the country’s growth. CCCP now is simply a fast food joint serving the world’s biggest brand, Coca-Cola.

You can’t help but notice how IT oriented the city is. One of the things I trumpet about Kazan is that there are more than 20 universities, most of them technical. This is a university town graduating the next generation of computer programmers annually. Kazan, and Russia as a whole has a culture of IT. The coolest job you can have is a computer programmer. Being high tech opens the doors of opportunity, including working at Google in St. Petersburg, or eventually working in the US if you are good enough.

Billboards around the city advertise HP desktops and laptops. The government has just invested in a beautiful IT startup “IDEA Park” to provide office space to startups complete with furnished desks and computers. The rent is discounted 50% for winners of an annual business plan competition.

Two years ago Fujitsu moved an entire office from the UK to Kazan through a partnership with a Russian based IT company, ICL. Since then, IBM has moved in and is partnering with Kazan State University and there were rumors when I was there that Microsoft is next and that top talent is starting to be recruited by Microsoft.

I can’t wait to see what Kazan looks like next year. One thing is for sure, the Flatsourcing office will have quadrupled in size and we’ll be hiring more!

Finally, the hottest gadget in Russia by far is the iPhone. I brought three of them over for Oleg, Alex, and Timur and they were promptly unlocked and filled with some of the most amazing software that we’ll learn about over here in the near future. I ended up leaving my personal one behind as well. Even though carriers don’t sell them yet, and they go for upwards of $800 on the black market, our last night there we were surprised to see the women at the two tables on either side of us to be taking pictures of each other with their iPhones. An apt metaphor for falling borders in this ever-flattening world!

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