Role of Passion

Coming back to Connect 2006 in Prague I attended last week. The conference was very well organized. Even though it was the event focused on NMS and its community, whole first day was spent on general presentations instead of just selling NMS products. It’s a great idea because hosts are usually tempted to make “buy a lot of our stuff” event concentrating on things, which are good for them, not for attendees. NMS restrained the temptation. They prepared a set of panel discussions engaging a bunch of representatives from leading companies in telecommunication business. Of course there were also NMS products sessions, but they were moved to the second day. Generally whole conference came up as well balanced event.

From attendee perspective I can recommend hosting a conference in Prague’s Marriott. Organization and catering were superb. These things don’t make a conference successful but if they’re poor they can ruin whole effort invested in a substantial part of the event.

I’d like to say a bit more about panel discussions from the first conference day. I saw quite a lot of this kind of sessions, but they’re very rarely successful. Those at Connect 2006 managed to be good. I think there’re two main requirements that have to be met if a panel discussion is planned to be a successful one. First, a subject should be controversial, at least a bit. If all panelists agrees on subject there’s nothing more to add. Yawn. Boring. Second, people engaged should show some passion. If a whole bunch of people sitting behind a panel table aren’t passionate, they just pass (boring) information instead of presenting their vision, discussion is doomed to be boring.

A role of passion could be seen clearly during the first presentation of the conference, when a future of telecommunication market and candidates for killer applications were discussed. There were four panelists – recruited mostly from managers of leading telecommunication companies (like Siemens or Vodafone). There was also Andrew Bud from mBlox, who is an Executive Chairman there. That was Andrew who brought passion into discussion. When he was talking he was not only well prepared, but he also believed in what he was actually saying. And he was passionate about that. It was a contrast to other panelists who looked like they’d repeat anything their companies’ spokesman told.

Andrew brought a life to discussion (he brought some doubts about one of NMS flagship products also) and sounded most reasonable among all panelists. There’s only a thing that made that – the passion. He was the most successful of panelists in convincing the audience that he’s the one who is actually right. Even if a one didn’t agree with Andrew his speeches were definitely most remarkable.

If you want to convince others to anything you have to believe in that yourself first. And you have to show it. Another thing is that it’s much easier to change someone’s mind going through his heart, not through his mind. Actually substantial discussion can change someone’s mind only if she accepts possibility of being wrong (and that’s not so common). In other case even the most reasonable argumentation won’t help. Going through heart can be more successful, because if you won someone’s heart she often won’t listen to counterarguments for what she believes, even if they’re reasonable. Be passionate then. Hearts are won by passion, not by information.

On the contrary to Andrew Bud I can put a sales guy from NMS we talked with during the conference. He didn’t believe in success with his product. If you hear from a sales guy “I don’t actually see any potential killer app based on our product” it calms your enthusiasm down. Hey, if the sales guy doesn’t believe it success with the product, why should I? Where’s his passion? I bet it’s far away. In the same place where his success is.