Zoho Day 2024 and the Mother of Exiles: A Chance Encounter with History in McAllen, TX and Why Zoho’s Different Approach Matters

There’s always a surplus of things to write about following a Zoho event. There’s the great customer stories, the new technology offerings and the growing number of applications under the Zoho One umbrella (50+). Other great topics include CEO Sridhar Vembu’s take on capitalism and transnational localism, the sensible position Zoho is taking on AI, the growing number of data centers they’re opening to keep their customers away from profit-hungry hyperscalers, Zoho’s burgeoning partner program, and the company’s side hustles in organic agriculture and medical devices. And that’s my short list.

The post I’m writing this time around doesn’t fit into any of those categories. I’m going to write about my perceptions of this year’s venue – McAllen, Texas, as far from the normal tech conference circuit as you could find – which I will use to add some context to the real story I want to tell: my chance encounter while leaving McAllen with a young migrant on his way to being reunited with his father. It’s not the kind of story usually told as part of a technology conference post, but it’s a story worth telling nonetheless.

This year a veritable mob of analysts descended on McAllen, Texas, the site of Zoho’s new satellite office in the lower Rio Grande Valley. RGV, as it’s called, is part of an agglomeration of cities on both sides of the Texas/Mexican border that together form the home of 2.6 million people, divided by the geographical border formed by the Rio Grande and its flood plain. The region’s history is one of the movement of people and the sands of history: the displacement of its native tribes in the face of Spanish colonial settlement, the Mexican War of Independence, the ensuing Texas Revolution, the Mexican-American War, the Mexican Revolution, and, more recently, the migrant crisis that dominates the news and an unfortunate corner of our political discourse.

As such, the RGV is also a region defined by treaties and their after-effects. The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that followed the Mexican-American War designated the Rio Grande as the border between the two countries, setting up the demarcation line for a complicated interrelationship between the multi-cultural, multi-lingual people living on either side of the border. The impact of this treaty is one of the many hugely important parts of our history that is poorly taught – if at all – in our country’s schools. Literature is sometimes the best way to tell history, and so I highly recommend giving John Nichol’s novel The Milagro Beanfield War a read. While not a history of the region per se, it’s a wildly entertaining yarn full of highly memorable characters that chronicles the forces of economic development and social change this treaty foisted on the people of borderland regions like the Rio Grande Valley.

Another defining treaty is the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which helped reinforce an already a burgeoning cross-border economy that had been officially recognized by the formation of the McAllen Foreign Trade Zone in 1973. NAFTA helped reinforce the importance of McAllen’s much larger cross-border neighbor, Reynoso, as a home for the growth of near-shore manufacturing while at the same leading to the loss of manufacturing jobs and the creation of a burgeoning Rust Belt in the Midwest and other regions of the US. More recently, NAFTA was swept aside by the 2018 United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which came about in part because of the politicization of the continuous influx of migrants in the lower RGV and elsewhere along the US-Mexican border.

As such the region has also been part of an ongoing political theatre game regarding migration over our southern border. The political theater curtain has risen on Texas Governor Abbott dropping by McAllen and other RGV towns to tout his controversial Operation Lone Star initiative, known in part for its abuse of migrants and the use of these pour souls to score points as part of a cynical political game played out in a national political arena far from McAllen. The Pharr-Reynoso bridge outside of McAllen, which is the largest commercial border crossing in the lower RGV, was the scene of a protest in the spring of 2022 led by truckers incensed that the shift from using Federal customs officers to inspect in-bound traffic to using Texas state troopers was damaging cross-border commerce. The shift to state control, ordered by Gov. Abbott, came in the face of the Biden administration’s decision to stop summarily turning migrants away – effectively nullifying the previous administration’s application of Title 42, part of a World War II era law that was used, under the threat of the spread of Covid, to deny migrants the right to seek asylum.

The backdrop to the politicization of cross-border immigration in the RGV, rife with racist depictions of migrants demonized as criminals and freeloaders, deserves a sanity check. My friend and colleague Tim Crawford spoke to a McAllen police officer during the Zoho event about the local impact of this in-migration. According to the police officer, while the border crossings are definitely a problem, they were not contributing to an increase in crime in McAllen. Tim’s interlocutor was more concerned about criminals coming upriver from Brownsville than from the nearby border. He also told Tim that, in his opinion, these were people seeking a better life for themselves and their families and willing to work hard to achieve that goal. One man’s opinion, but one that’s been reinforced by many others who see these migrants’ stories as no different than the stories of other immigrants, such as my grandparents and great grandparents, who were welcomed to this country in the spirit of The New Colossus¸ the poem by Emma Lazarus that is etched into the base of our “Mother of Exiles,” the Statue of Liberty.

McAllen has geographical significance as well, sitting in the flood plain of the Rio Grande, as evidenced by the extensive network of canals and ditches that crisscross the city and surrounding region. Flood plains and river deltas create rich habitats for migrating birds, and in McAllen’s case it attracts migrating birds from two major migratory flyways. Flood plains also provide fertile ground for agriculture, though McAllen’s once burgeoning citrus production industry has dwindled to a lone farm on the outskirts of town, where Zoho hosted an event the last night of the conference.

People, place, water, agriculture, and environment are issues that Zoho finds important enough to highlight on a regular basis as part of its transnational localism philosophy. This philosophy is relatively straightforward: Use the power of the global business and technology culture of Zoho to have a direct and positive impact on local communities that might otherwise be left behind economically and culturally. The company literally goes out of its way to provide opportunity to those for whom opportunity can be elusive, as evidenced by its training programs, which recruit promising young people from the more remote parts of India, pay them a stipend while in school, and then guarantee them employment upon graduation – as well as its policy of opening satellite offices in places like McAllen.

The direct impact of this philosophy was on display during our visit to McAllen, a genuinely transnational, bi-national, city. From what I could see from walking and driving through the area, and from conversations with the staff at the hotel, the wonderful head of catering who supplied an amazing collection of fabulous TexMex food at the two evening events, and others, our visit to McAllen brought home the answer Raju Vegesna, Zoho’s chief evangelist, gave to his own rhetorical question, “Why set up an office on the Tex/Mex border and not San Francisco?” during a visit last year in Chennai, India.

“These are stones that haven’t been discovered but if you polish them, they shine like diamonds,” Raju said in answer to the question. Indeed.

Not everything to do with transnational localism and locales like McAllen is about diamonds in the rough. There is already considerable polish for Zoho to work with as well. I spent some time talking to one of Zoho’s McAllen employees, whose husband and daughter also work for Zoho. She was born in McAllen, ran off to the big city (Houston) to seek her fortune, and then returned to her hometown to raise her family. Her father is from southern Mexico, went to work in the Midwest, where he met her mother, and is now retired, living over the border in Reynoso. Like many of the people in the region, her first language was Spanish, not English, and for her and her family crossing over to Mexico for a visit is done as readily as people in my town cross the Bay Bridge and head to San Francisco. Judging from our conversation, this diamond was already shining when Zoho had the good fortune to hire her.

Finding myself as a guest of this transnationally local company, in a region literally straddling the crossroads of history, culture, and people, makes my chance meeting with a young migrant on his way from McAllen to his future a truly remarkable experience. Of course I can’t credit Zoho for having a direct part in this meeting, nor is it my intention that recounting this story be seen as representing Zoho’s take on the fraught and complicated issue of migration at our southern border. But, even as an inadvertent result of my visit to see transnational localism in action, the story is worth telling.

Here’s what happened: When I arrived at McAllen International Airport on my way home from a most excellent conference I noticed two young men joyfully taking selfies outside the terminal. The two were noteworthy because I was pretty sure they were speaking French – having lived a number of years of my adult life in France, my ears prick up whenever I hear it spoken. When I came up to them and offered, in French, to take a picture of the two of them, the one taking the selfies quickly handed me his phone, and its French-language interface confirmed my initial impression.

I was, however, a little confused by the fact that I had trouble understanding his accent. But my curiosity was piqued – what where these young Francophone men doing in a border town that was over 90% Hispanic? When I later saw them in the terminal with a group of other young people surrounding an older man dolling out portfolios of paper in clear plastic envelopes, it started to dawn on me: this collection of young people were most likely migrants about to embark on the next stop in their journey.

As it turned out this same young man whose picture I had taken in front of the airport ended up sitting in the middle seat next to me on the short flight to Dallas-Fort Worth airport. He appeared unfamiliar with being on an airplane, and after I helped him with the wifi he asked me if the drinks they were handing out were free. I happened to glance at the cover sheet (okay, “happened to glance” is a lie – I was at that point trying my hardest to look at it without being seen as the nosy neighbor I clearly was) and the words “Catholic Charities of the RGV” stood out.

I found out later that Catholic Charities of the RGV, part of the archdiocese of Brownsville, runs a welcome center in McAllen that has helped literally tens of thousands of migrants over the years on their journey across the border, through McAllen, and on to better lives. Back in 2015, long before our current political border crisis kicked off, Sister Pimentel, who runs the center, was singled out by Pope Francis for her work at the center. That work continues to this day, no less urgently.

We deplaned at Dallas-Fort Worth, and, as I had a long layover, I was loitering in front of the gate trying to figure out where to get lunch when my seatmate approached me. Again, in a French I had to lean into to understand, he asked if I could help him: “My father told me this was a very confusing airport and I want to make sure I don’t get lost.” I asked to see his ticket. He was connecting on to Fort Lauderdale, which only added to my curiosity, and together we walked over to an American Airlines employee helping people with directions. His flight was from gate A-17, and as we were in the C terminal he would have to take a train to A terminal. She pointed in the direction of the train, and, as I had plenty of time, I told him I would show him how to get to his gate.

On the way over, curiosity got the better of me, and having decided he was from a former French colony, I took my best shot: “That’s a long journey from West Africa to Fort Lauderdale,” I ventured.

“Oh no, I’m from Haiti,” he replied with a smile. A bit embarrassed, I recalibrated. Fort Lauderdale suddenly made a lot of sense: the coast of Florida from Miami north to West Palm Beach has a significant Haitian population, one of the largest outside of Haiti itself. And the language barrier was also explained – Haitian has an intonation and some Creole inflections that are different than the French I was used to, even though I’d lived in neighborhood in Paris replete with immigrants from much of France’s former colonial empire.

Another warm smile. “I’m going to see my father. I haven’t seen him in eight years.”

This stopped me cold – and now this young man suddenly looked like the child he certainly was, probably close in age to my own 18-year-old son, which meant he hadn’t see his father since… I didn’t want to think. He would have been a young child during the time of the 2010 earthquake, somehow surviving a disaster than killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced more than a million more. He had also survived Hurricane Matthew, a category 5 storm that hit Haiti particularly hard only six years after the earthquake. And he had recently left a country smothered by complete political and social disarray since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021.

During those same eight years my son went to middle school and high school, studying art and STEM, attended a motley collection of raves, skate-boarded, had some unpleasant experiences with quarantine, took road trips with me and his sister, and was now enjoying (too much, perhaps 😉) a gap year before starting college in the fall.

We arrived at the train, and I showed him which one to get on, made sure he understood what stop to get off at, and wished him well. He took my hand and said, with a sweet smile, “Que Dieu vous bénisse.”

“Et vous aussi.” I replied, and walked away with tears in my eyes.

I spent the rest of my layover in Dallas-Fort Worth contemplating this young man’s path to meet his father after eight years, such important years in a child’s life for a father to be absent. It’s hard to know exactly how he arrived in the seat next to me with a ticket to Fort Lauderdale, on his way to be reunified with his father. There’s a Federal immigration program called the Haitian Family Reunification Parole Program that’s intended to assist young men like him in obtaining asylum, but a careful reading of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services website makes it appear that he hadn’t followed the protocol, which would have required his father to both sponsor him and meet him at his port of entry.

This meant he came to Mexico from Haiti on a boat – the cost of a flight would have clearly been out of the question – and then crossed the border amidst that maelstrom of humanity that too many are willing to vilify and torment for cynical political gain. He eventually made his way to Catholic Charities in McAllen, where he was welcomed, fed, clothed, and, apparently, given a plane ticket to reconnect with his father.

I’m still shaking my head in wonder at it all.

It’s purely a coincidence that this encounter happened during a Zoho-sponsored visit to one of the places where the company intends its transnational localism philosophy to flourish, but the connection is important nonetheless. It fits because this is a company that wants to be relevant not just in terms of its goal to be the operating system of business, one that I hope my colleagues’ posts have helped convince you isn’t just a pipedream or marketing hype. CEO Sridhar Vembu’s decidedly different views on the intersection of technology and society, the company’s focus on lifting up local communities and people for whom the opportunities for the advancement that technology can bring are not always easy to access, are as important to Zoho as its products. Telling stories like that of a migrant on the way to find his father and a new life feels like a good fit, at least to me.

I can’t and won’t speak for Zoho about whether my encounter with this young man and my short, aisle seat view bearing witness to a rare, happy denouement of one our global society’s greatest crises – the forced migration of millions of people around the world in the face of war, disease, and natural and man-made disasters like climate change – has a place in a discussion of transnational localism and Zoho’s role in changing the world. But the company’s impassioned embrace of a different view of the role of technology companies, locally and globally, seems to be, at a minimum, an appropriate catalyst for writing about these issues in a blog that would otherwise be focused on the usual discussion of technology, markets, and business trends.

It is in this light that I believe Zoho’s vision and its impact on the world juxtaposes well with the story of this young Haitian, off to see his father for the first time since he was a small child, off to find the opportunities for a better life that defined my immigrant grandparents’ reason for running from the pogroms of Czarist Russia to join the huddled masses yearning to breathe free that have helped redeem our otherwise often troubled society and its often troubling history. A history that has played out in the Rio Grande Valley since the first Europeans set foot on this continent.

That’s the other reason I’m telling this side of my visit to McAllen: It is towns like McAllen and the story of McAllen’s native daughter and her work with Zoho that define an important part of our American Dream and, by extension, why I think Zoho’s dream for transnational localism makes increasing sense in the crazy world.

Changing the world one town, one family, one migrant reuniting with his father at a time may, to some, sound like a drop of water in the vast soulless desert of human misery that confronts us from the front pages of newspapers around the world. To which I call bullshit: Zoho is literally seeding the oases of today, in McAllen and Tenkasi and elsewhere, in order to water the abundant fields of tomorrow. Like this young Haitian, Zoho in McAllen is taking the small steps, the hard steps, that are really the only way to make a difference. It was a true privilege to have been there to see it all.

–XXX—

Below is a list of just a few of the excellent posts about Zoho Day that will hopefully satisfy your need for more of the usual post-conference fare, as well as some excellent takes on transnational localism and other aspect of Zoho’s different take on the role of technology companies in the world today.

Jon Reed always out-covers everyone at these events, so there may be more posts of his from this event that I’m missing:

ZohoDay 2024 – how customers overcome industry challenges with the Zoho platform (diginomica.com )

ZohoDay 2024 – how Zoho plans to integrate LLMs and smaller language models to get a better (and cheaper) AI result (diginomica.com )

Phil Wainewright, helping keep Diginomica’s coverage at the top of the heap, has a great take on transnational localism:

ZohoDay 2024 – Zoho, the tech vendor aiming to put capitalism on a different path (diginomica.com )

His original post on the transnational localism concept : ZohoDay 2021 – post-pandemic business success depends on transnational localism, says Zoho CEO (diginomica.com )

Thomas Wieberneit did two excellent video interviews worth watching on AI and a noteworthy customer: