IT Expo West & CloudComm Summit 4

Let me be blunt, at present I’m just on the periphery of the telecom space. I’m still a user, specifically a home office user. Not being directly involved in the telecom industry I don’t get the opportunity to take part if many of the major industry events. However, when TMC decided to hold IT Expo West 2011 in Austin, TX it proved just too good an opportunity to pass up.

Austin is essentially right in my back yard. “Just over yonder” in local terms. OK, it’s really a two-and-a-half hour drive, but that’s still close compared to its usual location in Los Angeles. When TMC offered a deeply discounted uber-early-bird registration back in February I took the plunge and bought a show pass.

I booked some vacation to attend the conference. Time passed.

Then not long ago Dave Michels asked if I would accept a speaking slot at CloudComm Summit 4, an event co-located at IT Expo. He wanted someone to give a whirlwind overview of HDVoice, a topic near & dear to me. So, of course, I agreed.

Having attended a great many such conferences in the past Dave has some interesting ideas about what works and what doesn’t. He laments the fact that panel sessions often put a great group of people on stage, but ultimately fail to get into any depth on their assigned topic.

I’ve seen this all to often at various broadcast conferences that I’ve attended. The standard process of introductions, moderation, questions & answers in turn, limits the amount of hard information that can be exposed in an hour.

The folks organizing CloudComm Summit 4 decided to try a new format for one session. They asked several individuals to give a short presentation on a specific topic, each offering, “Three things you didn’t know about….”

Then they asked some interesting people to present on very interesting topics:

• IPV6: Dan York, Voxeo
• APIs: Thomas Howe
• Tele-Video: Jeff Rodman, Co-Founder of Polycom
• HD Voice: Michael Graves

While perhaps a bit less audience interactive than a traditional session, it should be an interesting time. I’m certainly going to have to bring my A game to keep up with that crowd.