The Flat Planet and a Phone !

Thomas Howe started this discussion, Jon Arnold and myself commented and now Alec Saunders took off a few minutes from his vacation (don’t miss his vacation photos!) to add his comments.

Alec sums up his view with “there’s a place for VON, and a place for ETel, and they don’t necessarily have to be the same show. The center of innovation has shifted to ETel, but the people I want to do business with are at VON. ”

I agree with Alec that there is a place for both, but I still believe that Von should have a more innovative flavor to it, to pull in people like me. Sure Etel has it’s share of hackers who are more interested in the cool code than how to make a business out of it. But, it also has the innovators. that is what made it exciting to me as a business person, enabling to meet informally with the people who are really shaping the future of communications. Not just for the next quarter, but more so - five years down the road. Alec, these are the people I want to do business with! Big companies were also represented at Etel, but by their innovators and not their bizdev and marketing people.

Now lets look at Jeff’s keynote yesterday at Von. Jeff declared that he was taking out the IP from VoIP. He believes, rightly so, that we should speak about Communications. It doesn’t matter what is underneath. In that case if Von is just a Communications show, why should a carrier pick it over the many voice and Communication shows that already exist?? There are many trade shows where they can go, see the latest equipment and discuss the industry.

Now I am the new kid on the block, but in my opinion, people will continue to come to Von for innovation. By innovation I mean people like Alec, Craig Walker, Thomas Howe and others. Zennstrom is not an innovator. He was. Skype was a gigantic disruptive innovation at the time, but that is last years news. Hearing Nicklas deliver the Skype marketing message is not necessarily my idea of an exciting keynote speach.

As a veteran Comdex goer (didn’t miss a show from 86-95), I would hate to see Von to go the way of Comdex. In the early years, Comdex was an exciting place with lot’s of innovation. With it’s tremendous growth came boredom and the “more of the same” feeling. Eventually I stopped going. I think Pulvermedia is aware of this and is working to bring in more innovation with the Asterisk pavilion and other initiatives. My suggestion - do more of that!

VON07