Cisco Connect 2014 - Takeaways

Yesterday I attended Cisco Connect 2014 here in Toronto. This was their 12th event, and it sounds like this was their biggest to date. Sure looked packed to me, and a good sign that Cisco is doing its fair share of business in Canada.

Analysts and media were on a track of our own, so the day was pretty structured. The opening talks were similar to last year, but this time around we're pretty much being told that IoE and IoT is the future, so get ready. The Internet of Everything sure sounds ominous, and they're expecting the world to have 50 billion "people, processes, data and things" connected by 2020.

Well, if that doesn't make us really smart, I don't know what will. There's ceratinly an opportunity here, and lots of business to be had from "connecting the unconnected". What that opportunity really is, nobody knows, but it will be big. The number Cisco is putting out there is $19 trillion - too big for me to comprehend, but we're talking about a new world order after all.

Just to clarify, however, this isn't a spending opportunity - it's "value at stake", and primarily represents cost savings from doing things more efficiently. Still, it's another big transformation that's very much underway, and it was correctly noted that some big names out there will go away but new leaders and industries will emerge.

On a local level, we heard a lot about what Cisco Canada is doing to drive innovation here, and they're making good on initiatives we heard about last year. There was a well-done video illustrating how technology is being used to deliver telehealth and education to remote communities in the Far North. Closer to home, the innovation hub is going to be built here in Toronto, and they are seeding research chairs in the higher education sector to get more kids going into science/technology studies. Financially, they'll soon be announcing initiatives about how they're working with the VC community to help foster startups and entrepreneurship in our space - definitely something we need more of here.

We also had a guided tour of the show floor, with lots of focus on the cloud and data centers. Not too many phones, but lots of video/collaboration tools along with security offerings. Aside from that, everywhere you turned, there was something about their role in the 2015 PanAm Games which will be held in the greater Toronto area. These mega-events are great technology stages for the likes of Cisco, and prime opportunities to show us why IoE is the next big thing.

As a sidebar, if you only want to think locally, the PanAm organizers looking for 20,000 volunteers, so if you want in, Cisco Canada can get you in touch with the right people. That number isn't quite 19 trillion, but it sure shows that we need a lot more than technology to get big events like this done. My toaster may soon feel empowered to talk back to me, but it won't be much good helping people find out where the ping pong matches are being played - leave that job to us humans - it may be the only job we have left.  :-)

Exec keynotes from Nitin Kawale and Rebecca Jacoby

Rowan Trollope demo'ing the SX10 - small scale out-of-the-box telepresence for about the same price as a decent HD TV - I'd say they've really got it right with this one. Would you buy telepresence from this man? I would.

This week's smart grid webinar - reminder and update

Just a quick shout-out for tomorrow's Zpryme webinar on managing power outages in extreme weather. I'll be moderating and presenting trend data based on a recent survey conducted by Zpryme. Joining me will  be sponsor Ventyx (an ABB company), and Kansas City Power & Light. This is a last minute change, as Oklahoma G&E had a change in plans.

We're on at 1pm ET tomorrow, and as usual, registrations have been strong. For more details, here's the registration page on Zpryme's site. Hope you can join us.

Next Stop: Toronto and Cisco Connect

I hardly ever attend local communications events here in Toronto, mainly because there are so few of them - and the same applies to Canada in general. Very strange, given how active I am in this space, but that's another conversation.

Not only am I attending one in my native Toronto, but this is an unprecedented second week in a row for local events. As you may know, last week I attended the CTCA's annual conference, and was happy to contribute not just as a moderator but the keynote speaker to open the event. You can read more about that in this post from earlier today, along with links to the presentations.

Back to the future - so, tomorrow I'm attending Cisco Canada's big annual partner event. It's called Cisco Connect, where they'll be showcasing the latest and greatest in their technology and partner ecosystem. As Canadian events go, it's pretty big, and there will be tons of customers, prospects and aspiring partners roaming about. Aside from the exhibits, there will lots of content and talks from key execs, including rising star, Rowan Trollope.

Content-wise, there's a lot of focus on data centers, service providers and network security, so that should tell you something about what Cisco thinks is important right now. Yes, they'll be talking about collaboration, but I bet we'll hardly hear a word about phone systems or video. The mix of sponsors reflects a lot of this, with most of the top tier supporters being our big 3 carriers catering to enterprises - Bell, Telus and Allstream. Interesting to also see Microsoft, their favorite frenemy up there as a Gold Sponsor. Interesting times, for sure, and I'll do my best to tweet as time allows.

CTCA Conference - Quick Coda and Presentation Links

I've been meaning to post again about last week's CTCA event in Gravenhurst, ON. This the Canadian Telecom Consultant's Association, a community that is a step to the left of what analysts like me focus on. Their clients are the end users, and our clients are the vendors/carriers, so together, we pretty much know everything that's going on in the comms space.

Maybe that's wishful thinking, but the collective experience on hand was pretty impressive, and I'll bet the main sponsors and participating vendors got their money's worth - Cisco, NEC, Interactive Intelligence, Huawei, Mitel and ShoreTel. Ditto for the operators, Bell (lunch sponsor too!), Primus and Cogeco Data Services.

All told, the quality of speakers and content was great, and being a small group, the audience interaction was lively. I've been waiting to post until now, as CTCA has been uploading the presentations to their website, and most of them are there now. 

Am really glad they're doing this, as it will help show the kind of thought leadership CTCA can pull together, and hopefully they'll continue to grow their membership. Aside from there being some informative vendor presentations, we got a lot of updates on the state of network infrastructure policy issues, telecom regulation, and implications for the 700 MHz wireless spectrum auction. 

Lots of good updates here worth reviewing, and I would also urge you to look at the locknote keynote from Ron Pickett. He gave a very engaging talk about why a lack of an innovation strategy is really hurting the Canadian communications sector. It was a great way to end the event with lots of food for thought for how we could be doing things so much better.

For the record, I'd be remiss to mention that my keynote presentation has been posted there as well. 

I hope you review them all, and your comments would be most welcome - both here and by the CTCA.

That's my take on the event, and I'll leave you with a few pix to mark the event.

Cisco's Fran Blackburn addressing the audience

Yup, mid-April - snow, ice and wind - come back in a month, and you'll never want to leave!

VoIP Security - What You Don't Know Can Hurt You - new article

Regular followers will know that I've been focused a lot lately on VoIP security. This post is timely in light of Heartbleed, which is yet another example of how vulnerable we are online, despite what we think are solid measures to avert security breaches.

I don't think VoIP is connected to Heartbleed, but as it becomes more widely used, there will be a lot more weak links to worry about - at least until both end users and enterprises step up their efforts to properly secure VoIP.

My latest article on this topic has been published now by U.K.-based Enterprise Management 360. I've been doing things with them for a while, and their current print edition is out now - Q1 2014. The magazine is big and glossy - very impressive looking - but they also have a digital edition. There are apps you can get from their website to download it to your mobile device, but the link to view it online isn't up yet.

Until then, I wanted to share my article, which is part of the Q1 2014 edition. The publisher has provided me with a PDF version, and I've web-enabled it so you can view it here. I hope you like it, and more importantly, I hope it gets you thinking more critically about the connection between VoIP and IT security.

Is Voice Really Dead?

Geez, seems like I'm asking a lot of provocative questions this week - I hope that's creating some good food for thought out there. Disruption never seems to end in the comms space, and this time around, I'm looking at voice.

One of the monthly columns I write is for TMC's Internet Telephony Magazine, and this one is called Rethinking Communications. With a mandate like that, my latest column fits right in - "Is Voice Really Dead?" - and is running here as part of the magazine's digital edition.

Chances are you have a pretty good idea about that already, and whatever side of the coin you're on, I think you'll find this a good read. My commentary is based largely on takeaways from the SmartVoice track during the last ITExpo in Miami, with particular reference to what Martin Geddes had to say. He's definitely on to something with hypervoice, and I would encourage to you to explore that further.

Why Does Customer Service Suck?

Well, I'll bet that sure got your attention. It's not my headline, but if it gets you reading my article, you'll see why, and hopefully you'll learn something new.

That's the title of my current writeup for InformationWeek. If you don't know, I write a monthly colulmn for their Unified Communications portal, and it's running now. Here's the link, and if you like it, your comments are most welcome. This is a great topic, and I have a follow-on post coming about in my next IW column.

Life After Nortel - my next Webinar, April 25

Seems that when I'm not writing, I'm busy at conferences - or doing webinars. If you follow me, you'll know I keep busy both in telecom and smart grid, and this time around it's the former.

My next webinar is another Ziff Davis B2B event, with the focus being on Nortel customers. I've been writing about this a fair bit lately on their Toolbox.com IT portal, and now I'm going to complement that with this upcoming webinar.

The title is self-explanatory - "Life After Nortel - Key Considerations and Options for your Telephony Roadmap", and we're doing this on April 25 at 1pm ET. If you can join us, here's the registration form, and I look forward to having you on the call!

Calling all Conferencing Users - Share Your Experiences in a Survey (with prizes!)

I'm a market researcher by trade, and when LifeSize told me about this survey they're running, I figure why not help out and make more people aware of it.

Actually, I wish every company would do surveys like this (especially if they hire me to do it!), as I think end users need to be better understood. Whether doing quantitative surveys like this, or qualitative research such as focus groups, there is no substitute for learning first-hand from end users. If you're not familiar with the virtues of market research, there's a primer about the basics on my website, and I'd be happy to tell you more any time.

Enough about me. Here's the pitch, along with a link to the survey and a chance to win a $200 Amazon gift card:

5 minutes – 5 winners!

$200 Amazon Gift Card

One of the keys to a developing a great product is when a company truly understands its consumers wants and needs.  LifeSize, a pioneer and world leader in high-definition video conferencing systems and software applications is doing just that.

Please take 5 minutes to tell us about your usage and experiences with audio and video conferencing solutions in the workplace and you’ll automatically be entered to win one of five $200 Amazon Gift Cards. Five winners will be randomly selected from all completed entries between received between April 7 – April 18, 2014. 

Survey:  https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/59BNM2L

Next Stop - Gravenhurst, ON - CTCA Conference

Yup, the Great White North, eh. Well, I do live in Toronto, and a 2-3 hour drive around here barely gets you out of the city. Most people have no idea how big Ontario is, but they'll find out when the world runs out of water, and the province is annexed by a superpower to harvest our lakes to survive. Sounds like this could make a good movie, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it actually happen in my lifetime.

On a more cheery note, the weather IS warming up, but my Red Sox are suddenly in last place, so things could be better. For me, Gravenhurst will make things better, and that's where I'm going this week, from Tuesday - Thursday.

I've had some near misses to participate in CTCA events, but this year, it's finally on. CTCA is the Canadian Telecom Consultants Association - our version of the STC in the U.S. Their 2014 annual conference is being held at the Taboo Resort, and it's very scenic - and expensive - up there in Muskoka country.

Am really looking forward to attending, and I'd better not be late. I've been kindly asked to give the opening keynote on Wednesday morning, and I'll be talking about five trends in the communications space we all have to pay attention to - not just consultants, but vendors, carriers and channels. Oh, and of course, businesses - if nobody's buying, we'd better find something else to do. My presentation is ready to go, but I'm not giving it away here - you'll just have to come up to Gravenhurst and get a ticket - or ask me nicely after the event.

I'm also moderating a session on the cloud later that day, so I hope you stick around for that. Joining me will be speakers from Cogeco Data Services, Interactive Intelligence and NEC.

It's not too late to drop everything you're doing this week and make your way up north - right? For locals, the Leafs should be dropping out of playoff contention by tomorrow, so it's not like you'll have any distractions. :-)

Hope to see you there, and for more detail, here's CTCA's landing page for the conference.

I'll do my best to tweet and blog - my handle ia @arnoldjon, and the event handle is @CTCA_Canada

Next Smart Grid Webinar - Managing Outages in Extreme Weather

With ETS behind us now, it's time to get back to smart grid webinars. The next Zpryme webinar is on April 17 at 1pm ET, and I'll be in my usual role as the moderator/host.

Even though winter is pretty much behind us, and baseball is back, extreme weather threats are not too far back in our rear view mirrors. Ice storms are off the table now for a while, but depending where you live, floods, hurricanes, etc. can happen any time.

That's what we'll be covering in this webinar, with a particular focus on what utilities need to do to keep the lights on under extreme conditions. Joining me will be Clinton Davis of Ventyx, and Kandace Eaves of OGE - Oklahoma Gas and Electric.

Our webinars are always well-attended, so I'm just giving you an early heads-up here about the next one, and to register, here's the web page. Weather permitting, I hope you can join us! :-)

State of Cloud-Based Solutions and Ecosystems - UCStrategies Podcast

Our latest UCStrategies podcast included a guest, namely Zach Hinkle. He's the Solutions Program Manager for Interactive Intelligence and their cloud-based contact center platform, CaaS. His company has long been a leader in moving communications applications to the cloud, so they were a great addition for this topic.

For a change, I served as the moderator, and led Zach through a series of topics that our usual group of UC Experts had no trouble chiming in on. We started by talking about why vendors are moving to the cloud and why their customers are now following them. Naturally, we wanted hear about Interactive's experiences, but then moved on to the broader vendor space.

Building on that, we talked about the challenges and realities, along with the importance of building up an ecosystem to support the changing needs of a multichannel contact center environment.

The podcast has been posted to the UCStrategies portal, so you can give it a listen here. We covered a lot of ground, so it's a pretty long session, and if that's asking too much, you can just read the transcript as well as fast forward to the parts you really want to hear.

Book Review - Hacking Exposed for UC and VoIP

I don't usually write book reviews, and I've never written a business book. Definitely looked into the latter, and I'm sure I could it, but it just hasn't grabbed me enough to do one. I'll bet I could ghost-write a good book for someone else, though, so if that grabs you, I'm not hard to find. :-)

Back to business. Mark Collier is the CTO with SecureLogix - both he and the company know the nuts of bolts of IT security really well. I've known Mark for some time, and when the 2nd edition of this book came out, he sent me a copy and asked if I'd be kind enough to review it. Our paths crossed recently once he saw the white paper I authored on VoIP security for VoIPshield. Since we're on the same wavelength about these issues, I was more than happy to do it.

The book at hand focuses specifically on IT threats related to VoIP and UC, and is part of an ongoing series of books under the Hacking Exposed theme. Mark co-authors these books with David Endler, another major thought leader and practitioner in ths space.

I decided to post my book review on Amazon.com instead of here since it will get broader exposure there. I'm not a big online shopper, but have recently discovered the joys of hunting down hard-to-find CDs and books there, and have since added a couple of short review of CDs. If you've never posted a review on Amazon, it's easy to do, and I figured why not post my Hacking Exposed review there too.

Without further ado, then, you can read my Customer Review here, and I hope you find it helpful - maybe even helpful enough to add their book to your shopping cart! There are a few other reviews about the book as well (much shorter than mine!), so you can see that I'm not alone in giving it two thumbs up.

March Writing Roundup - my top 7 Picks

I recently started a roundup post to summarize highlights of my writing for the previous month. March was busy as usual for me, and while I don't expect you to follow everything of mine, here's a digest of the posts that I think you'll find the most interesting.

My writing turns up in many places, so I figure this is an easy way to make sure my followers don't miss the posts that I feel represent my most timely/relevant thinking.

If you don't want to wait this long, aside from following my blog and tweets (@arnoldjon), a good way to track my articles and columns is on this summary page on my website. As you probably know, I don't make a living blogging, and if you want to know what clients hire me for, you should spend some time there. You might be surprised to learn the various ways I work with clients, and if you think I can be of service, I'd be happy to hear from you!

Words of the Woz and Other ETS Takeaways - we Need More Invention, not Innovation - this blog, March 28

Top 100 Tech Podcasters as per GetVoIP - me and 99 Others! - this blog, March 14

How Legacy Phone Systems Could be Hurting Your Productivity - Ziff Davis, Toolbox.com

Change is Good - Starting Fresh After Nortel - Ziff Davis, Toolbox.com

Business Implications for Hosted VoIP - Size Doesn't Matter - Ziff Davis, Toolbox.com

Five Signs Your Business is Ready for UC - ADTRAN blog

How Amazon Mayday Could Have Helped Weather the Toronto Ice Storm - Internet Telephony Magazine

Colonel Chris Hadfield - Lessons Learned from Collaborating in Space

It's not everyday you get to see an astronaut and bona fide space hero, but this was a pretty good way to start the week. I was invited to attend a talk last night sponsored by Cisco Canada and Allstream, and we were graced by the presence of Col. Chris Hadfield, who gave a really inspiring talk about his time in the space program. When it comes to local-boy-makes-good, he's as good as it gets for being a homegrown hero, and a world-class example of the kind of leadership Canada is capable of producing.

The event was fittingly held at the MaRS facility in downtown Toronto. While the acronym has nothing to do with the planet, it actually is home to one of Canada's leading edge innovation incubators, especially in the life sciences.

You may be wondering what this has to do with tech, but the event title provides a good clue:

The inspirational message is that there are always ways to go higher, further, faster, etc. Being out in space is the ultimate challenge for pushing the envelope, and I doubt anybody on the planet has lived this out more than Chris Hadfield.

He gave a fascinating recap of his career, and with so much of it being on the Space Station, his perspectives on team work and collaboration were great. Nations tend to be very competitive and political when it comes to space exploration, but he made some great points about how well everyone gets along out in space when you're together on a common mission. When you have to work in very tight quarters with so little margin for error, those cultural and language differences go away in a hurry.

On a larger scale, he contrasted how differently the world behaves depending on the circumstances. He showed a map of the world during WW II, identifying the Allied countries, the Axis countries and the neutral countries. It was a pretty stark reminder of what the term World War means - in real life, not some stupid video game - when nations are solely focused on defeating and/or destroying their rivals.

Fast forward two generations later, and it's amazing to see how these very same nations are united with a common purpose in space exploration. He pointed out all the various centers across the globe that share in the Space Station initiative for our collective benefit and understanding of the universe.

His main point is that in the space of living memory, this is proof that we can change behaviors on a large scale, and when we work together, humanity can accomplish amazing things.

By association, of course, both Cisco and Allstream are hoping that message sinks in with their customers. Once that link has been established, the next step is to start the Unified Communications conversation - but in this context it's on a very strategic level.

We may not have to collaborate at work as intensely as Chris and his colleagues do out in space, but the message is a strong one. Like anything else, if you have the right tools, it's much easier to achieve a common goal. Collaboration is a big driver of behavior in business today, and when UC's value proposition can be presented - and understood - as an enabling solution for this desired outcome, then I like UC's chances of success.

Time will tell, but Chris's messages were as good as it gets, and I hope Cisco and Allstream succeed in driving them into the marketplace. Cisco has been focused on this message for a long time, and last night made me think of their 2011 C-Scape event, which I attended. John Chambers gave a strong presentation on the power of collaboration, and in my post, I tied his messaging to football and deaf culture. If you have an affinity to either of these references, I think you'll find the connections I made to collaboration thought provoking, and as a small tie-in, it just so happens the deaf person I wrote about works for NASA. Again, with the right tools and frame of mind - anything is possible.

Chris Hadfield - so, a Canadian, an American and a Russian astronaut walk into a bar.... :-)

Words of the Woz and other ETS Takeaways - we need Invention, not Innovation

If that headline is all you remember from ETS, I'm a happy guy.

Am back and mostly recovered from the Energy Thought Summit, held earlier this week in Austin, TX. This is definitely my kind of town, and if you missed the basics, here is my photo summary post from Tuesday. In short, ETS was the first conference put on by Austin-based Zpryme Research, and it was a great success.

If you weren't there, not to worry. Zpryme has posted video of the sessions, both on their site and on YouTube. Just poke around there and check out whatever strikes your interest - all the sessions and keynotes I saw were great, and I still need to check out the sessions I couldn't catch.

For those who don't know, I've been active in the smart grid space for several years now, mainly due to the overlap and opportunities for players in the communications space. I've got feet planted in both gardens, and as an Advisor to Zpryme, I have an ongoing role with their Premium subscription service industry reports, and a largely behind-the-scenes role in developing the conference.

Enough preamble. Let me share with you a few key takeaways from ETS, starting first with our star attraction, Steve Wozniak.

The title of this post is the main message for me. He's totally right - we need more invention, not innovation, and he wasn't shy to say that he's concerned about Apple in this regard. For the last while, they've mainly been tweaking (perhaps milking) their iPads and iPhones, but there haven't been any game-changers. I've been saying for some time that the business market - UC in particular - is there for Apple's taking, but I highly doubt they'll go there. Talk me later about that if you like.

Anyhow, there's definitely a difference between these terms. In my view, innovation tends to be about doing old things in new or better ways, and it's usually incremental. Invention, of course, is making up a whole new game, where everyone is starting from scratch, and by virtue of first mover advantage, you get to make up the rules. We're not seeing much of this these days, but when you least expect it, invention just shows up from left field. I'm absolutely convinced that the ultimate mobile device has yet to be invented - there are pieces of it here and there, but nobody has truly nailed it. Could Apple go the way of RIM? If they're not careful and stop inventing, you bet.

If you follow my writing, you'll know that I'm skeptical about how innovation has so much cachet in today's business lexicon. It's very easy for vendors to talk about how their offerings will enable innovation, and that's exactly what execs want their employees to do. Whatever. Technology is just a tool - no different than a typewriter or pencil and paper. Real innovation comes from hard work, inspiration and the infinite power of human imagination. Furthermore, innovation is usually the product of individual effort, not groupthink, so be careful when vendors infer causal links between collaboration and innovation. I'd better stop now.

The Woz is very much a pragmatist and an everyman when it comes to assessing the value of technology. It was refreshing to hear him talk about technology and smart grid in practical terms. He's more concerned with the health of the planet than lowering our energy bills, and he kinda walked the walk by arriving at the venue in a Tesla (electric vehicle), and rolling up to the stage on a Segway - amidst the common folk, down the aisle and not from a puff of smoke on stage. Gotta love that.

Finally, for the math geek in all of us, he left us with one of his ruling principles of life:

H = S - F

Got that? I don't know if he uses this for all his other talks, but I loved this one:

Happiness Equals Smiles Minus Frowns

So simple, but so hard to do. This could only come from the left coast, but I'm with Steve 100% on this one.

Otherwise, there were many other highlights, and I want to quickly share three here:

1. Andres Carvallo moderated the Smart Grid Realization panel, and while a lot of the dialog was dry, I took away one strong message - you need a strong grid before you can have a smart grid.

Well said, and it applies equally well to the communications space, especially with the big rush to the cloud. Do we really know how strong it is? How much has it really been tested? Don't all those security breaches worry you? Is there enough regulation in place to ensure a strong foundation? Do we have the right regulations and policies, or does this need a rethink?

These questions were certainly relevant at ETS, as the panel cited how emerging economies are making smart grid investments based on a weak foundation. The North American grid is aging, brittle and not very flexible. It performs very well most of the time, but not all of the time, and needs a major overhaul to keep up with how our needs are evolving.

2. Karl Popham moderated the electric vehicle panel, and joining him were speakers from major auto makers.

A core issue is how best to support consumer preferences when it comes to choosing between a conventional vehicle and one powered by electricity and/or batteries. I found strong parallels here between the need for telecom vendors to offer premise-based and cloud-based UC/VoIP, and the challenges faced by the channels in selling them.

Related to that is the existential threat raised by the likes of Tesla, who cannot access the existing channel system run by the dealers. It's prohibitively expensive to build their own dealer network, so they have to be creative- INVENTIVE - and find new routes to market. This is exactly why you see them on display in shopping malls - you have to create awareness before you can create demand, and an awful lot of people are discovering Tesla while out at the mall. Clearly, the crowd at ETS didn't need any help, and we had a real AHA moment, when the audience was asked if there should be an easier way to buy a Tesla. The reaction was an emphatic YES, and if you believe that the auto dealership model is broken in terms of providing choices that consumers want, this was a pretty good indication.

3. Keynote from John Scott of NASA

Another big highlight, especially for the space exploration fans and scientists out there - and there were plenty. Most of what he talked about was too much hard science for me, but there was one segment that really resonated. Mr. Scott presented a compelling breakdown of the timeline for how the atomic bomb came to be. Most of us know the high level history of the Manhattan Project, but he went deeper to explain how the science was developed, particularly in the context of how WW II  was unfolding.

Nothing drives the need for invention more than the threat of being conquered - forget about innovation - and before 1939, the idea of an atomic bomb was simply inconveivable. I loved the way he outlined the chain of events, tests and discoveries that unfolded during this process. When you consider the state of science up that point, it's incredible to see how much can be accomplished during the six year timeframe it took - starting with some vague hypotheses to full realization, and thank God we got there before the Nazis.

Most everything we do today with our "smart" phones is laughably trivial compared to this, and considering they didn't have computers or the cloud back then, I'm not sure we've evolved much as a species. Coming back to Steve Wozniak, we have fantastic tools today to truly make the world a better place, but the masses just want to play games and chat on FB. You'd like to think there would be a lot more invention happening, but innovation is just easier. Of course, invention is happening in disciplines like life sciences, and I think we're going to see more of that in smart grid once the grid gets stronger. In the communications space, I'm not so sure, but I'll save that topic for another day.

Thanks for bearing with me here. Your reward - a smiling Woz and another fun musical moment from ETS.

Very accommodating during the press session after his keynote. Got his biz card too - metallic - very cool.

 The Hot Nut Riveters. They were great - and yes, the guy in the middle is playing a saw - how's that for invention?

ETS - Quick Highlights

Just have a short window to share some photos of Day 1 here in Austin at ETS - the Energy Thought Summit. This is the inaugural event put on by Zpryme Research, and I have been playing a quiet role, mostly behind the scenes. They've really put a great lineup together, and delivered a solid day of content, with a strong touch of Austin-style hospitality. Translation - lots of live music, courtesy of several local performers, for which Austin has an inexhaustable supply.

Will have more comments in a follow-up post, and just wanted to share a few photos of Day 1. I'm one of the MCs for Day 2, so will be pretty tied up most of the day here.

Otherwise, I'll steer you to Zpryme's website, where they've been posting streaming video of the sessions. Needless to say, the photos there will be much better than mine! They've done a great job documenting the content, and just as importantly, sharing it. Enjoy.

The Paramount is a 99 year old theater - fantastic place and great history. The prep area below the stage has a lot of character, with the walls covered with autographs and messages from performers. It's a bit like inside the scoreboard at Fenway Park where ballplayers leave their autographs wherever there's space. Here's one part with Carol Burnett and Woody Allen's momentos.

Andres Carvallo, welcoming everyone. He's been the main face of the show and he's everywhere.

This is how you open an event in style - Austin style. Below is Caleb Hans Polashek. He's the youngest tenured member of the Austin Symphony Orchestra, and he performed two original compositions - lucky us, huh?

You might expect to see this in New Orleans, but no music is out of place in Austin. This was part of the buildup to Steve Wozniak's keynote. He was driven up to the venue in a Tesla, then entered the venue from the front door all the way down to the stage on a Segway, and ushered in with this marching band. Tough act to follow, and he was great.

View from the balcony. They don't build theaters like this any more - beautiful!

Professor Massoud Amin, keynoting later in the day. If you remember the Smart Grid Summit events I used to run, you should recognize Massoud. He was good as always - great sense of history and perspective on tying the big issues together.

Next stop - ETS in Austin, TX

Travel has been light so far this year, but starting next week, I'll be on the go a fair bit more.

Next Monday and Tuesday is ETS - the Energy Thought Summit. Wearing my smart grid hat, I've had an active role with my partners at Zpryme Research. Conferences take a long time to put together, especially when it's your first, so I've been adding more than my smart grid expertise, mostly behind the scenes.

Our hard work is poised to pay off next week, and if you're coming, am sure our paths will cross. I won't be hard to find, and will likely end up moderating a panel or two. Also, I'm the MC for Day 2.

Registration is peaking now, and we have a first-rate lineup of thought leaders to make this worthwhile for anyone who wants to know where smart grid is headed. There will be several communications and IT-related tracks, including one on cybersecurity, which I'll be taking in for sure.

If you don't know by now, Steve Wozniak is our marquee keynoter, and he's speaking Monday morning at 10am. For the rest of the program and roster, check out the event website, and it's not too late to make plans.

Amazon Mayday and the Toronto Ice Storm

These references may sound a bit obscure, and that's understandable. If you don't live in Toronto, you probably don't know about the Ice Storm we had, plus it occurred three months ago. Hopefuly, you know about Amazon's Mayday button, so let me connect the dots a bit more.

I'm posting here about my monthly column that I write for TMC's Internet Telephony Magazine, Rethinking Communications. Print publishing has long lead times, and while this article was written in the wake of the Toronto Ice Storm, it's only just been published today in the digital edition of the magazine.

If you lived through the Ice Storm, then my analysis would be very appropos for how the concept of Amazon Mayday could have helped ease the anxieties around what happened. We've long since gotten over the storm, but the ideas are still highly relevant for any utility, and incidents like this happen all the time.

In general, utilities have a lot to learn about customer service, and the thinking behind Amazon Mayday could really help raise the bar. That's the main connection I'm trying to make, and if that piques your interest, I hope you read my article. As always, comments are welcome.

Top 100 Tech Podcasters as per GetVoIP - me and 99 Others!

GetVoIP.com follows our space pretty well, and while their main business is being a channel/resource for buyers of VoIP, they provide some good content. Some of it they generate themselves, and some comes via industry watchers, myself included.

Everybody likes a top 10 list, and GetVoIP produces these from time to time, with the latest one coming yesterday. This was the top 100 "tech podcasters to follow on Twitter", and I'm happy to say they've included me, along with colleagues such as Blair Pleasant, Dave Michels and Don Van Doren. There are many other familiar names as well, along with others I don't know, so if you're looking to broaden your horizon of thought leaders in this space, you should check out their list.