ITExpo - Quick Pix

Will have more to say later, but for now, I just have time to share a few photos from the ITExpo, here in Fort Lauderdale. The show definitely looks and feels bigger than last year, and I see two reasons. One would be the ramped-up IoT conference that is co-located here. It's really taking a life of its own with a pretty substantial exhibitor roster that stands apart from the main show floor.

These exhibitors don't have much in common with the UC/VoIP crowd, and it's a reminder that communications is just a small slice of the IoT pie. It's also very interesting stuff, and I loved the drone on display - see last photo below. With a 10 mile range from the ground, powered by IoT - note the PC at the bottom of that photo showing the tracking data - you sure can do a lot of interesting things that are much more effective than using conventional approaches.

Another reason for the show being bigger is the larger number of regular ITExpo exhibitors. There just seems to be a greater variety, although still largely from the same categories we see every year. Most of my time has been spent in the press room doing briefings, , but the few sessions I've seen so far have been quite good. Friday is the last day, and I'll be busy moderating back-to-back panels, so this is my only window to post while I'm here. Below are a few photos to give you a flavor for this year's edition of the ITExpo.

ITExpo Shout-Out #2 - Panel Session: Emerging Technologies Influencing Your Business

Am moderating back-to-back sessions next Friday at TMCnet's ITExpo in Fort Lauderdale. Yesterday, I blogged about the first panel, and this one is at 11am. 

Emerging technologies covers a lot of ground, and I'll be joined by a diverse group who will have more than enough to talk about in the short time we have. Along with SAP, IBM Security and Plantronics, we'll have independent perspectives from Jeff Pulver and Chris Fine.

It will be a great way to wrap up the conference, and you won't be disappointed if you join us. More details are here on the Conference Program page - just scroll down to Friday in the Hot Topics in Tech and Telecom track.

ITExpo Shout-Out #1 - Panel Session: Customer Service, Evolved

TMCnet's flagship show, ITExpo gets underway next Wednesday, and I'll be there as usual. No complaints going to Florida in February, and I've got a full schedule of vendor briefings, meetings and am moderating two sessions.

The first one is on Friday at 10am, and as the title above suggests, we'll be discussing how technology is impacting customer service, and what businesses need to do to adapt. Joining me will be speakers from Plantronics, Telax, CGS and USAN. It's going to be good, and for more detail, scroll down the Conference Program page here, and when you get to Friday, look for us in the Enterprise Communications track. Hope you can join us!

ITExpo Preview - JAA Interviewed by TMC: "The Tech Road Ahead"

I started posting about the upcoming ITExpo recently, and will be doing more of that over the next two weeks. This is TMCnet's flagship event, and when the weather is this cold, Miami Beach can't come soon enough.

If you're keeping score, I'm moderating two panels, and you'll be hearing about those very soon. For now, I'm going to share an interview TMC did with me to help set the stage for ITExpo. It's titled "The Tech Road Ahead", where I share my views on various tech trends you can expect to see covered at length at the show. Here's the link, and if it inspires you to book your trip to join us, I'll buy you a fancy cocktail - and perhaps TMC will buy me one too!

ITExpo Session #3 - Big Data and the Customer Experience

Whether you believe Big Data will be a Big Nothing or a Big Deal, you'll want to join us as we talk about what this means for the "customer experience". I'm not sure which of these is the bigger buzzword right now, but the question of the day is "what's the connection?" I don't think anyone quite has the answer yet, but that's where the conversation is headed next Thursday at 12:30pm.

TMCnet's ITExpo East, 2014 edition is less than a week away, and if the cold weather has finally gotten to you, it's not too late to make plans for Miami Beach.

Once you're there, I hope you make time for our session, and joining me will be Brian Sadowski from Apriva, and Brian Spraetz from Interactive Intelligence. We're working on adding another speaker, and will pass that on once in place. For more details on the panel, scroll down the Program tab on the show site - we're part of the Customer Interaction track.

ITExpo Session #2 - Transitioning Your Enterprise to UC

As we go from freezing to deep freeze here in Toronto, Miami Beach is looking better by the minute, and it's not too late for you to join us at next week's ITExpo!

If you've been following my posts, you'll know I'll be busy there wearing a few different hats. This post is about the second session I'm moderating, and it should be a must-see for anyone thinking about deploying UC. I write about this topic constantly, and have a pretty good sense of the challenges, so I'll be keen to hear what other have to say.

Joining me will be Dean Manzoori from Masergy, Frederic Dickey from Sangoma, and Khris Kendrick from CounterPath. The 45 minute panel format means the time will fly by, and we'll have no problem sharing real world examples of what works, what doesn't work, and best practices to make your path easier.

Our panel is at 1:30 on Wednesday, and it's part of the Enterprise Solutions Track. For more details, scroll down the Program tab on the show site, and if there's anything in particular you want us to to talk about, drop me a line.

ITExpo Session - Next Generation Contact Centers

This is the next update in a series of posts I'm running about what I'll be up to at next week's ITExpo in Miami Beach. My prior post covered what I'll be doing with the Government of Ontario and their economic trade mission showcasing some leading tech startups.

Now I'll focus on the sessions I'm moderating. My first panel is on Wednesday, from 9:00 - 9:45 am. The title is pretty self-explanatory: "From Call to Contact: Next Generation Customer Service Centers", and it's part of the Customer Interaction Track.

Joining me will be Max Ball from 8x8, and Rick McFarland from Voice4Net. We expect to add another speaker soon, and I'll pass that update along. This is a big topic, so we won't have time to fully re-invent the contact center, but I'm sure you'll come away with a few new ideas about what you could be doing.

For more detail, just go to the Program tab on the show's site, and scroll down to our time.

Also, an FYI, I'll be participating in Editor's Day on Tuesday, so if you're planning to be at the show, I won't be hard to find. If you can't attend, the next best thing is to follow TMC's show blog, as well as their tweets - @TMCnet and @ITEXPO - and even mine - @arnoldjon.

ITExpo Preview #1 - Ontario Pavilion Briefing

TMC's ITExpo East is now less than two weeks away, and it's time to start talking things up. Am sure you're getting regular updates on the keynotes and sub-events, and it looks like they've settled into a good thing with the Miami Beach venue. The size is about right - although it might feel crowded if the event gets much bigger - and nobody is complaining about going to South Beach in late January. We survived the Ice Storm here in Toronto, so the change in scene will be very welcome!

I'll be moderating some sessions and participating in Editor's Day, and posts are coming with more details. Thought I'd start this series off talking up what the government of Ontario is doing with their trade mission to the Expo. They're returning to the show with their Ontario Pavilion, located in booth #815. I've been involved with this initiative at previous Expos, and the idea is to showcase Ontario companies in our space. Like any trade mission, it's an economical way for these companies to get direct exposure to new markets, and a chance for attendees to see what Ontario has to offer.

At present, the delegation consists of eight companies: Advance Software Concepts, Cloud Dynamics, Excelocity, In-Touch Insight Systems, Myplanet Digital, Phybridge, SVK Software, and Telax. They're all doing interesting things, and will be on hand there throughout the show.

Aside from that, the pavilion is hosting a market briefing and meet-and-greet at the booth on Friday, from 10-11am. I'll be providing an informal briefing about market trends and opportunities that these companies are addressing, and a delegate from the Canadian Consulate in Miami will be on hand. So, if you want to see the latest and greatest coming from Ontario, please join us.

I'll also be particpating in a VIP breakfast being hosted by the Ontario government, plus there's a general reception from 2-4pm on Thursday at the booth, which has been well attended in the past. See you there - go Canada!

IT Expo 2014, Miami - Be There?

Happy 2014!

It's about 100 below today in Toronto, and even more than usual, I'm looking forward to the next ITExpo in sunny Miami Beach, starting January 28.

Aside from the frigid weather we're getting now, Toronto just came through an unprecedented ice storm that left over 300,000 people without power. Our house was without power for 9 days, and my business had no connectivity for 8 days. We're back to normal now, but it was pretty disruptive, and it's time to get back to work.

To get the year started - and resume blogging - I'm doing a quick shout-out for the ITExpo, an event I've been actively supporting for many years. The show continues to evolve and is doing a great job keeping up with the latest trends, including WebRTC, cloud, SDN and UC. They've also added some new tracks (co-located events, actually), such as visual collaboration and "SmartVoice". In short, it's great see some cutting edge focus on voice and video - really, the core building blocks for UC - and for the latter, you won't want to miss comms guru Martin Geddes, who's keynoting Tuesday morning. That should be a real treat.

I'll have more updates on the show, as well as details about the four sessions I'm moderating. If you're feeling the weather the way I am, you shouldn't need much prodding to make plans to join us!

ITExpo Takeaways - Innovation, Startups and Implications for UC

Just saw Steve Wozniak's talk here at ITExpo in Las Vegas. Definitely the marquee session, so everyone is here. Lots of great stories about how he learned how to build things as a kid and how that set the stage for what was to come. The natural curiousity that comes with being a kid is the best magic of all, and if everyone followed their early instincts, most of the world's problems would be solved overnight. Nevermind....

Back to work. I just posted my thoughts about Tuesday's StartupCamp8. It's a different take, and is focused on where - or how - UC fits into the startup ecosystem, especially around driving innovation inside businesses. Problem is that I'm not seeing much of a fit, at least based on the startups we saw.

Is this a big deal? I don't know, but my instincts tell me that UC is on the outside looking in when it comes to how startups think about the business problems they're trying to solve and whether they see UC as an enabler for their ideas.

If that raises questions for you, I think you'll enjoy my post, which is running now on the UCStrategies portal. Please give it a read, and would love to hear your thoughts!

ITExpo 2013, Las Vegas - Day 1

Yesterday was Day 1 of this year's ITExpo West, being held for the first time in Las Vegas. Much bigger here in many ways than Austin was last year. Too early to tell how this location plays out, but there are definitely lots of people here. Just sharing a few high level thoughts from what I saw yesterday.

Things kicked off with a roundtable panel on tech trends, with voices from TMC, analysts and consultants. There were a lot of good ideas and food for thought, and the hour flew by fast. Topics covered included M2M, white spaces, WebRTC and the need for IPV6. Bigger picture, a key theme was the idea that our personal identities have value - as we better understand that, the relationship between buyers and sellers will change, and this has implications for everyone in the room - both as consumers and as businesses trying to make money in telecom.

Moving on, I moderated a well-attended session on how technology can be used in the contact center to improve the customer experience. Lots to talk about there, and it's clear that things like social media, mobility and multichannel communication are presenting big challenges for contact centers. It's also worth noting that almost everyone in the room was a first-time ITExpo attendee. This happened as well in the panel I ran this morning on hosted PBX. I'm sure the Las Vegas location has something to do with that, and maybe TMC is tapping into a new audience - time will tell.

Otherwise, yesterday was full with briefings and from there, everyone went to StartupCamp8. Over the past few ITExpos, this has been the most engaging session, helped in large part by the open bar, but also the content. The format is well honed now, and 4 startups gave their pitches, followed by some feedback from the judges. After that, the audience voted on winner, which turned out to be a local startup, Alice Receptionist. None of these really stood out for me, but I have a more detailed post coming about these startups - it will run on the UCStrategies portal, hopefully before the week is out.

Preceding the pitches, we heard a good keynote from Jeff Bonforte of Yahoo!. Aside from telling us how they missed out on acquiring Twitter for pocket change in its early days, Jeff covered 12 elements that characterize innovative organizations. Overall, this sounds like a good recipe for success, and clearly most businesses simply aren't wired this way. Aside from things you'd expect to hear, I enjoyed his take on the need to fail before you can succeed. For companies that can learn from this, the main idea is that the more you fail, the more likely you'll find something that actually sticks. It seems countertintuitive, but when you compare the culture of startups against enterprises, it's not hard to see why this is standard procedure for the former type of business.

I'll get another post out by end of the week, and I'm sure the buzz will be great when the show floor opens later this afternoon.

Rich Tehrani kicking off the show

 Technology trends roundtable

 View of the strip from the 62nd floor during the reception following StartupCamp8

ITExpo Preview - Session #3 - VaaS

Last but not least, my third session at the upcoming ITExpo is titled: "VaaS - Leveling the Playing Field for SMBs". Add one more acronym to your alphabet soup canon in this space - now we're talking about video as a service. With cloud, you just know that sooner or later, everything will get their "aaS" moniker, just like finally getting added to the Apps store up in that same cloud.

Well, if any application can truly benefit from the cloud it's video. This is the most expensive of all communications modes to provide with a premise-based solution, and now that the technology is "good enough" for just about any endpoint, the market is finally here. This certainly isn't what Cisco had in mind with telepresence, which is such a great experience, but really just for the Fortune 1000 set. Cloud-based services are nowhere as good, but my favorite tag line of "good enough" definitely applies here, and that's one of the themes we'll be exploring on the panel.

Our session is Thursday, August 29 at 1pm, and is part of the the Cloud4SMB Expo, which runs under the ITExpo tent. I know it's one of the last sessions of the conference, but if you're not dashing off to catch a red-eye back East, this should be a fun session.

Joining me will be Vishal Brown - Yorktel, Mark Cray - AGT, and Steve Vobbe - Glowpoint. Full details are here, and hope you can join us.

Am on vacation next week, and blogging gets a break too, so I won't likely post again til just before the Expo. As a reminder, I'm also moderating panels on Tuesday and Wednesday, and I posted about them here and here. See you in Las Vegas!

ITExpo Preview - Session #2

Continuing from yesterday's post, this is a series of shout-outs for the sessions I'm moderating at ITExpo West, coming real soon. This is TMC's flagship event, and is being held in Las Vegas from August 26-29.

So, on Day 2 - Wednesday - I'll be hosting my second panel, titled "10 Ways Hosted PBX Will Benefit Your Business". Gee, I wonder what that one will be about? Whether you call it hosted or cloud or managed, the trend to go off-prem is really strong, especially in the SMB space.

Joining me for this one will be Aaron Charlesworth - Vocalocity, Tim Healy - Telepacific Communications, Steve Lingo - XO Communications, and Bill Miller - Freedom Voice. That's a pretty solid lineup, and if you don't come away learning something new here, then maybe you should moderate this topic next time around.

We're running at 10am, on Wednesday, August 28, and the session is part of the Cloud4SMB Expo, one of the many sub-events running alongside the ITExpo. For more detail, just scroll down this page to our date/time, and I hope you can join us.

ITExpo Preview - Session #1

TMC's ITExpo is now just 12 days away, and there are lots of loose ends to manage as usual. I'm moderating three sessions, and am doing separate posts for each. They're all different, and I hope to see you at some or all of 'em.

As you probably know by now, this year's West event is in Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay. It's a pretty hot time of year to be in the desert, but that's the story. This is actually TMC's 3rd locale for the West ITExpo in 4 years, so we're all looking forward to seeing how they've changed things up. Los Angeles was their base for several years, but they pulled roots and had the last two Expos in Austin. I loved it there, but it's not really a Western spot and I guess it just didn't pull right, so off to Mandalay Bay we go.

I'll be there the full time, and my first session is Tuesday, August 27 at 10am. This will be a topic I really enjoy researching, and it's going to be fun. It's called "Solving the Customer Experience Equation", and we'll be exploring the relationship between communications technology and contact center agents, and how best to marry those for providing great service.

Joining me will be Steve Brubaker from InfoCision Management Corporation, Steve Chirokas - VoltDelta, John Cray - Zeacom, and Ann Sung Ruckstuhl - LiveOps. With four speakers, the time will fly, but you'll definitely hear some pretty sharp perspectives.

If you want get regular updates on the show, follow my twitter feed, and along with TMC's - @arnoldjon and @ITExpo.

ITExpo - 24 Days and Counting....

I can't think of anywhere I'd rather be in late August just before Labor Day than... Las Vegas. Yeah, it's a dry heat and everything is air conditioned anyway, but summer is short around here and if I have to travel now I'd rather be going to a cottage (that's happening the week before) or a beach (ditto).

With that said, it's ITExpo time, and this only happens twice a year, so that's where I'm going to be. As you likely know, TMC continues to expand/enhance/improve this show, and you have to admit, having Steve Wozniak speak is a pretty cool draw.

This is just a quick shout-out, and I'll be posting more extensively starting next week about the conference. I'll be moderating some sessions, so stay tuned for details, and if you're not following the TMC tweets - or mine - just add these handles for up to the minute updates - @ITExpo @TMCnet @arnoldjon

Now You Want Me to Collaborate? Leave Me Alone!

That's the title of my current article running in Internet Telephony Magazine. As you hopefully know, this is TMC's flagship publication - both print and digital versions - and my monthly column, Rethinking Communications, has been running there since May 2012.

As the column's namesake implies, I try to focus on issues that transform how we think about and use communications technologies. This is pretty fertile ground, and I often look at things from the end user's perspective. That's definitely the topic this month, as I approach collaboration from a slightly less receptive vantage point.

If you lean on me long enough about collaboration, you'll tap into a vein along the lines that it's overrated and overestimated. I'll leave it at that for now, and hope you'll hop over next to the digital edition and give my article read. Give that some thought, and I'd love to know if we're seeing things the same - or not.

Before signing off, I'd be remiss to not use this post as a quick heads-up for ITExpo, TMC's bi-annual conference that's just three weeks away! Yikes - I have to get my panels organized, like now. More on that in my next post. Will I see you there?

ITExpo Highlights

Time sure flies, and that's not a good thing when the weather is sooo nice in Miami Beach. ITExpo is finishing up this afternoon, but I need to get on my way now. Guess I won't be winning the Jeep, but you can't have it all, right?

Seen a little of everything this time around - all the sessions and speakers I heard were quite good, but attendance was variable. I ran 3 panels - 2 were well attended, and 1 hardly at all. Video seems like the hot topic - those sessions were busy, as was Ingate's SIP Trunking program and Crossfire's M2M tracks. I'm not the only one feeling this way, and it's no reflection on the content - just a lot of demands on our time. Between visiting the show floor, catching keynotes, doing briefings, stepping outside for some sun, networking in the hallways and dropping in on sessions, there's a lot of ground to cover. This means attendance of your session has a lot to do with what else is going on at that time, and every conference has to deal with that.

Overall, TMC does a great job keeping things moving along, but I think the stress level would be lighter if there were fewer things to be running to. No time was wasted, and everything I saw was worth getting to - just wish I could have seen more.

With that, I have a highlight and a lowlight to share.

The highlight, as expected, was John Sculley's onstage interview during StartupCamp7. Larry Lisser has done a great job with this, and it always draws a full room. Quickly, the format is to have 4 startups do a 5 minute pitch, then take questions from an expert panel as well as the audience. There were two winners - the audience went with Verbalizeit, and the panel went with Thruview. I liked Thruview the best as well, but none really did that much for me. Seems like everybody is in the mobile apps business now, but they all face the same challenge of monetizing a cool idea. Enough from me on that - you can read up on all this on the Expo website.

Back to John Sculley. I didn't know much about him, but his story sure is a good one. I actually found his Pepsi experience more interesting than his time at Apple. Sometimes you have go way back to revisit ideas that really matter now, and he's a great example of that. Looks like he was the driving force that made Pepsi a major player based on a simple twist of marketing logic - "don't sell the product, sell the experience".

With so much commoditization in the communications space, this is probably the most important message to impart. If it could work with Pepsi, it sure can work with UC, video, social media, mobility, etc.  That's my big takeaway and highlight. When engineers run a company, it's all about the product; but when marketers are in charge, it's all about the experience. Ideally you want a balance, and that's why Steve Jobs was so successful. Obviously, it's hard to do, but it absolutely should be driving every company in our space.

Lowlight? Well, for me, it was my panel yesterday, which ended up having two speakers - BroadSoft and Metaswitch. How often does that ever happen? In headier times, this would have a been an SRO session, with everyone anxious to see how they would square off. Well, we played to a near empty room, so we ended up talking about more mundane things. Too bad - this could have been a very lively panel, but we were up against too many other things at that time, and that's the way it goes. Too bad. Maybe next time we'll be the headliners, and then we'll really have to be ready. I'm up for it!

Next Stop - Miami and ITExpo

Living in Toronto, it's a great time of year for Miami Beach, and that's where my first travels of 2013 are taking me. I'll be at TMC's flagship event, the ITExpo, where the winter edition has a nice home at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

If you've been following me, you'll know I'm a regular there, and this show has survived, thrived and keeps things fresh by covering the gamut of IP communications. It's fair to say things are spread impossibly thin, and one person can only take in so much, but you can't go there and not learn something new. Lots to look forward to as always, and to keep tabs from wherever you are, follow their twitter feed - @ITExpo - and it couldn't hurt to track @TMCnet as well.

I won't be hard to find, and would be happy to hear from you. I'll be taking part in Editor's Day tomorrow, and will be briefing with companies from 4-6pm. During the next 2 days, I'll be moderating 3 panels, which you can get details on by scrolling through the conference program here. I've also been blogging about each panel the past few days, and details are also posted on my website.

Enough about me - how about you - will you be there?

ITExpo Shout-Out #3 - Turning UC into Revenue

I don't mean to confuse you, as this message isn't meant for IT managers deploying UC - although that could be a worthwhile topic to explore - creatively. What I'm talking about here is for service providers - how they can leverage Unified Communications as a way to drive new revenues. This is pretty much a mobility story, where operators are struggling to keep up with our ever-changing wants - you can call them needs, but we've survived for thousands of years without these goodies - to satiate our smartphone and tablets obsessions. There's definitely money to be made here, and UC actually provides a lot of value to businesses trying to make sure their employees stay productive when out of the office.

That's the set-up, and for the rest, you'll have to join us next Thursday at 3:30 for our panel. I'm moderating, and will be joined by Chris Carabello of Metaswitch, Leslie Ferry of BroadSoft and Payam Maveddat of Taqua. These are all familiar faces for me, so it should be a lively session.

So, where and when? Almost forgot - Miami Beach - you ok with that? Of course, it's TMC's ITExpo, and this is the third session I'm moderating at the show, so I won't be hard to find. As with my earlier posts about my sessions, you can get all the details here - just scroll down to Thursday and you'll find us on the Service Provider Solutions track. See you there!

ITExpo Shout-Out - My Panel, The Optimal Customer Experience

Am just continuing my posts in advance of next week's ITExpo in Miami. It's -100 here in Toronto, so South Beach is looking better by the minute.

I'm moderating two panels on Wednesday, and this is my second one - at 1:30 on the Customer Interaction track. The full title is The Real Business Value of an Optimal Customer Experience, and as you might expect, we'll be talking about how the contact center can improve that experience and ultimately makes customers more loyal.

Joining me will be Lisa Abbott from Genesys, Brent Morgan from Interactive Intelligence, and Ann Sung Ruckstuhl from LiveOps. Should be a good one, and you can get more details here, then scroll down to our session, where all the info will pop up.