JAA'S Analyst Blog - Current Posts
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A short note for navigating this section - scroll below for the most recent posts, and then for more, click on the Blog Archive box, where you can view all of my posts, going back to the beginning in March 2005.
Smart Grid Summit - Photo Highlights
/Larry Karisny leading the opening panel on cybersecurity. Larry was a huge help, not just with his industry knowledege, but also for moderating and speaking on a few sessions.
Dr. Massoud Amin from U of Minnesota. The "father of the smart grid" did not disappoint - just wish the lighting was better for a picture!
Maureen Harris and Orjiakor Isiogu on the NARUC smart grid working group update
Joy Rychlik (also from Toronto), moderating the Green IT/Data Centers panels, along with Henry Bailey (SAP), Kyle McNamara (Verizon) and Charles O'Donnell (Liebert AC Power)
Ken Rowen's keynote about what PAETEC Energy is doing in this market
Sandra Manning, City of Tallahassee - very engaging, and great to have some local presence for the Florida market
Dr. Mo Shakouri (Alvarion) on the Rural Smart Grid Opportunity panel
SAP's Henry Bailey on the Electric Vehicle session - yes, they are very busy in this space!
Olivier Pauzet (Sierra Wireless) on the Public vs. Private Networks session, along moderator Larry Karisny, Andy Balaschak (Tropos) and Jeff Dygert (AT&T)
Next Stop - Miami and the Smart Grid Summit
/I've done enough talking about it on the Smart Grid Portal, so that's where you need to go to get the latest on the summit, which runs this Wednesday and Thursday.
The summit will keep me pretty busy, and aside from stealing some time to walk through the ITExpo show floor, you won't likely see me around that show, or any other of the sub-events running under TMC's big tent.
For now, there's just one exception I can tell you about, and that's on Tuesday night. Interactive Intelligence is hosting a special ITExpo event on cloud communications, and I'm one of the panelists. Should be fun, and I'm looking forward to wearing my telecom hat for a topic I really enjoy following.
Smart Grid Summit Updates - Taking My Talents to South Beach
/Smart Grid Product of the Year Awards
/Next Stop - GridWeek, Washington, D.C.
/I'll be there through Wednesday morning, and will post my thoughts as time allows on Twitter, as well as our Smart Grid Portal. I don't travel this often, and next week will be my third straight week for U.S. events, and fourth in five weeks. That's plenty for me, and I'm looking forward to staying put for a bit once I'm back.
Smart Grid Summit - Video Clips
/First off, I did some video interviews at TMC's booth during the summit - those are running now - with Aviat Networks, Celergy Networks and Carl Ford.
Next - in addition to my photos I've been posting, TMC's photos are now posted, and you can find are some shots there of the summit.
Finally, I've managed to get my video clips uploaded and am ready to share them here. They'll be posted to our portal shortly as well, but since you're here now, enjoy! These clips are nice and short - about 2 minutes each - just enough to give you a taste of what you missed, and hopefully get you thinking about coming to our next summit in Miami. :-)
Smart Grid Summit - More Photos
/Sven Thesen, Better Place
Christoph Inauen, NSN
Lee Krevat, San Diego Gas & Electric
Steve Oldham, USTelecom
Dr. Mo Shakouri, Alvarion
Wireless broadband in the home panel - Jim Hunter - 4Home, Lew Brown - Z-Wave, Gabe Nave - SprintNextel
VC/startup panel - Chris King - eMeter, Gene Wang - People Power, Dylan Steeg - Intel Capital, Curtis Mo - DLA Piper, Dr. Pedram Mokrian - Mayfield Fund, Sam Smith - EV World (speaking about a hydro kinetic power startup)
Jerry Melcher, EnerNex and Tim Boucher, Southern California Edison
Dr. Emir Macari, Cal State University
Jason Rodriguez, Zpryme research - presenting with me on our renewable energy market study findings
Prof. Raj Gadh, UCLA WINMEC
Crystal Ball session - Jay Cappy - Verizon Business, Jamie Clark - OASIS, Raj Gadh - UCLA WINMEC, Eric Murray - Tantalus, Katherine Hamilton - GridWise Alliance
And now...for something completely different.
Why on earth is there a photo of a Philly cream cheese container here?
Well, look closely - on the left - the green leaf - it says "made with Renewable Energy". Really! I sure did a double take when I was prepping my bagel just before we started Day 3. I thought that would be a perfect prop to kick off our Crystal Ball panel. When you start seeing messaging like this on mainstream products, you KNOW there's perceived value to this concept. I think I'm going to call Kraft and see if they'd like to sponsor our next summit! :-)
Smart Grid Summit - Photos
/Ernie Lewis, Verizon Business
USTelecom policy panel - Michael Oldak, UTC and Eric Batongbacal AT&T Services
Data privacy panel - Lee Tien, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Ward Pyles, Southern Company
John Yu, LA Department of Water and Power
Ishak Kang, Dot UI
Gary Sorkin, USNAP Alliance
Team Alvarion, including Dr. Mo Shakouri and Eedo Lifshitz
Larry Lisser's hugely popular (and darkly lit!) Startup Bootcamp
Next Stop - LA - Smart Grid Time
/If you follow my blog or my tweets, you'll know what's happening around this, and if not, it's not too late to get up to speed. Anyhow, if smart grid is on your radar, you won't be disappointed if you can join us next week at the summit. All the details are on the website, and if you can't make it, follow the tweets and check in with us on the Smart Grid portal.
Just to be sure, I'll reiterate that our summit is co-located with TMC's flagship event, the IT Expo. Now in its 11th year, I don't think you'll find a bigger or better conference anywhere in the communications space. Smart grid is very much about communications, and that's why we're there. Hope you'll be there too!
Hold On - My Fridge is Calling!
/When you think about how many people work from home, and how intertwined our work and personal communications have become, the title of this post will start to make more sense. See for yourself by reading the brief, and by all means, add your thoughts and keep the dialog going.
Launch News Item #1 - Smart Grid Summit
/Smart Grid Summit - Call for Papers
/In case this is news or you're interested in speaking at our next Smart Grid Summit, you can review the notice here.
Smart Grid Summit - photo highlights
/Too much time has passed for a thoughtful review of the summit, but we did have a fair bit of media attention, and I'll be posting a roundup article citing all of this for our Smart Grid portal later today. If that doesn't do the job, then drop me a line and I'll be happy to tell you more.
We had four keynotes during the Summit. First up, Dr. Ron Sega, Colorado State University
Kevin Suitor, Redline Communications
John Bryan, Secure Smart Grid Association
Ryusuke Masuoka, Fujitsu Labs of America
Here are a few shots from the panels. Fist, Christine Hertzog moderating the Game Changing Apps session.
Shidan Gouran and the Standards/Interoperability panel
One of my sessions - What Utilities can learn from Telcos
Rose Gabriele moderating the Modern Network Solutions session
smart grid summit - day 1
/Will have more to report tomorrow - so please bear with me and keep visiting the Expo website.
Smart Grid Summit - Lots of Reasons to Come
/Today, I posted Part 3 of my Smart Grid Summit preview series articles. You can read it here, and to get the full story, you can read Part 2 here, and Part 1 here.
That pretty much tells the story, and I hope to see you in Miami. If not, please check in regularly to the portal, where I'll be posting daily recaps. Also, one of our media partners - Livecage - will be doing live video streaming, and once it's running, I'll let you know where/how to find it. In fact, if you go to their website now, you'll see a couple of placeholder welcome video messages for our event. Trust me, it will look a lot better once we have our speakers up there!
smart grid summit - product of the year awards deadline fast approaching
/In that regard, I have a bit of news. The final deadline for submitting applications is Monday - January 18. The Early Bird deadline has passed, so you have to pay the full fare, but if you win, I'm sure you won't think twice about that.
The winners will be announced in March, and TMC will publish this on the Smart Grid portal. Recognition like this is especially important in a newly developing market, and needless to say, TMC has a multitude of ways to help the winners maximize their 15 minutes of fame, which hopefully will soon become fortune. Isn't that how life works?
Wryness aside, it's a great program, and I want to be sure you know about it. You can read more about the details and registration process here, and I'll certainly be doing my bit blog-wise when the winners are announced.
Smart Grid Summit - Fly to Miami, Drive Home in a Honda Element
/The other day, I posted about 5 reasons to be at the ITExpo next week. Nothing has changed there, so I won't say anything more. Well, the Honda giveaway is a great reason #6, and if you want a 6B, they're also giving away a Honda motorcycle on Thursday. Maybe that's reason enough for you to go - if you're not sure, check it out for yourself here.
Our Smart Grid Summit is much smaller than the ITExpo, and we can't compete with that. I could offer something like one pick from my vinyl record collection, or an online guitar lesson by my shredder wiz son, Dean. He's only 13, but I've been taking him out with me to play to play at a local blues jam, and he's got the goods. I've been playing for decades, but he passed me by a long time ago. Remember his name - someday he'll do something cool....
Back to Smart Grid. With just a few days to go, we're tapping all channels to get the word out and hope you can join us in Miami. I just started writing a series of preview articles about the program, and you'll see those starting today on our portal. I've also been busy with shout-outs on my Linked In and Facebook pages and groups, and gained some good exposure on CircleID with my recent article about Google Energy.
By the way, if you haven't subscribed to our eNewsletter, you should do that now.
Finally, you may already be receiving eblasts from TMC with the latest news about the summit. Here's the latest one, and I think this will give you even more reasons to come. If you'd like to receive these eblasts, let me know and I can get you added to their database.
Five Reasons to be in Miami for the ITExpo
/1. The ITExpo. Having cracked the 10 year barrier, TMC's flagship event has become a cornerstone of our market, especially for anyone focused on enterprise and SMB communications. Many shows have come and gone in this space, and ITExpo keeps getting bigger and better. There are lots reasons to be there, and you don't have to spend much time at the show's website to see why. Digium/Asterisk World is a reason all by itself, but there's much, much more to see and do. If you can only look at one quick link, try this one - it's a great summary from Rich Tehrani about who's coming and the sessions you can see there.
2. Smart Grid Summit. Self-promotion aside, this is our second summit with TMC, and it didn't take long to expand this into a three-day program. We know we're on to something good here, and I really believe this is one of the ways that the ITExpo experience is truly different from most any other communications conference. We have keynotes from Redline Communications, Fujitsu, the Secure Smart Grid Association, and Ron Sega, a former NASA astronaut. Our agenda and roster have pretty much filled out now, sponsorship and industry support has been strong, and we've added a BOF session with the SIP Forum to talk about their new Smart Grid working group.
3. 4GWE. We have followed in the footsteps of Carl Ford and Scott Kargman to partner with TMC for a vertical event. Their wireless event has been a success from the start, and provides a lot of depth into all things LTE and 4G. Whatever stolen moments I can take from my Smart Grid duties, I'll be checking out their sessions. A sidebar to this is the M2M event, which they also put together, and is another important vertical for emerging communications technologies.
4. Cloud Communications Summit. Just as we've followed 4GWE, our good buddy Thomas Howe has followed us. He's teamed up with TMC to put this one day event together during the Expo. Tom will always be Mr. Mashup to me, but this venture will be a great showcase for something much bigger. It's one of the big trends I'm following this year, and am hoping to contribute some content that will be included with material Tom is preparing for the attendees.
5. Telephony Startup Camp. I feel like I'm building a pyramid here. One step behind Tom is Larry Lisser - another colleague I've worked with on several occasions. Larry is one of the best guys out there for working with startups and getting them to market. He also had brought a new concept to TMC, and hats off to them for running with this is as well. The economy can't suck forever, and in time, startups will get their mojo back. There are lots of reasons to believe that we'll see momentum build in 2010, and Larry has put together a mini-event to showcase a series of startups. The lineup hasn't been announced yet, but it will be series of 15 minute pitches. I don't think ITExpo has done this before, and I think it's a great way to expand their reach and give startups a new platform to show their stuff. Larry's event runs Thursday evening, and I hope to catch it after we finish up our Smart Grid sessions.
smart grid summit - product of the year awards launched
/I should also add that people have started registering for the summit, and the e-blasts are going out now on a regular basis. Over on the Smart Grid portal, the content continues to flow from many sources, including a guest article today from Brendan Herron of the Current Group, with his take on the Copenhagen Climate Conference. If you like his insights, then you'll definitely want to join us on the Smart Grid Initiatives panel, where he'll be speaking.
Before moving on, I have two more items about the portal of note. First, our traffic continues to be strong. Our November visits were up from October - not as dramatically as the previous months, but still going in the right direction. For anyone looking to get their message out to the Smart Grid space, this is the place to do it. Second, if you haven't subscribed to our Smart Grid eNewsletter, now is as good a time as any. It's free, and it just takes a minute - click here, and you're on your way.
This has become a long preamble, but I'm getting to the real news item. TMC knows how to run a conference, and they're starting to add the pieces that will make the Summit really distinct from other grid events. Today, we launched the Smart Grid Product of the Year Award, and it's open to anyone in this space - not just exhibitors. You can read all about it here, and for those of you who want to apply, here's the form.