Spring 2008 VON has come and gone, and it’s time to sit down in the lobby of the Fairmont in San Jose, get a glass of the house Chardonnay and wait for the JetBlue flight back home. On the one hand, many people were commenting how dead the show was, but my other hand can’t hold the amount of good leads I got from the show. As they say in Boston, all politics are local. So, here’s my experience, the good, the bad and the ugly:
The Good
- Not only were we honored with a VON Innovator’s Award, we were named an Editor’s Top Ten Pick. More than that, we were the only professional services companies named at any level. We thank the VON Editor’s for this honor; we won’t disappoint.
- To say that we are proud to be a Broadsoft Partner and featured in Broadsoft’s Marketplace doesn’t capture our feelings. I’ll have a separate announcement about this in a few days, but we truly believe that Broadsoft’s market leading platform will become the defacto standard for voice enabled offerings from the carriers. So, for all you Ruby fans out there, I wrote a ruby gem for Broadsoft that I’ll post to whoever wants it. Mike Lauricella, the marketing lead on the program, has done an excellent job putting this marketplace together, no doubt under the vision of uber-marketer Scott Wharton.
- The un-conference was three times larger than last show, and many people who attended reported to the Pulver staff that it was the best part of the show for them, including Chris Fine from Goldman Sachs and Brad Templeton of the Electronic Freedom Foundation.
- My sessions on Communications Enabled Business Process, Web 2.0 service creation, Social Networking and on Voice Mashup templates were well attended - thank you so much to everyone who showed up. For nearly all of these presentations, it was my first time giving them - your questions and attention will make them so much better next time.
- Oh my goodness, Andy Abramson’s Wine Dinners will go down in history as classic events.
- The Broadsoft booth was hopping. I mean hopping. Serious traffic in there. Thanks to the booth staff who supported me.
- Seeing (nearly) all my friends, but especially you phone geeks with a dozen phones in your pockets, with another in your left hand taking a Qik video, while drinking with your right. You know who you are… you resemble the remark.
- Being present at the un-conference when Ken Camp asked Sheryl Brueker to marry him. You never saw that at a conference, now, have you?
- As I said before, a two-inch thick stack of leads.
The Bad
- People commented on the VON show’s attendance, and it did seem like the numbers were down. My protestations about the stack of cards aside, I would have flown out here to meet one good guy. I met about two hundred more than that. The disturbing parts for me are two-fold : how people mistake quantity for quality, and how quick they are to predict a show’s slide. If you’ve been around a while, you know this show’s got more lives than a dozen cats. Count on it.
- Russell Shaw’s empty seat at the table.
- Service providers need direction and advice on how to compete and grow in this new market. If the VON show doesn’t give it, no one will. I’m going to tweak the leadership of the show to concentrate less on technology, and more on business strategy.
- Too many people who should know better say that our emerging market is mature. Come’on. Wake up. You’re annoying me.
- During one meeting, my eyes were opened to the fact that most of the people whom I think are doing the crazy good stuff (Troy Davis, David Troy, Jay Phillips, Mark Spencer) are much younger than those tasked with leading the conference. I think we better include before they exclude.
The Ugly
- Me after Andy’s wine dinner. There’s video, but I’m not going to help you find it.