March (Conference) Madness

As a recovering sports junkie and sports marketing executive in my former life, one of the most exciting months of the year was always March. Not only was it make or break time in the NHL and NBA, but for many a real cage fan, the NCAA March Madness college hoops tournaments were the thing to watch.

So looking at the month of March, if you're a conference junkie, or just have to be at them like I do for clients and personal interest, you can't but realize how mad it will be.

O'Reilly leads off the month with eTech in San Diego. Due to travel on the east coast and midwest I'll miss one of the more interesting 2.0 events of the year.

For VoIP, no conference this year may hold a candle to eComm which starts March 12 in Mountain View. Granted I'm helping out by donating PR services, and rounding up some sponsorship from friends, but the line up of speakers is unbeatable. Don't take my word for it alone, take it from Martin Geddes too who even puts on his own conference a month later as part of the Telco 2.0 Executive Brainstorm series over in London, which I'll be attending again and again starting on April 16th.

Martin opined:

The new schedule for eComm is up and is frankly bloody amazing. It’s an utter “who’s who” in the emerging personal communications space. You’d be nuts not to go. I’m stocking up on a year’s blog idea fodder…

Martin's point about eComm being followed by this year's Spring VON couldn't be more spot on. Starting the 17th of March, I look at this years VON as a transition event for the industry and for VON itself.

End of the month is what I think is the most important event for the IP conferencing industry. Web collaboration, video conferencing and voice conferencing are converging and changing the landscape of how we work as well as where we work. While a lot of attention is usually given to other events, the real MacDaddy for these is put on by Elliot Gold, a literal one man band who carries more respect in the space that anyone. If Jeff Pulver is to VoIP as the guiding light for what VoIP has become, Gold is his equal for conferencing. His weekly PDF newsletter is a must read by anyone in the collaboration and conferencing industry. That's why another cant' miss event is Telepspan Workshop end of March.

These events are far more than navel gazing experiences. In a nutshell these five events all represent the future of telecom, and far outstrip anything else that may be going on. While no one can expect to be at every event, for the most part, if you're looking to know what's happening and will be happening, these are the near term best bets. Hope to see you there.