Alec Saunders SquawkBox

I’ll be moderating the IM and Mobility panel at Pulver’s CES Consumer VoIP Summit on Wednesday.  We’ve got a great line-up, including representatives from AOL, Earthlink, MSN and Yahoo!.  The panel will be one hour and fifteen minutes long.  Format wise, each participant will be allowed a maximum of five minutes to tell us a little about their company’s offerings, and then we will turn to a Q&A format roundtable discussion.

As the moderator, it will be difficult for me to blog the panel, but I will try to get as much of it up here as I can from hand written notes.  If you have questions you’d like to ask the panel, please let me know.  I’ll include as many of them in the Q&A as possible.

Cellphone etiquette continues to be in the news.  This morning, Marylee Shrider, writing in the Bakersfield Californian, rails at people who take calls in restaurants, theaters, and other public spaces.  This, after going to a movie and being disturbed by callers.

Cell phone etiquette, like cell phone technology is still evolving, but “no matter where you make or take a call, virtually all situations call for you to avoid being intrusive,” writes Peggy Post, great-granddaughter-in-law of etiquette doyen Emily Post and author of “Emily Post’s Etiquette, 17th Edition.”

Maybe the solution is to do as the french have done, and permit the use of jammers in theaters and concert halls. 

David Cowan of Bessemer has written a post titled Control Roulette.  Among the gems in it:

Crafting the right board of directors has nothing to do with legal structure, and everything to do with getting the right people in the room.

And,

the ideal board of directors has 5 members–a nice, small odd number that allows for multiple skill sets without losing anyone’s attention or complicating communications.

The key to succesful board composition is skill set mix, a strong chair, and accountability.  Boards that meet informally, without minutes (which provide a common reference point for future dialog), are a disaster waiting to happen, whether your point of view is that of the entrepreneur or the investor.