Alec Saunders SquawkBox

eComm is the espresso of the conference world.  Concentrated, condensed strong stuff.  My trip to eComm was short but jam packed.  A delayed arrival, due to mechanical problems in Ottawa, meant that I had just 36 hours in San Francisco.  In Tuesday at noon, out Wednesday at midnight.  Phew!  Concentrated, condensed, and very productive hours, however. 

Congratulations go out to Lee Dryburgh and his advisors.  eComm, as many have said, is unique in the communications industry.  It’s the place where people who are designing, creating and building the future of the industry gather.

It’s also a fabulous place to meet old friends, network, and conduct business.  Expect announcements in the future from relationships germinated at this one-of-a-kind event.  Everyone was there.

Here’s a sample of what others thought: Jim Courtney: eComm 2009: An Outstanding Primer in Emerging Communications,   Martin Geddes Virtual Presentation,Richard Sprague WebLog : eComm 09 virtually,VoIP Watch: eComm Was A Hit, Dean Bubley’s Disruptive Wireless: Thoughts from eComm 

We hosted Lee Dryburgh, the organizer of eComm, on the January 26th SquawkBox conference call.  A wide ranging and well attended conference call, we discussed the origins of the eComm Conference, what to expect from this year’s conference, and highlights of previous years.

Along the way, we also managed to talk about Open networks, telecom and Skype, whether interoperability really matters at all, and the communications continuum idea that folks like Jeff Pulver have been actively promoting. And we managed to convince lee to dust off his crystal ball, and prognosticate on the future of telecommunications. 

eComm will be March 3-5 in San Francisco.  Early bird registrations are open for just two more days – until January 30th.  If you’re in the communications industry, you owe it to yourself to attend this event.

On the Calliflower Conference Call: Jonathan Jensen, Dan York, Jim Courtney, Lee dryburgh, Martyn Davies, Mark Hewitt, Mike Pruyn, Brad Jones, James Body, Ken Camp, Sheryl Breuker, Warren Bent, Todd Spraggins, Jeanette Fisher, TJ Snell, Sergio Meinardi, and Tim Panton.

 

 Squawk Box January 26, Guest Lee Dryburgh [57:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I’ve got a couple of exciting SquawkBox calls to tell you all about.

First, this Friday January 16th, seven days after the release of the Windows 7 beta, I’ll be hosting a roundtable discussion for people who’ve either tried the beta or are curious about it.  It should be an interesting and fun talk.  Join us on Calliflower for this conference call. 

Second, on Tuesday January 20th, one day before the end of the eComm early bird registration, I’ll be hosting eComm organizer and founder Lee Dryburgh.  We’re going to be talking a little about what to expect at the show and a little about the future of communications and telephony.  Join us on Calliflower for that conference call with Lee.

Yes, I’ve missed the microphone.

What do you do if you’re trying to:

1. Help homeless people.
2. Test the effectiveness of social media awareness campaigns.
3. Promote an upcoming conference.

Well, if you’re Lee Dryburgh, you craft an experiment.  Lee’s trying to construct an opt-in mailing list for the eComm 2009 conference.  He’s calculated the cost of buying and filtering an opt-in email list, and will donate that cost to the Shelter Network instead, using social media techniques instead to achieve his goal.  

He’s asked a group of social media gurus (see the list below) to help, and he’s asked the rest of us to “blog this, Twitter this, email this to friends, IM it, Facebook share it, Digg it, Reddit – anything and everything across the social media space that you think could be effective.”

Adam Broitman, Ayelet Noff, Ben Grossman, Brian Reich, Brian Solis, Carlos Hernandez, Chris Brogan, Chris Heuer,David Berkowitz, Eric Weaver, Gradon Tripp, Greg Verdino, Howard Greenstein,Laura Fitton, Jeff Pulver, Jeffrey Sass, Jeremiah Owyang, Jeremy Vaught, Jim Benson, Justin Levy, Rebecca Bollwitt, Robert Scoble, Robin Good, Steve Rubel,Susan Etlinger and Tim O’Reilly.

So far eight of these folks have responded!  Good on you Lee.

So how about it folks?  Let’s blog it, twitter it, email it, IM it, share it, Digg it, Reddit….

In today's Squawk Box, Alec Saunders was travelling but Dan York stepped in to host a session with special guests Lee Dryburgh, conference chair for the upcoming eComm 2008 conference and Thomas Howe, one of the speakers at eComm. eComm, subtitled "The Trillion Dollar Industry Rethink", is a brand new conference that emerged after O'Reilly shelved this year's ETel show that will be bringing together the leading innovators and thinkers about communication in one place in Silicon Valley from March 12-14. The eComm schedule is full of people truly on the bleeding edge of the ongoing communication revolution.

In the call we talked about the reasons for launching eComm and such questions as: With all the talk of openness, what will Skype be highlighting in their keynote? Who are the people attending and speaking? What will Google be announcing? Why is there an anthropologist on the agenda? Why is it called the "Trillion Dollar Rethink"?

It was a lively and interesting conversation that involved some great questions from the listeners. We would encourage you to listen to the show and consider attending eComm 2008.

Show notes and links can be found on the Live Wall on the Facebook page for this conference call, which was recorded using Iotum's FREE Conference Call application for Facebook. P.S. In full disclosure, while Dan York has been a regular participant in recent Squawk Box podcasts, it should be noted that his employer, Voxeo, is also one of the sponsors of eComm 2008.

 

 Squawk Box Ecomm2008 Preview [40:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download