I had lunch with friends in Jersey who told me it was time to move on. At that time we did not realize I would have no choice. The bottom line is this is a one year review of the activities since then.
1) Scott Kargman and I have formed an LLC with Crossfire Consulting called Crossfire Media
2) Crossfire Media has a joint venture with TMC on the 4G Wireless Evolution website and event and is posting biweekly newsletter
3) I write for Fierce Markets
4) We have two other events we are looking to launch.
5) I have been asked to contribute to the GSMA community site
6) We are in the process of supporting an association.
I also want to note that Incharge Systems, which is a company I consult is making good progress.
Tag Archives: 4GWE
Up, Up and Away to 4GWE
I am packed and leaving for the 4GWE conference connected to the ITEXPO show and Digium Asterisk World. While I am comfortable at all these events, the coherent theme of these shows is not IP its practical investing.
Where does it make sense to deploy and be guaranteed your return on investment these days?
For VARs, Carriers, and Businesses and the rest of the community answers will be found here.
I am looking forward particularly to the Microsoft Response Point update.
Should be interesting
One Week to Go
No Its not the superbowl. I expect the Steelers to win, but will root for the Cardinals! Its 4G Wireless Evolution I am talking about. And as we get ready for the next generation of wireless that will be part of the Internet, I am seeing the need. My small circle of non telecom friends discussed their phone options and frustration. Some hate the iPhone as a phone. Others have a variety of devices from Verizon, but no one was in that state of rapture that you get from iPhone enthusiasts. Device wise, I don’t think we are 1.2 yet never mind 2.0.
My Gphone has the battery life of the first analogs, My replacement blackberry is like a friend you had a blow out with and now are back together. An uneasy truce to cover the breached trust.
But at this stage we are not at the 4G device. The base stations are in deployment and the chips are being produced. We have a future to look forward to that may make old brands irrelevant and new brands our future. I am coming to Miami to be wooed with the hope of something better.
Change I can live with!
VON The Taffy Pull
A lot of friends have been sending me the Virgo Newsletter with the announcement of their running of VON. Congratulations to them. Virgo has a history of delivering their community and I am sure it will continue.
When VON first started, free voice was the really cool idea and VoIP looked like the perfect vehicle. VON was cool when Jeff Pulver started it and with Jeff’s background as a ham radio operator it enabled him to think about the patch between packet and circuit as a given. I came from the bell headed opposing side of the equation. “Look at what this data traffic does to my switches”, I said when I was in the phone company and I was interested in putting the traffic on something that moved the traffic differently. Together we were a blend of Internet and Bell thinking that was very good and I give Jeff a lot of credit for his creativity.
Jeff was on the cool apps side, while I brought in the people who wanted to make efficient networks to support them. That to me was VON, but to our audience VON was a lot of things. It was Cool Apps, New Opps, brillant minds and the switch to cheap voice, etc.
It maybe the community embraces Virgo’s VON as the place to meet. However, VON’s audience was fragmented and its important to note that it will probably stay that way at least for a while. Comptel, GTM, IT Expo, SIP World, VoiceCon and VON will have community participation with people looking to save money. Ecomm, Open Mobile, and SoComm and everything GigaOm’s shop does will have the cool apps and the social crowd.
I think VON was a phenomenon because it was at the center of the migration from circuit to packet and the embracing of the Internet for the Landline side. I am now focused on a similar migration to wireless I call the 4G Wireless Evolution .
My carrier friends still deploy VoIP, but the end user does not benefit. We lost the innovation of presence in delivering the voice when we connected to the PSTN. I know the same thing will not happen this time around, but I am not sure how it will manifest in our experience and hope its not just our phone number list having the green status dots now part of our mailbox?
The cool aspect is no longer cheap voice, its integrated voice. Integrated voice that is Web 2.0, context – aware, voice embedded applications on your TV, browser, game box and your phone. That thread will be in all of the events. I believe that voice will one day be a function and not a service, but for today the world is a blend of bundles; some in the old models, some in the new and some in unexpected ways.
In these times, I also believe all of our events will lose some old friends, find some new ones and be surprised by the unexpected.
Feedback: What a Pleasure!
Blogging is such a weird experience to me. I do not like it, and I am afraid it often shows. I write in three places and frankly don’t feel like I am doing it adequately for any of them. Also there is the problem of English. I am aware that my use of it makes my English teachers roll over in their graves.
But this week, I have heard back from people who enjoyed my writing and frankly I was shocked but delighted. Of course, it made me wonder if all my other writing is that wretched.
Or maybe I wrote from the heart this week? Not sure, but I am glad for the feedback.
The other night I had dinner with friends who were so politically repugnant to each other I doubt they would ever speak if it were not for the wives. We managed to have a lively debate and find common ground in a world that is constantly pushing to the either / or of a situation.
I believe in the ability of people to find the common ground.
So even if I say something that is off track, myopic or egocentric. Even if I digress (again and again and again), I like the feedback.
4G Wireless Evolution.
Moderating conferences for the last decade has been a wonderful experience and I have grown in the process.
Last night we announced a 4G event that is being organized with TMC. The team at TMC has been wonderful and I am looking forward to working with them.
Looking at the infrastructure they have put in as an organization they have a great many abilities that were left undone in my previous experience.
The most fascinating thing to me is there ability to embrace the industry and help deliver the message. The editorial staff is dedicated and they are very good at gathering all the data.
So where do we fit in? Crossfire Consulting is a trusted name in the IT industry that often develops and delivers projects that are either critical to our customers or are adopting new concepts that need to be proven. We worked with telcos on their Internet strategies and did technical due diligence on many acquistions. Crossfire Consulting success has helped in other industries as well.
So we are in a position with TMC to not only deliver the news, but put together the appropriate people in the industry.
In my favorite book, “Fifth Business” the character in opera is explained as neither protagonist nor antagonist, but the keeper of the secrets. While publicly moderating I have been very good, (though it would be hard for you to know) in keeping company council and progressing the story.
Crossfire Media is dedicated to progressing the story of what happens next for telcos and the wireless Internet. That is the story behind the 4GWE conference and it’s the story we will follow on the portal.
As 3GPP progresses there are several issues that make Long Term Evolution uncertain. Remember the Internet was built to overcome any one network’s weakness and we are seeing these same concerns expand the applications providers network. So high speed services are going to be a continuously evolving mixture of applications being implemented in new ways, consumers adopting them virally and access providers (telcos) trying to profitably connect them.