Emerging Communications Conference, March 3-5, 2009 San Francisco
There’s a very interesting conference taking place from March 3-5, 2009, Ecomm 2009, which will be held at the San Francisco Airport Marriott. Among the trends that Ecomm’s speakers will address are:
- Telecom is becoming software
- The cash cows of telephony and SMS will dry up long term
- “Phones” are turning into general purpose computers
- A march is underway to change how spectrum is allocated and utilized
- Applications innovation is being democratized
- The media industry is converging with personal communications
- Search engines and computer manufactures are encroaching into the space
- The telecom kingdom is fragmenting daily.
I looked through the Ecomm agenda and these are the presentations I would attend:
(1) Reframing the Net: Moving Past the Language and Concepts of Telecom
Doc Searls, Editor/Fellow/Writer/Author/Consultant, Harvard University/UC Santa Barbara
Date: Tuesday, March 3, 9:15 – 9:30 AM
How can we unleash the power of the Internet while we talk about it as the third act in a “triple play?” How can we talk about “open” and ”emerging” communications when we still think and talk in terms of ancient businesses, economic models and regulatory frameworks? How can we can we walk a new walk on a path paved with old talk?
The short answer is: We Can’t. Concepts like “backhaul,” “loop,” “play” — and even “broadband” – are all bricks in the walls of the conceptual box we need to blow up before we can exploit the boundless opportunities opened by the Net. In this session we’ll talk about conceptual frames that open up this new world, rather than keeping us trapped in the old one, even as we talk about “change.”
(2) No Numbers and My CallerID: The Receivers in charge!
Stuart Henshall, CEO, Phweet
Date: Tuesday, March 3, 11:00 – 11:10 AM
The solution for the future of telephony is not in the number, or in a single or unified directory service. The solution is in a simple URL where each URL represents the potential for an “exchange”, where there is no cost to raise the exchange and independent parties decide the interconnect arrangements. Introducing Phweet where CallerID’s are controlled by the users and may draw from one or more social networks. Where every call is preceded by the “context” for the call and the records for the call may be live, shared and acted on while it is in progress. The users benefit from choice, privacy and control. In fact the “signaling” for the call may take place outside the telecom structure all together.
(3) Digital Democracy or Plutocracy: Open Technology and the Future of Wireless Communications
Sascha Meinrath, Research Director, Wireless Future Program, New America Foundation
Date: Wednesday, March 4, 8:45 – 9:15 AM
The fight for open spectrum will significantly determine the future of communications. What if anyone could access spectrum anywhere at anytime; a world with no spectrum scarcity? It’s often claimed that established interests are fighting to prevent widespread access to the public airwaves. We’ll explore the regulatory issues, technologies, and key players involved in this critical inside-the-beltway battle.
(4) Mobile Phones Reveal the Behavior of Places and People
Tony Jebara, Chief Scientist, Columbia University & Sense Networks
Date: Wednesday, March 4, 12:15 – 12:35 PM
As more of us generate GPS data with our mobile phones, how can this aggregated information give us an unprecedented new understanding of the people, places, and rhythms that make up our cities? How can we index the real world using location data? Location data combined with learning algorithms lets us cluster different places and people into social categories and tribes. By harnessing this rich, natural and anonymized data, unprecedented possibilities emerge for user modeling, marketing, advertising, recommendation, search and collaborative filtering. Using machine learning algorithms, we can infer the context of a place and the tribe of a user from just their location data. It turns out that the flow and movement of people through the city (who is where and at what time) defines places and their character. Similarly, a person’s movement trail through the city reveals their personality and tribe. With location data, we build a network of places (how similar is place A to place B) and a network of people (how similar is person X to person Y). These networks let us cluster places and people as well as compute next-generation demographics and analytics. As your cell phone learns about you, it helps you find people, places and things you are interested in and your phone’s mapping software becomes your personal social navigator.
(5) iPhone Cloud Telephony Mashups: How to Build a Sophisticated iPhone Telephony Application in Less Than One Day
Irv Shapiro, CEO, IfByPhone
Date: Wednesday, March 4, 7:30 – 8:30 PM
This tutorial will cover everything you need to know to build an iPhone application that integrates with a cloud telephony service to deliver cutting edge telephone applications. By carefully building a native application view, residing on the iPhone, and integrating it with a cloud resident model and controller, attendees will learn how to deliver telephony applications unavailable natively on the iPhone. Sample applications such as voice broadcast, conference calling and calling trees will all be discussed. Ifbyphone CEO Irv Shapiro will walk through code from both the iPhone and the cloud components and provide online access to examples and free Ifbyphone accounts as an example of what developers can do to build their own applications quickly and affordable. (In fact Ifbyphone built their iPhone apps for less than $5K!).
(6) Suing AT&T for a Trillion Dollars While the President Tries to Stop You
Brad Templeton, Chairman, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF has filed a lawsuit against AT&T)
Date: Thursday, March 5, 11:55 – 12:15 PM
The story of the EFF’s lawsuit against AT&T for performing wiretaps on their main data fibers without warrants when asked by the NSA, and the subsequent lawsuit against White House officials when they managed to get congress to pass a law granting retroactive immunity to the phone companies.
Including:
* What we know went on inside AT&T
* What we suspect went on inside AT&T and other companies
* How the law was structured to prevent it
* How it failed
* How they tried to stop us with an act of congress
* How we hope to prevail anyway
* Ramifications for telecom policy, encryption and more
(7) Where’s the money in Voice 2.0?
Martin Geddes, Head of Strategy, BT
Date: Thursday, March 5, 4:00 – 4:15 PM
In the Voice 1.0 world — a trillion dollar business — the revenues came from selling minutes and calling features. In future, a very different business model will drive growth. Value increasingly comes from managing interactions between businesses and consumers — getting the right people together on the right medium at the right time; and from transactions during those interactions. Martin shares some of the latest research and ideas on how this will happen.
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[...] Like Esme, I think next week’s eComm show in Burlingame will be one of the more interesting communications-related events of the year. Unlike the so-called “big vendor” shows eComm to me means an intelligent discussion and review of all aspects of communications, from people who aren’t uncomfortable shedding labels and “old ways” of doing things. [...]