When we launched the Realtime VoIP Community in 2005, we had good reason to focus on VoIP and not get too broad in our ambitions. It was the first Realtime Community, and we were exploring not just the techonology, but the framework for the community environment itself. As such, we began with native blogging capability built in to the communicty software, then quickly determined it wouldn't meet our needs and shifted to this blog hosted on Typepad.

We'd planned podcasting as part of the community from the very beginning, but I really wan't to avoid the weekly podcast syndrome. As a result, we've gone from the news update podcasts I began with, to an ongoing series of interviews and other podcasts. The highlight of the podcasting so far has been the VoIP ThinkTank sessions. I'm joined periodically by colleagues Andy Abramson, Martin Geddes, Alec Saunders, Ted Wallingford and Dameon "Phoneboy" Welch-Abernathy to discussed a variety of hot topics of the day.

We added the AskKen forum to the community and set up email and voice mail capacility for readers to ask questions. And boy have we had some great questions. They've been answered by me, and gotten really great input from other readers and community members too.

Several months have past since we began all this and there are som changes coming ahead. We'll introduce a new colored theme, but the content will only get better. Our goal...my goal here, is to make the content both broader and deeper.

We're beginning the shift beyond VoIP. Just as VoIP is an evolutionary step in the path to complete network convergence, it's a step in our evolution to a more comprehensive community embracing unified communications as a broader topic. Will we cover everything? Absolutely not. But as we broadedn beyond pure technology to embrace more of the business side of the issues too, here are some areas that we'll cover to give you a sense of the breadth:

• VoIP. We'll always cover VoIP technologies
• Video. Video collaboration technologies. VVoIP technologies. We'll probablt talk about IPTV to some extent.
• Fix Mobile Convergence (FMC) and wireless. We won't focus on wireless technologies in great depth, but we'll hone in on the convergence areas between wired and wireless networks and mobile communications.
• IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS) and the other carrier and network operator strategies for providing unified communications services.

 There are some things you'll see more of as we make the shift to a new community platform and new blog face in the near future:

More podcasts. Podcasts by me. More from the VoIP ThinkTank. More interview podcasts

More interviews. More pictures. More video. We'll be doing more collaboration including video inteviews, and video broadcast messages. VVoIP technology is becoming hotter every day. We'll be testing and commenting on the technology and the players in the sector as we evaluate products and try them all out. 

More conferences, trade shows and seminars. That means more live-blogging from sessions on the road. It also means podcasts and vidcasts via remote for locations I'm able to get to. My plan at the moment is to kick that off with some surprises from the Internet Telephony VoIP 2.0 Conference at the San Diego Convention Center from October 10th - 13th.

I'm still working toward solid product reviews here, but that's going to take a bit longer. We'll be glad to review any products or services providers and vendors in the segment offer up.

I'm even trying out the new beta Microsoft Windows Live Writer blogging tool to post this. And sadly, since it makes Technorati tagging a fully manual process at the HTML level, it's a tool that probably won't survive the night. But we'll keep checking all the latest tools.

So there you have it. Some news about changes on the horizon. Keep your eyes peeled for some good new things ahead. I hope to see you around here on a regular basis.