Monday starts my week with a flurry of meetings and activity. On Tuesday I'm off to the Internet Telephony Expo in San Diego for the remainder of this week. While I'm there, I'll be posting to both the Realtime Unified Communications blog and my own Digital Common Sense blog as time permits, sending some pictures, and trying to podcast and send video from the show, the truth is that I'm going to be pretty busy. For folks who followed the blow-by-blow session blogging I did at the VoIP Developer's Conference in August, I will not be attempting that for this event. It was a ton of work and I got almost no feedback of any kind, so I'm thinking it wasn't terribly useful. This is a different event with a whole different audience and a much larger scale.

From a logistics point of view, photos and videos will most likely be shared using Flickr, Bubbleshare and blip.tv. They combine to provide a great mobile set of tools for sharing media files. If I actually get podcast files put together, I'll be editing them and manually doing those. That means posts, photos and videos could come any time, but podcasts are only likely late at night or early in the morning.

Here's where we'll be -- all 9,000 or so of us.

I've posted much of this before, so this is an update, but the last update (I promise). And it's mostly for those of you who may be there at the Expo and want to connect face-to-face.

At this point, I'm involved with four panel discussions at the Expo.

Wednesday 4:30 - 5:30
The Next Wave: The Future of IP Communications Technology

The mass migration to IP-based communications technology is only beginning to reveal its true potential. As applications emerge and networks converge, as standards evolve, and as service providers continue the shift to a pure, packet-based network infrastructure, the future for IP Communications technology is brighter than ever. This special panel session will explore what the future holds for the marketplace – from new enabling technology that will provide the essential building blocks for future hardware and software solutions, to tomorrow’s breakthrough applications that will redefine the ways we work, communicate and share vital information.

This session is part of the IP Communications Business Summit put together as a workshop educating the investment community.  I'll be joining Jon Arnold from J Arnold & Associates, and Ronald Gruia from Frost & Sullivan, with Marc Robins as our moderator as we talk with investors about the future of IP communications. This is sure to be a lively and interesting discussion of the future of the industry. I'm pretty confident that Jon, Ronald and I all see different things in the crystal ball. I'm really looking forward to seeing what roads this discussion points down for the future. I expect Jon and Ronald will bring up ideas I've never even dreamed of. One idea I hope to talk about is presence information as part of our digital identity. And if you agree that it is is just that, why would you let a carrier montize your personal information?

Thursday - 10/12/06, 3:00-4:45pm
After VoIP is Video

The IP based communications world is changing. No longer are we content with e-mail and Instant Messaging as the means to communicate, as voice and now video are rapidly emerging as the new ways people are using IP to stay in touch in real time and even in a store and forward messaging manner. Choosing the right platform and having the proper technology, capabilities and features to do the right things essential, and with Video and Voice now being available to almost everyone with a desktop, laptop, and even a mobile phone its only a matter of time before we start seeing video as the next major application in the world of communications and collaboration. This panel will discuss how IP-based video will enhance personal and business communications with a group of experts from leading messaging and video communications services companies.

I was invited to join this extended panel session to talk about the evolution that's underway as voice embraces video as another facet. For me, video falls into several categories. There's video collaboration, which I do with SightSpeed and Skype every day. There's IPTV, which to me is broadcast programming over the Internet. And there's TVoIP (TeeVoIP), which I see as YouTube, blip.tv, video blogging, video email and the like. Think of it as indie entertainment created by users. This will be a great session. Andy Abramson's moderating, and I've seen how Andy moderates a panel. It's a topic he knows well and is passionate about, so there'll be no slacking. I've learned that I'm joined Peter Csathy from SightSpeed and Jeff Bonforte from Yahoo on this panel. Those are a couple of the sharpest guys I've ever met. I wouldn't be surprised if Andy pulls another person or two into this conversation. This session could be a wild ride. Video is a huge piece of where unified communications is really heading. Those of us who use it every day grow increasingly frustrated with the tolls that can't support it.

Friday 8:45 - 9:30
Introduction to VoIP Security

While performance and availability of a VoIP system are of course extremely important, security oftentimes tops the list of concerns when deploying VoIP. In order to achieve the highest quality of service, focus must be placed on the underlying VoIP security framework. With most attacks occurring at the application level, it is imperative that companies understand the risks, and consequently design an effective security approach. By weaving security in from the onset, VoIP can be a powerful enterprise communications solution that significantly enhances worker productivity and enables cost savings. In this presentation, the speakers will address a number of security-related VoIP topics, including: • How VoIP can benefit enterprises; • Why security must be a critical focus of VoIP migrations from the onset; • Best practices in developing VoIP migration and adoption plans that maximize security; • The most dangerous VoIP vulnerabilities and the impact of network configurations on security.

I'll be moderating the panel discussion with Emmitt Wells from Getronics, Eric Rasmussen from Juniper Networks, Surya Kumar IVG from HCL Technologies, and Tom Gilheany from Nortel. We'll be exploring some of the basic VoIP security concerns from eavesdropping to SPIT.

Friday 12:15 - 1:00
VoIP Security Best Practices

Behind our daily barrage of hacker attacks, announcements of new viruses and worms, and frequent risk of downtime is an opportunity. This session is an opportunity to step away from the noise and learn how to build a proactive VoIP security model. It will explain the root cause of downtime and non compliance and how to preemptively, proactively protect VoIP networks against hackers, viruses, worms, spyware and malicous insiders. Attendees will learn how IP communications applications demand a security solution that not only “borrows” from the best security functionality of the data world but adds specific VoIP protection techniques that take into account the real-time, peer-to-peer, and feature-rich nature of these session-based protocols.
I'll be moderating this panel discussion with Jonathon Weiss from Lucent Technologies, Shahadat Khan from Eyeball Networks, Dan York from Mitel (and Bluebox Podcast), Tom Gilheany from Nortel, and Micaela Guihat from Sipera Systems. In this session we'll really dig into some of the best practices and the reasons behind them. being proactive it what security is all about,

I'll also be meeting with a lot of people there. I'll get to meet some fellow VoIP bloggers I've only known online like Bruce Stewart, Jon Arnold (who I'll be on a panel with), Phil Wolff and Russ Shaw. I'm also looking forward to meeting David Beckemeyer, aka Mr Blog, from TelEvolution. Lots of others, but those three have been on my "must meet" list for a long time. And I'm looking forward to finally meeting Peter Csathy from SightSpeed in person finally. Peter and I have exchanged far too many virtual handshakes without meeting in person.

I'll be joining my friend Andy Abramson for dinner two nights, with different groups of people. While I know what dinner is like with Andy at an event like this, joining the people coming at McDonalds for a Big Mac would in itself be a story worth telling my grandson. Andy's dinners bring together not just excellent food and fantastic wines. They bring stellar minds. Consider the parlor game "what ten people would you invite to dinner?"  I can tell you that Andy invites them and I'm deeply honored to be included when the stars align.It's an opportunity to listen to, and witness conversations shared among some of the most brilliant industry bloggers, analysts and thought leaders who define the next generation of unified communications technologies. These folks are the people who are writing us in to existence in the future of communications technologies.

Obviously there are exhibits and chances to talk to a lot of hot companies. It's a chance to discover the next hot thing. There will be innovators who've yet to reach the public eye. And there will be products and companies on the way to fizzle there too.

I'm thankful that Rich Tehrani and the fabulous team at TMCnet graciously provide press credentials to bloggers and industry analysts like me. That helps facilitate access to some of the real movers and shakers in the industry.

And for those folks who dropped me a note along the way, here are the companies I have scheduled meetings with. These are scheduled, but the reality of an even like this is that more meetings happen - in hallways, at the coffeepot, and in the lobby. This is to give you a sense of some of the folks you'll hear about on the Realtime Unified Communications blog in the next few weeks :

• 911Enable
• ActionTec
• AudioCodes
• FONAV
• NextAlarm
• Pandora Networks
• Paragon Wireless
• Sangoma
• SightSpeed
• snom Technology
• Solegy
• Spanlink
• Sphere Communications
• TalkPlus
• Unyte
  

I don't plan on posting any more updates on plans before leaving. This is enough of a plan to keep me busy, and sure, things will change on the fly. They always do at an event like this. I'm reachable while at the Expo, and all my contact info is easily found. If you're there, please look me up.


Technorati Tags: Internet Telephony Expo, ITExpo, Jon Arnlod, Ronald, Gruia, Marc Robins, Anndy Abramson, Peter Csathy, Jeff Bonforte, Emmitt Wells, Eric Rasmussen, Surya Kumar, Tom Gilheany, Jonathon Weiss, Shahadat Khan, Dan York, Micaela Guihat, Bruce Stewart, Phil Wolff, Russ Shaw, David Beckmeyer, Rich Tehrani, 911Enable, ActionTec, AudioCodes, FONAV, NextAlarm, Pandora Networks, Paragon Wireless, Sangoma, SightSpeed, snom Technology, Solegy, Spanlink. Sphere Communications, TalkPlus, Unyte