My partner Sheryl and I really planned to be part of eComm this March. We were planning on attending and slated to speak. Unfortunately some scheduling logistics prevent us from being there. But we're still tied to the event and invested in its success. This morning we sat in on the daily Squawkbox Call started by Alex Saunders at iotum. Squawkbox uses iotum' FREE Conference Call app on Facebook.

There's a pretty regular cast of attendees, and the calls are always interesting. This morning we got to chat with Lee Dryburgh who's jumped into the void and taken on coordination of eComm. There's a huge wave of change underway ni communications. Lee calls it the "trillion dollar industry rethink."

For people who are really watching the trends in communications technologies innovation, eComm looks to be the rising wave of focus on just that. One area Lee's really promoting the idea of socially opportunistic devices. These devices work to help us. Imagine attending a conference and having your cell phone probe your social media networks to alert you that three people seated around you were also at the last four conferences you attended. Devices that share not just presence and availability, but proximity and social history open doors to new potential we've only begun to explore.

Lee and I briefly chatted about the complex issue of data portability and how it plays in this revolution on the call, but this is a huge problem that we're really only beginning to understand. The telecom industry doesn't understand it all, but the innovators are really beginning to grasp it's full import. Data, our personal data, is a resource. In the world of social media, it may be our most important personal resource. As we learn how to share it effectively with our devices, and with our family, friends and colleagues, the ability to store all this information under our own control somewhere in the "cloud" so it can be accessed any time, anywhere from any device.

Just yesterday I swapped notes with Lee sharing my disappointment at not being able to attend. Today's call was like rubbing salt in my own wound because every time we talk about this conference I hear more reasons to attend and be there. I'm already planning ahead to make sure that Sheryl and I are involved in a big way next year.

And thanks to our good friend Dan York for filling in and hosting today's call while Alec is traveling back from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

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