Carl's Corner

So Long its been Good To Know You

You can find me over on carlford.net

While Waiting for my delayed plane

I am feeling akin to the power airline employee who is listening to the people who were stuck on the tarmack for an hour only to be returned to the terminal.

Other than his insignia on this shirt, he has little to do with their complaint.

I believe, I have parallels in my life.

If you use IM i am alwaysoncarl @ everyone include hotmail for MSN.

Defending My Honor

Wow, what incredible hostility, and blatant defamation of character.

It occurred to me as one of the few people who you could actually contact from Gigaoms site, that I should at least say I am here.

I am not at liberty to discuss anything, but for all who want to complain to me. I will listen.

Of course, if you consider me a jester, than the talk may be among two fools.

But if you want to contact me. I am here.

Kind Regards,
Carl

Responding to GigaOm

Okay, Lets try to turn to the positive here.

Lets talk about what happens. First of all, I agree VoiceCon had the audience this time. When VON first started VoiceCon (PBX2000) did not like VoIP. The innovation was with us. We built a great UC event that probably would have done well if I had not been running against VoiceCon. The sessions by in large were great.

For the innovators I was asked to provide an open staging area in VONCamp and I did that. But marketing an undefined structure without the entire community committed to supporting it was hard. On the other hand, Several good topics came out of the discussion that I hope the community progresses.

I will remind people that I established a ning thing for people to continue the dialogue its called pulcom.ning.com. It is not a place for commercials its a place for discussion.

As for us missing the boat on Video, I am not sure thats accurate. imho, IPTV vs the Over the Top Video seems to being won by OTTV. Jeff had it right with his video on the net content.

I am not saying we are without error.
Halloween is a much bigger event these days then when I was a kid.
And Choosing to compete with Saint Patty, Maundy Thursday, and Spring Break was another error.

The truth is VoIP won. But like Bush on the Air Craft carrier the victory is not concluded.

I intend to stay in the community to support its continued evolution.

Fave 5, 10, 20 how about 150?

In the US the cellular carriers are trying to convert us all in groups. �My BFF Jill�, and Fave 5 call groups are being touted like we are all knowing insiders in social network newspeak. But are these network suggestions of friends list artificial? What is the right number to consider in developing a network of peers and friends.

Antropologically speaking it seems to be 150 other people.

Dwight Irving has been trying to get my attention to these issues of social networking. He has introduced me to a community of Robin IM Dunbar fans. In particular I have been reading an article that asks the premise why would your body give 20% of its energy to support 2% of its mass. Or stated my specifically, why do we have brains?

The interesting analysis �we have brains because of our need to be social�. Now I am not going to take you down into social networks. But I am going to take us into the discussion of call patterns.

In theory what this says is that people function best in groups of less than 150. So in theory we should see a pattern in the way we call that hits a limit at 150.

It strikes me that this should reveal itself in a number of ways.

1) Call centers. If anyone has call center experience with a group that is greater than 150, I would love to understand how its organized. And if you see problems that you would not expect to see if you were running a group below that number.

In theory call support should be harder to maintain.

2) Billing Records. Our overall bill patterns should show repetition in numbering that relates to professional and personal social networks.

My own take is that women�s phone records should show greater spans of reaching the 150 mark then men because they manage more social items such as children�s schedules etc.

3) Sales. If I am reading this right now matter how many cold calls a person does they should in theory top out on quantitiy and start to exhibit quality numbers somewhere below 150.
I am sure there are other ways to interpret this and my own take is that it says something about the way we work as well.

If you keep a journal of your work like most of us do, you rapidly see that your conversations probably keep an inner core. Regardless of weather the people are on the inside or the outside of the company.

So now that I wrote this, let me ask do you think you have a limit to your ability to function above that number or not?

]]> Background
http://www.commonsenseadvice.com/human_cortex_dunbar.html
http://www.liv.ac.uk/evolpsyc/Evol_Anthrop_6.pdf

The Hand That Fed You

Okay, lets cope with the rumors. For the time being pulvermedia is restructuring.

In theory no one should be noticing these changes, but people like to talk. Some just like to hear themselves.

Its unfortunate.

Look at the industry and show me a company that has not gone through a major transition at least once.

VON had a lot of redeeming qualities.

And their are lots of people who want to see VON fail.

Its probably never a good idea to let the outside world see the sausage being made.

If you are reading the negative about what is going on here are some rules.

1) Consider the source
2) Consider the sources source
3) Consider the fact that the blogosphere has lots of people who want to show they are in the know.

Many of which have proven they aren't.

The people in the discussion are above my pay grade.

They will duke it out for a while and then we will see what happens.

This you can believe.

The story has not concluded.

VON Presentations

The Quickest Way to find the presentations at Fall VON is just a social clique away.

VON attendees are going to find a webpage to navigate the slides updated on the "NING" thing every nite. We are going to have them available while the show is going on for the delegates and nightly on NING. If you are not a member, its good to join now. It's also a good way to connect up to the community of attendees more directly. If you need anymore specific help please send a note to carl.ford@pulvermedia.com

Visit PulvermediaCommunity

A billion there vs. a Billion here

Sometimes the conversations you have with people are prophetic in nature. Talking to a friend who is doing a consulting gig with a vendor, we talked about the need for new infrastructure. Particularly to match how people are going to expect to see the Wireless Internet.

IMHO, You can call it Unified Communication, FMC or anything else but fundamentally its an issue of delivering data to an any to any world. And I am not expecting that peer to peer is the right answer for things that are still head end oriented in nature.

With att�s announcement that they planned for a $1B dollar build out of the International structure, I was delighted to see that statement. The issues with supporting the network needs of the future are somewhat more confusing than they were just 15 years ago.

Its no longer a simple matter of pipes and valves (as a cable operator friend used to say). Now we have the issues of caching, streaming, smart edges, and dumber pipes.

Its still about the Internet but the hour glass figure that converges on IP sometimes looks like the stacks are trying to widen the waist. For example, does an application need to know the QoS it gets before the service is set up? Or can a best effort network be the answer. Its trickier than you expect because the people I respect are in disharmony about these issues. And even at the IETF we have efforts being made to get some presession QoS metrics in the network routing table. It should be interesting to watch.

If you have a stake in the race for new services, it may be worth your while to listen to att at Spring VON.

]]> Background:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120471665116813469.html?mod=index_to_businesses

Dear Bill, I now have a MAC

I am not someone who adopts technology for the cool. After all it took me half a decade to finally get a sidekick. And between IM on the sidekick and my blackberry I can replicate about 70% of my desktop experience while on the road. Often to my wife�s chagrin (since I may occasionally read a message while driving).

So why am I on a MacBook?

The strange but true answer is that the power supply pin on my last 2 machines broke. In coping with this I now have another place where the lack of Interoperability drives me nuts. But I digress.

So here I am with a Leopard, where I am changing my spots. I was told to load Vista on the machine. But I am in no hurry. My first goal is to get use to have a single mouse button.

It�s the little things that make the difference between kewl and cold.

I may sing the praises of the wow factor here, but for today. I am glad the machine is working.

Sprint Brand New Management

The Wall Street Journal today reports the guidance that Dan Hesse gave to Wall Street. The story was not pretty. But there were some interesting glimmers in the discussion. The first was the dose of reality. The troubles are real and there is no easy fix. Sprint is losing market share to Verizon and ATT. Next the opportunity, Intel may choose to invest $2B in the Sprint WiMax initiative. Other strategies discussed were the adoption of a RIM dual mode phone. Not mentioned in the article was the Femtocell trial in Colorado. The commitment to wireless broadband is in tact and that�s the best news.

Spring VON starts off with Intel�s Anand Chandrasekher followed by Sprint�s Ben Vos.

I am also hearing rumblings that some of our morning speakers may have some Interesting announcements.

Interoperability � May I have it wrong.

I am down here at VON Mexico today, but before I left for the airport the wife had the honey � do lists. On that list was the migration of a printer to the basement for later use for the college bound daughter.

So what does this have to do with interoperability?

Well the reason the daughter gets this new printer is because my wife still has cartridges for the old printer. In other words the lack of inter operable ink cartridges.

Now thanks to drivers almost all computers can talk to almost all printers. Shouldn�t that be enough?

This can be juxtaposed to the problems we have in SIP Standardization, where nearly everyone wants to make nearly everything standard that touches SIP.

So I ask the question�
Should a phone be like a printer�s ink cartridge? Or the printer?

I have been advocating for the use of DIAMETER to be the equivalent of a driver for configuration of almost any phone to almost any service.
If you want to help me make my phone like a printer, I need to hear from you.

Because right now most of my friends are making money developing ink cartridge software. Where is the software? Configuration tools, middleware and signaling tools are where you see this.

And of course CODECs. As we watch video over the Internet the diversity of the codec�s used to broadcast increases. As we make voice calls with a variety of VoIP clients the dream gets more remote.

I will make room in the basement.

Jeff is going to Camp. VONCamp

Jeff is going to Camp!
VONCamp is the name for the unconference that is going to be done ad hoc at Spring VON. Our presenters are gathering their thoughts and the community is blogging about their intentions. I recommend visiting http://www.voncamp.net and subscribing to the RSS to keep track.
Here are the topics that are currently planned
1. Recruiting the Web guys: How to create and grow your developer ecosystem - lead by Dave Nielsen (PayPal/StrikeIron etc..)
2. Facebook the perfect sandbox for applications - lead by Alec Saunders
3. Google's Android; Where do we stand? - lead by Tom Howe
4. Business model mayhem.. Is there a VC or 2 or 3 in Silicon Valley willing to talk about this topic?- lead needed.
5. Will a US telco follow BTs lead with APIs?
6. Rethinking Broadband Internet Connectivity - lead by Brough Turner. Look at the image on Rethinking Broadband Internet Connectivity.
7. Does AWS, Google, Microsoft, or someone else provide all the application layer infrastructure that is needed?
8. Can Telephony Be Free? Lead by Gene Cohen, VoodooVox.
9. Is there any benefit on connecting Social Networks via telecom networks? If not, why? If so, how? - Arjun Roychowdhury (HSC)
10. Topic to be announced later - Ken Camp - http://stardustglobalventures.com
11. Unified Communication; do we have the technology for business? - Paul Sijben (Perzonae) - Great topic. Count me in (Ken Camp) - http://www.realtime-unifiedcommunications.com
If you are about networking the show floor is certainly valuable. If you want to be near all the people working on making new services and asking the big questions, you should be at http://www.voncamp.net
To register for the ridiculously low price of $495 go to http://www.springvonx.com
PS Can you tell which topic is Jeff�s? I know but I heard him say it on blog.tv and on the webinar about it here.

The Egg does Hatch.

VONCamp/Unconference

I just got mad at about a post to VONCamp. This is the name for our version of the unconference and man I am annoyed. The unconference is deliberately unorganized.

No marketing slickness, Just a Wiki with some posts. It�s a great place to chat and get ready. The fact that its not being overly hyped is out of respect to audience. The goal is to be dynamic and self organizing.

Tom Howe and I talk about this all the time. Tom does a great job being the net head and I do my bell head view. And while I would like to see struggling artists take over the world, my experience is that even the mona lisa requires logistical support for people to have access to see it.

VONCamp is going to have some of my favorite people in it and its going to focus on the big topics.

So I am here to help the Leonardo�s of the world display their masterpiece.

If you are the artist post your topic and come to VON as our guest. If you want to view the masterpiece the price is $495 and you can register here.

- Eating My Own Lunch - Spring VON

Its interesting how VON has evolved over the years, and its always interesting to experiment with new ideas. In chatting with the advisory board, we built the VON Tracks to be very specific about topics. In doing that, the VC session was misplaced, but now its back and it should be more fun than ever. We have made it a lunch time dias where I expect the delegates at the show to benefit from some networking.

So far Eric Zimits of Granite Ventures and Fred Wang of Trinity Ventures with some other friends are going to share their views about what makes sense in these turbulent times.

These are folks that put their money where their mouth is, so its appropriate that they talk during lunch.

So if you are looking for some guidance on starting up or taking the next step to grow, this is a perfect place to network.

Looking forward to breaking bread with you at Spring VON in San Jose March 18th.

- Danger Danger Steve Balmer

Normally I quote the robot from Lost in Space when I see bad things coming. In this case, I am seeing something formindable in a positive sense. I am becoming a Balmer fan big time. We will ignore my MSFT stock is getting depressed as Wall Street and Silicon Valley continue to dicker over the value of a faded flower. As Blue Bulbs go, Yahoo is quite beautiful and I will probably be a user of their�s regardless of what they do to next.

But in these days of economic slow downs, I am not looking for 11th hour heroics. Mr. Ballmer is driving towards goals that make sense to me and the acquistion of Danger, the developers of my Sidekick is another great move.

In the end Navigating software is the key to success for any product in the future. And my full expectation is that we are going to see a revolution in our hands over the next three years. I have no idea if Danger has some patents on flexible screens (hmmmn, where is Radius�s Pivot screen these days), but I would be looking at their IPR.

What do I like about my sidekick? The trackball, the IM connectivity, browsing. Imho, Its better than the iPhone for IM. Its also more rugged. So its needs to be energized to get the wow effect again. But Microsoft should be able to do that in the near future.