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No Jeans Found at VoiceCon, But Plenty of Video

I made a late-game decision to cross the country to VoiceCon earlier this week. Not because I knew it was end of an era--the show is changing its name--and neither for my love for Orlando (I have none). Truth is that VoiceCon San Francisco is just not the same event, so if you want to stay connected to the Enterprise communications market, VoiceCon Orlando is it. I was not disappointed.But I did forget about the dress code. No, there's not an official one but as a 15 year resident of the Bay Area, it's possible I've become too casual in my attire. Not sure I can be blamed--after all, my very first sales call in San Francisco back in 1997 was in front of someone in flip-flops and shorts, while I fidgeted in my suit and tie. Guess I never looked back.

My first night at VoiceCon, I got it right. Suit, no tie, at a super wine tasting event put on by the crew at UCStrategies. I fit right in, at least in terms of clothing. The second day is where I went wrong. In my jet lag haze early in the morning, I put on jeans--as I do hundreds of other days per year. Mistake. Within two hours of walking the conference, and not spotting one other measly pair of good old dungarees, I did a b-line back to my room to fix the wardrobe malfunction.

As for the show itself: Good show, plenty of people, sheets of announcements and a general feeling that good days are ahead. Especially for those in visual communications. Tandberg, Cisco, Avistar, Vidyo and others put up impressive booths and filled the exhibit floor with energy.

Couple new twists to video this year. Vendors are talking more not only about the mid-market but the small business segment as well. Tandberg announced something called Callway, a hosted service intended to enable smaller companies to get started with video with low CapEx. And Avistar's software driven model appears to be make a down-market move possible. We'll see.

Other bit on many minds is the issue of interoperability. I don't pretend to get all the ins and outs of "firewall traversal" and other big words, but I do know that unless this is fixed, rate of adoption risks slowing. Without an intuitive, and not intensively CapEx way to make point-point and multi-point calls to those not on the same platform as you (ie. me on Polycom, you on Tandberg), video can only scale so far. Imagine if I needed a bridge in my house to talk to people on AT&T from my Verizon phone. True, every vendor seems to have some standards-related based answer for interoperability, but none of them simple enough to explain in one sentence.

I'm glad I went. Congratulations to all those who worked tireless to bring us VoiceCon over the years. As of today, VoiceCon is now Enterprise Connect. Wonder what that will mean for the dress code....