It’s Show Time

Every industry of any size has an annual industry event. They used to be called exhibitions; these days they’re called Expos. For the word-nerd, ‘expo’ has been hacked out of ‘exposition’. If you run a conference, an exhibition or an ‘expo’ you need to be hip to the scene and use the latest marketing buz – simple language and existing names will just not do.

So, this year ours is UC Expo. UC is of course, Unified Communication, the poster child of telecoms for the last few years. For 3 or so years in the mid noughty’s it was called VoIP for Business and in a couple of year’s time it will be called something else again – Social Telecoms or some such.

Walking around the uniformly tedious and identical stands displaying headsets, phones, flat screens and free sweets, I came across the acronym BYOD, which apparently means Bring Your Own Device. This is  a ‘new’ idea. The big brands have finally cottoned on to the fact that people have their own equipment and often it’s better than the equipment they get from their employer. They own smart phones and SIP devices and don’t want to downgrade when they turn up to the office.

Well of course, we’ve had our own BYOD policy since we started back in 2004 – just plug in any SIP standard device. Should have made a bigger deal of it I suppose…..

Anyhoo, these events are not about the exhibitors – or exposers as they should be called but for obvious reasons aren’t – they’re about meeting all your buddies in one place, listening to pundits, meeting new people and having a beer and pizza.

When my head stops hurting, and the acronyms and word torture have stopped buzzing in my brain, I’ll have a go at summarising the current state of telecom play as seen from the Alice in Wonderland world of the Expo. Then maybe I’ll tell you what the people actually doing stuff think. Possibly.