James Enck is so sick and tired of all the VoIP conferences, that is forced to wonder aloud – if there are actually more VoIP conferences than actual users. Surely, James had his tongue firmly in cheek, but he does have a point. I must add – there are more press releases issued on VoIP than the number of users. Sigh… getting a bit of a VoIP fatigue of sorts.
I have seen that many of the old interactive TV conference crowd have migrated over to IPTV. Are the VOIP lot a new breed or where have they come from and more importantly for conference planners – where’ll they go after voip?
One possible opening – academia. Norwegian JustIP founder Frode van der Laak has been hired by a technology college to lecture a new course in ip-communications.
We did a poll this last week of around 16K subscribers who are ISPs, CLECs, Hosts and WISPs. We simply asked “Has the VoIP bubble burst?” 50% said No, but 33% said Yes and 8% answered “Almost”. Doesn’t bode well for an oversaturated market. As a conference producer myself, it’s pretty hard to find anyone to pay for anything but a hype-driven topic these days. The VON shows have done really well, even at the $1K+ range for a pass, but others can’t be doing as well without the substance of VON in tact. I hear there is the same support for the WiMAX hype shows. Even though there’s no “doing” or “how-to” involved, vendors are lining up with analysts to talk to eachother. The most opportunistic conference producers are all out there in droves trying to make a buck on a buzzword instead of building an industry event around a core community with passion for a specific technolgy or business. Time will tell, as always.
Everything old is new again. I sometimes think confereces are designed to slow innovation down.