• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

Martin Hofmann

a personal blog about technology, communications and other stuff that interests me

  • English
  • Deutsch
  • Archives
  • About
  • Contact

Events

Voice 2.0 conference a success

by Martin · Oct 17, 2006

Alec Saunders posted a great summary of yesterday’s Voice 2.0 conference in Ottawa. The brainchild of a group of people who attended BarCamp Ottawa in April 2006, the organizers brought together leaders from the telecom community to discuss the future of the telephony and communications industry.

“My takeaway was that Voice 2.0 is healthy and whole and heading for a bright future.  With our focus on user-centric communications paradigms, it seems clear to me that the telecom model of the past 125 years, including IMS, might finally be headed for oblivion.”

Alec Saunders, saunderslog.com 

Disclosure: High Road’s Ottawa office supported the Voice 2.0 organizers and partner OCRI.

Filed Under: Canada, Events, Technology

Wired Woman Toronto event on October 24

by Martin · Sep 28, 2006

PR bloggers David Jones and Leona Hobbs apparently know more about High Road’s speaking engagements than I do. Just saw on their blogs that Leona is speaking at the Wired Woman Toronto event on October 24 – together with High Road co-founder and president Mia Wedgbury. More information about the event here. 

Filed Under: Communications, Events, High Road

Getting noticed at CTIA IT & Entertainment 2006

by Martin · Aug 4, 2006

High Road’s resident telecom and wireless PR experts Sarah Spence and Jo-Anne Stayner are hosting a webinar on best ways to get exposure at this important industry show. Brad Smith of Wireless Week will join them to provide insights and guidance from a media perspective. The seminar is on August 9th at 1 PM EST. Go here for more information and registration.

Filed Under: Communications, Events, High Road

It’s World Cup time!

by Martin · Jun 13, 2006

 

I am on vacation in Germany to watch the soccer World Cup. Back in July.

Filed Under: Events, Transatlantic

Today is World Information Society Day

by Martin · May 17, 2006

World Telecommunications Day is now World Information Society Day “to help raise awareness, on an annual basis, on the enormous possibilities that ICTs can bring to all economies and societies and explore ways to bridge the digital divide”.

“ICT can change the face of the poor dramatically. ICT can be visualized as Aladdin’s Lamp in the hands of a poor woman. A digital genie can leverage her energy and creativity to lift her out of poverty at the fastest speed.”

Professor Muhammad Yunus, Managing Director of Grameen Bank, Bangladesh, and recipient of the 2006 ITU World Information Society Award.

More on the ITU website

Filed Under: Events, Transatlantic

Lunch with David Crow

by Martin · Apr 25, 2006

Boarding the cluetrain is one thing. Getting your clients to board another. And then there is the whole matter of staying on. A couple clicks from now you may find yourself behind it, watching its taillights fade. Then you turn around and there it is again, about to run you over (“We are watching. But we are not waiting”). This whole 24/7-participatory-attention-intention-economy-slash-Me2-revolution can be scary. But it doesn’t have to be.

That’s why it is always good to talk to people who’ve been riding the cluetrain for a while. Last week David Crow (bio) came to High Road for a lunch discussion. We had a great discussion about blogging, Web 2.0 and his adventures in unconferencing. Thanks again, David!

Since David started TorCamp/BarCamp/DemoCamp in Toronto, the number of DemoCamp participants, for example, have increased from 26 in December 2005 to 151 in March 2006. Clearly, David and his fellow organizers are on to something.

Based on all the grassroots enthusiasm out there, the mesh conference in Toronto seems to become another success story; one blogger suggests that it may have even helped push the professional event management firm for Syndicate Canada to cancel their conference.

The same principle that has made blogging popular and forced traditional media to incorporate new online features into their offering, also seems to change event management: the participatory model has become a hit. While I doubt that the old top-down organization of conferences will die out any time soon, it will make other tech conferences continue to re-think their approach.

Many bloggers, including David, have debated what makes a good conference and what makes un-conferences different or better, so I won’t repeat it all here.

But during our discussion David mentioned the rise of sponsorship and support enquiries for BarCamp/DemoCamp [Disclaimer: High Road offered to host one of the Barcamp/DemoCamp events]. It will be interesting to watch how much – if any – ‘commercialization’ they will agree on and what kind of changes Barcamp/DemoCamp will undergo when continued growth turns this startup idea into a mature event series.

‘Commercial grassroots’ events are not necessarily a bad idea. The key is the participatory element where people can help decide what they will see and how they get the most out of a conference. The mesh conference, for example, has a blog and – thanks to David – a wiki where people can provide their input and exchange ideas and information before the conference.

The new model is all about participation and engaging in conversations, and that includes new approaches to conferences. As long as long as particpation means more than banter between soap boxes, and those conversations actually contribute to better outcomes, I’m all for it. 

Filed Under: Canada, Communications, English, Events

Don’t be afraid, upgrade to simplicity! – Ars Electronica 2006

by Martin · Apr 21, 2006

Simplicity is the theme of this year’s Festival Ars Electronica which is held from August 31 to September 5 in Linz, Austria. A blog about the festival program will be launched in May. Last year’s festival featured 450 particpating artists and scientists from around the world, and 33,000 vistors came.

The challenge of the future will be to make complexity comprehensible and manageable. Thus, simplicity in a positive sense means developing intelligent strategies to facilitate access to technologies, to make them more convenient, and to enable users to see what actually happens with the information moving through them.

Gerfried Stocker, artistic director, Ars Electronica

Filed Under: Events, Transatlantic

« Previous Page
Next Page »

Copyright © 2023 · No Sidebar Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Flickr
  • Google Plus
  • YouTube