I’ve been meaning, ever since VON, to convene a virtual gathering of the bloggers roundtable that we had. There was, of course, considerable discussion of video blogging at the end of that round table, which prevented me from asking the one question I really wanted to ask the panelists: How should the communications industry think about video? Brough Turner posted some preliminary thoughts a few weeks ago, but let’s try to dig a little deeper here.
This is obviously an important question. Jeff added an entire segment to the conference to focus on video, in part because he sees the coming disruption in the same way that he saw the disruption of VoIP a decade ago, and in part because he believes that this is something that carriers should have in their sights. It seems as if Jeff is really trying to steer VON to becoming a communications show, rather than just a voice show. In fact, I asked Jeff about this, and he said:
What has happened is that VON has met the challenge and grown up and in fact based on the “who attended” reality of VON, we have become a non-so-mini version of what was Supercomm/Globalcomm. Our topics cover the heart of the issues facing the future of communications and we are reflection of the greater industry that we represent. VON is really no longer a VoIP show. But guess what? It never really was. We were always about IP Communications. And in 2006 this means that we follow the major trends and make guesses on where things are going to go. Yes we share vision of tomorrow in the content and we deliver products of today on the show floor.
There are obviously some very interesting things going on here. Aside from the cool streaming video which Jeff showed during his keynote, there were many questions about the role of video. It’s clear that video calls aren’t a big use today, but new uses like ”show my friends what I am doing” are very compelling. When coupled with social networks, these are particularly interesting businesses. Â
Anyway, prompted by Tom Keating’s swipe at Jeff’s focus on video this morning, I was reminded that I hadn’t yet asked this question.  So, panelists — respond on your own blogs, or respond here — but I’d like to know what your thoughts are. And bloggers of all walks, please feel free to join the discussion!
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