We had another great SquawkBox this morning, with as many as 21 people on the line. My guests were Jon Arnold of J Arnold and Associates, and Jon's colleague and business partner Marc Robins of Robins Group. The focus of the call was two fold. We talked about the conferences people have been attending in the last couple of weeks — eComm, VoiceCon and VON.x. And we also talked about the launch of Jon and Marc's new venture, IP Communications Insights.
One of the things that emerges in the call is that a lot of people are concerned about the future of the VON show. People passionately want to see the industry innovation focus return to VON. It's good to see such strong support for VON from innovators in the industry. One of the things that we discussed was how to get the most out of a tradeshow. As James Body and I both said on the call, the opportunities were there to have great meetings. I'm pretty unequivocal about tradeshow investments. If you spend the money to go to a show, and don't make the effort to pre-book the meetings, make the announcements and drive traffic to your exhibit, then you're wasting your time. From my perspective VON was a quality networking opportunity and I made the most of it.
Enjoy the call. There are lots of perspectives to be heard.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
