Seems our Director of Engineering may have ignighted a bit of a dust-up with his VON wrap post, wherein he gave his honest opinion about the IP Communications Industry confab held in Boston from September 12 - 14.

Today, a full two weeks after the fact, I've got people in my ear and in my face pointing out how Tom Keating over at TMC and Garrett Smith at VoIPSupply picked up on Eric's post and used it to get a little conversation going about the health and direction of the IP Communications space, and about the purpose and value of trade shows in general.

I understand Jeff Pulver even had a few WTF comments for our CEO, though this whole thing makes me think just a little bit about Marcelo's very first post in this space about the very nature of the VoIP blogosphere.

So, I'll toss in my two cents and see if I can help straighten out a few things, or whether it just rattles more cages.

To begin with, this isn't the first time Mr. Keating has used his forum to divert our attention here at Voxilla from our main purposes, which are to serve our customers and to provide timely, accurate information about the people, products, and policies that drive our industry. Last year he raised a great stink claiming our reporter, Carolyn Schuk, had stolen one of his ideas for a story we ran on our front page, and basically asked the industry to question our credibility if Ms. Schuk didn't print an apology and give him credit for the story.

Turns out Carolyn had been working on the story for several weeks, long before Tom posted anything about it in his blog, and the "ideas" underlying the whole thing were matters of common knowledge and common sense, accessible to anyone who might care to think about them. After it was clearly proven that Voxilla's reporter had done none of the things of which Mr. Keating accused her, rather than offer an apology to her, he simply removed his original post from the TMC site.

With today's post, Mr. Keating comes at Voxilla in a slightly more oblique manner, but it wrankles me none-the-less. Why lead your item with reference to something two weeks old? If you want to start a conversation about whether Jeff Pulver is turning his focus from Voice to Video after 10 years at the forefront of IP Communications, why not just do that? It seems to me there are any number of good lead-ins that can accomplish the goal of getting a conversation going without using one individual's personal comments to set the stage.

In addition, it's incorrect for Mr. Keating to have said "Voxilla…was disappointed in this past VON show." Eric was personally disappointed for reasons he mentioned in his blog item, but as a company — and I gave Pulvermedia representatives positive comments to this effect at the conclusion of the show — we were actually pleased with the turnout, the vibe, and the opportunities we had to reaffirm some longstanding alliances, and to open doors to new ones.

Now, I think it's all fine and good to have a conversation about the maturation of the IP Communications industry and to speculate on whether video is poised to overwhelm voice as the driver of innovation in the technology, even to fantasize about Jeff Pulver's future focus and motivation. It's also good to question the economic health of the industry and to read in the success or failure of shows like VON and ITEXPO the future of the industry and of the economy in general.

The fact of the matter is there's an awful lot of money floating around out there chasing the Next Big Thing and it seems like a whole lot of people still believe in the money-for-nothing dreams created by the original Dot Com Boom of the Go-Go 90s.

I've been paring down my own expectations for the past several years and looking for people and things of lasting value in my life and in the investments I make of my time and my resources.

I happen to believe the innovations coming out of the globalization of the marketplace and out of the shrinking of barriers to communication being provided by the Internet lie at the heart of some very valuable processes and technologies that will define the way business is conducted and the way people will interact for many years to come. And I feel fortunate to have an opportunity to participate in the development of some of those things, perhaps even to influence them in some small way, by my work with Voxilla.

So, by all means, let's have a little more conversation, but let's keep it to the things that matter, can we?

Voxilla has been in the midst of a complete corporate makeover in 2006, from the inside out.

We have completely revamped our back-end systems to provide for greater accountability and inventory control, as well as increased responsiveness in our fulfillment and support endeavors.

Even though it’s been a challenging year from a pure device sales perspective, it feels like we’ve made a lot of progress as a company.

We have also been re-designing our public-facing presence, Phase I of which rolled out with the new Forum about two weeks ago. Today we went live with Phase II, the the new Voxilla News and Information site.

Although we had hoped to roll out in concert with VON last week, it just wasn’t quite right, and looking at it today, I’m glad we waited. I like our new look, even if there’s a little too much red going on — but that will get fixed in short order.

The idea is to get back to what launched this company, which was fresh, incisive content on the people, products, and issues driving the growth of our industry, and I believe now we’ve got a platform we can use to achieve our goals.

Phase III is the new Voxilla Store, which we’d love to have public by the end of the month. Stay tuned for details and some “Grand Re-Opening” Specials.

If there is one thing the schlep to Boston proves, it’s the versatiltiy of IP communication technology.

Voxilla is a small company and because we recognize the value of presence at our industry’s premier confab, we’ve got every one of our key players outside the shipping and fulfillment department here, thousands of miles away from home base.

While it might be nice to spend our time here schmoozing and socializing, cementing relationships with people and companies we only ever have a chance to meet on-line or on the phone, negotiating new alliances, and even nosing around for new and interesting developments coming over the horizon — all the things an industry event like VON is designed to produce — we actually have a business to run.

So what we’ve done the past three days is move our operation across an entire continent, though you’d never know it by calling us on the phone.

The mobility afforded by IP communication technology allowed us to establish an East Coast outpost in a matter of hours, proving that IP telephony works.

Many of the exhibitors here show off the latest and greatest iterations of the technology, but the devices are “dumb.” They are here, you can see ‘em and touch ‘em and hear all about how they work in any number of deployments in the real world, but in large measure it’s theory.

Here in the Voxilla booth, the PBX solution we’re selling is the PBX we’re using. The IP phones we’re demonstrating are connected to our PBX and live to our offices in San Francisco, Montreal, and Manila. Our PhoneLabs cell phone stations are synched to my cell phone and we have two separate analog phones making and receiving wireless calls on my Cingular account.

Now, if I could just find time to do a little schmoozing.

The BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP of propane forklifts aggravated my mood for most of the day today, as hundreds of Teamsters and employees of many of the world’s most important IP Communications companies banged and whirred and taped and hammered together display booths and tradeshow paraphernalia on the cavernous exhibit floor of the Boston Convention Center.

Now, a little less than an hour from the VON Conference’s Opening Reception, the fork lifts are in clean-up mode at the far reaches of the hall’s rear corridors, and just the buzz of the occasional power screwdriver can be heard as I roam up and down the Exhibit floor’s 16 aisles, surveying the advance mood of perhaps the industry’s most important conference.

And the mood seems one of decided maturity. Almost everyone has been here and done this for the past several years running and the atmosphere strikes me as more “carny” than “rock show,” despite the new play being given to companies and concepts focused on video, as opposed to the conference’s former fealty to voice.

Tomorrow is another day, however, and until the big glass doors of the convention center’s mezzanine open to the paying attendees, it’s probably not fair to start pinning labels on the personality of this year’s show.

As for Martha, Eric, and I in the Voxilla booth, we’ve got our network up and running, our booth display erected, the CommunigatePro Mini Mac server registering a Polycom IP601 and a brand new Linksys SPA962. I’ve also got my cell phone hooked up to a PhoneLabs Dock n Talk and we are ready to talk the talk for the next three days.

I’ve already had a very interesting conversation with a service provider who claims to have the SIP WiFi puzzle solved and operational on some high quality hardware I’ll be able to identify after I get my test units, so maybe there will be some new and good news out of this conference after all…

I tossed a huge pile of paper into the big blue recycling bin on my way out of the office Friday, a housekeeping move designed in part to actually clear away the non-essential detritus of a life in commerce, and at the same time, create room for more.

We’re decamping over the weekend to Boston for the Fall VON Conference, which begins on Tuesday. Martha, Eric, and I head out Sunday, to be joined by Amin and Marcelo on Monday evening. Next week our East Coast peeps could see better response times to comments and queries. Anne and Julio will be holding down the fort from both sides of the Pacific.

For the first time ever, each of us will sport Voxilla-branded shirts. I hesitate to say uniforms since Martha got something more in keeping with her sense of style than the polo shirt we guys will be wearing.
Last year at VON we taped up banners we had done at Fast Signs, and this year we’ve got a pop-up booth with groovy graphics — but more importantly, we’ve got a focus, and a vision of where IP Communications is growing.
We’re looking forward to vibing this year’s tilt toward Video On the Net, to seeing old friends, and showing off a few of what we think are IP Communications’ best solutions.

I’m looking forward to seeing my buddy Doc and to spending a few days in one of America’s greatest cities. It’s a hard life, but one has to enjoy it.