Smart Grid Summit - Day 1 Highlights

I don't blog here much about smart grid, but wanted to follow up on the photos I posted yesterday. My first recap article is running now on the Smart Grid Portal, and I'll have another one coming tomorrow - stay tuned!

Smart Grid Summit - Photo Highlights

I've been on vacation the past few days and wasn't planning to post these til tomorrow. However, there's a flight delay and with free WiFi, I've got a window here to share some photos. I'll have a recap article about the summit on the portal in the next day or so, but until then, here are a few photos...





Larry Karisny leading the opening panel on cybersecurity. Larry was a huge help, not just with his industry knowledege, but also for moderating and speaking on a few sessions.


Dr. Massoud Amin from U of Minnesota. The "father of the smart grid" did not disappoint - just wish the lighting was better for a picture!


Maureen Harris and Orjiakor Isiogu on the NARUC smart grid working group update


Joy Rychlik (also from Toronto), moderating the Green IT/Data Centers panels, along with Henry Bailey (SAP), Kyle McNamara (Verizon) and Charles O'Donnell (Liebert AC Power)


Ken Rowen's keynote about what PAETEC Energy is doing in this market


Sandra Manning, City of Tallahassee - very engaging, and great to have some local presence for the Florida market


Dr. Mo Shakouri (Alvarion) on the Rural Smart Grid Opportunity panel


SAP's Henry Bailey on the Electric Vehicle session - yes, they are very busy in this space!


Olivier Pauzet (Sierra Wireless) on the Public vs. Private Networks session, along moderator Larry Karisny, Andy Balaschak (Tropos) and Jeff Dygert (AT&T)

Next Stop - Miami and the Smart Grid Summit

For a Northerner, it's pretty hard to beat Miami in February, and that's where I'll be the rest of this week. Seems like yesterday when we had our last Smart Grid Summit in Los Angeles. This time around, it's a much shorter time between events, and we have another strong program in place.

I've done enough talking about it on the Smart Grid Portal, so that's where you need to go to get the latest on the summit, which runs this Wednesday and Thursday.

The summit will keep me pretty busy, and aside from stealing some time to walk through the ITExpo show floor, you won't likely see me around that show, or any other of the sub-events running under TMC's big tent.

For now, there's just one exception I can tell you about, and that's on Tuesday night. Interactive Intelligence is hosting a special ITExpo event on cloud communications, and I'm one of the panelists. Should be fun, and I'm looking forward to wearing my telecom hat for a topic I really enjoy following.

Smart Grid Summit Updates - Taking My Talents to South Beach

I had some fun with this writeup for our portal, but the main idea is to update you on the Smart Grid Summit. Miami is only a few weeks out, and with winter weather ramping up today, yeah, I'm looking forward to being there! You can read the latest program update here, with more coming next week.

Smart Grid Product of the Year Awards

Our Smart Grid Summit program is coming together nicely now, and the event is just a few short weeks away. I just wanted to note that our second POTY Awards program has just launched. If you're a smart grid innovator and want a shot at industry recognition, you can read more about the program here, along with how to submit an application. Good luck!

Next Stop - GridWeek, Washington, D.C.

On Sunday, I'm heading to Washington, D.C. for my first visit to GridWeek, which is one of the top events in the smart grid space. I'm quite excited about going, and it will be very interesting to see how this compares to our Smart Grid Summit, which took place two weeks ago.

I'll be there through Wednesday morning, and will post my thoughts as time allows on Twitter, as well as our Smart Grid Portal. I don't travel this often, and next week will be my third straight week for U.S. events, and fourth in five weeks. That's plenty for me, and I'm looking forward to staying put for a bit once I'm back.

Smart Grid Summit - Video Clips

Getting things done here, one at a time. Finally getting more content up online now from last week's Smart Grid Summit.

First off, I did some video interviews at TMC's booth during the summit - those are running now - with Aviat Networks, Celergy Networks and Carl Ford.

Next - in addition to my photos I've been posting, TMC's photos are now posted, and you can find are some shots there of the summit.

Finally, I've managed to get my video clips uploaded and am ready to share them here. They'll be posted to our portal shortly as well, but since you're here now, enjoy! These clips are nice and short - about 2 minutes each - just enough to give you a taste of what you missed, and hopefully get you thinking about coming to our next summit in Miami. :-)

Smart Grid Summit - More Photos

Pushing content out today as fast I can. Here is my second set of photos from the summit. Lots of Twitter activity today around my recap article on the portal, and the feedback both online and offline has been great so far - nice to see that! Got some nice video clips in the can, and will post those on Monday - stay tuned.

Sven Thesen, Better Place


Christoph Inauen, NSN


Lee Krevat, San Diego Gas & Electric


Steve Oldham, USTelecom


Dr. Mo Shakouri, Alvarion


Wireless broadband in the home panel - Jim Hunter - 4Home, Lew Brown - Z-Wave, Gabe Nave - SprintNextel


VC/startup panel - Chris King - eMeter, Gene Wang - People Power, Dylan Steeg - Intel Capital, Curtis Mo - DLA Piper, Dr. Pedram Mokrian - Mayfield Fund, Sam Smith - EV World (speaking about a hydro kinetic power startup)


Jerry Melcher, EnerNex and Tim Boucher, Southern California Edison


Dr. Emir Macari, Cal State University


Jason Rodriguez, Zpryme research - presenting with me on our renewable energy market study findings


Prof. Raj Gadh, UCLA WINMEC


Crystal Ball session - Jay Cappy - Verizon Business, Jamie Clark - OASIS, Raj Gadh - UCLA WINMEC, Eric Murray - Tantalus, Katherine Hamilton - GridWise Alliance


And now...for something completely different.

Why on earth is there a photo of a Philly cream cheese container here?

Well, look closely - on the left - the green leaf - it says "made with Renewable Energy". Really! I sure did a double take when I was prepping my bagel just before we started Day 3. I thought that would be a perfect prop to kick off our Crystal Ball panel. When you start seeing messaging like this on mainstream products, you KNOW there's perceived value to this concept. I think I'm going to call Kraft and see if they'd like to sponsor our next summit! :-)

Smart Grid Summit - Photos

Just got time to quickly post some photos from Day 1. Got more coming for the rest of the event, along with some short video clips from the sessions. I'll also have a writeup about my thoughts on the summit for Friday, and that will run on the Smart Grid Portal.

Ernie Lewis, Verizon Business



USTelecom policy panel - Michael Oldak, UTC and Eric Batongbacal AT&T Services


Data privacy panel - Lee Tien, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Ward Pyles, Southern Company


John Yu, LA Department of Water and Power


Ishak Kang, Dot UI


Gary Sorkin, USNAP Alliance


Team Alvarion, including Dr. Mo Shakouri and Eedo Lifshitz



Larry Lisser's hugely popular (and darkly lit!) Startup Bootcamp

Next Stop - LA - Smart Grid Time

Well, the Smart Grid Summit is finally here. It's been a long time since the last one, which means we've had a lot of time to get this one ready. It's ready now, and I'm flying to LA on Sunday.

If you follow my blog or my tweets, you'll know what's happening around this, and if not, it's not too late to get up to speed. Anyhow, if smart grid is on your radar, you won't be disappointed if you can join us next week at the summit. All the details are on the website, and if you can't make it, follow the tweets and check in with us on the Smart Grid portal.

Just to be sure, I'll reiterate that our summit is co-located with TMC's flagship event, the IT Expo. Now in its 11th year, I don't think you'll find a bigger or better conference anywhere in the communications space. Smart grid is very much about communications, and that's why we're there. Hope you'll be there too!

Hold On - My Fridge is Calling!

If the title of this post got your attention, and if you know that I keep busy in the worlds of both telephony and smart grid, then you'll want to read my latest Focus Brief. I'm really writing about the USNAP Alliance - who will be participating at our upcoming Smart Grid Summit - and I thought their latest news marked a good time to talk about their work and how the smart home environment will in time become relevant for businesses.

When you think about how many people work from home, and how intertwined our work and personal communications have become, the title of this post will start to make more sense. See for yourself by reading the brief, and by all means, add your thoughts and keep the dialog going.

Launch News Item #1 - Smart Grid Summit

Things are moving quickly today, so this post will be short. This afternoon, the program and first round of confirmed speakers was announced for the Smart Grid Summit. Not many speaking spots left already, and I know we're going to have a first-rate program. You can read more about it here, along with a full outline of the agenda on our website. Gotta go...

Smart Grid Summit - Call for Papers

Just a quick note to say that the latest iteration for our Call for Papers went out just before the long weekend. We're getting a healthy response, which is great, and it's always good to hear from new voices.

In case this is news or you're interested in speaking at our next Smart Grid Summit, you can review the notice here.

Smart Grid Summit - photo highlights

After the Summit finished up on Friday, I had an extended family visit for a few days, and am just back to everyday stuff now. Had some technical difficulties with my new PC, and wasn't able to post my photos from from the show, so I've got those coming here in two posts. First, this post about the Smart Grid Summit, followed by some photos from the rest of the ITExpo.

Too much time has passed for a thoughtful review of the summit, but we did have a fair bit of media attention, and I'll be posting a roundup article citing all of this for our Smart Grid portal later today. If that doesn't do the job, then drop me a line and I'll be happy to tell you more.




We had four keynotes during the Summit. First up, Dr. Ron Sega, Colorado State University



Kevin Suitor, Redline Communications


John Bryan, Secure Smart Grid Association


Ryusuke Masuoka, Fujitsu Labs of America


Here are a few shots from the panels. Fist, Christine Hertzog moderating the Game Changing Apps session.


Shidan Gouran and the Standards/Interoperability panel


One of my sessions - What Utilities can learn from Telcos


Rose Gabriele moderating the Modern Network Solutions session

smart grid summit - day 1

Way, way too busy to give you a recap from our first day, but I can say it went really well. Our room was over-full from the beginning, and stayed that way all day. I'll get a recap article out to our portal ASAP, and have some photos to post here. For now, I'll steer you to the ITExpo Show Daily, which covers all aspects of what's going on here.

Will have more to report tomorrow - so please bear with me and keep visiting the Expo website.

Smart Grid Summit - Lots of Reasons to Come

Tying up loose ends today, and flying to Miami tomorrow for the Smart Grid Summit and ITExpo. I've been posting off and on about this for the past few days, and wanted to do one more post summarizing the highlights of what you can expect to see at our event, running this Wednesday - Friday.

Today, I posted Part 3 of my Smart Grid Summit preview series articles. You can read it here, and to get the full story, you can read Part 2 here, and Part 1 here.

That pretty much tells the story, and I hope to see you in Miami. If not, please check in regularly to the portal, where I'll be posting daily recaps. Also, one of our media partners - Livecage - will be doing live video streaming, and once it's running, I'll let you know where/how to find it. In fact, if you go to their website now, you'll see a couple of placeholder welcome video messages for our event. Trust me, it will look a lot better once we have our speakers up there!

smart grid summit - product of the year awards deadline fast approaching

Many hats to wear to make the Smart Grid Summit happen, but we're almost there. For those of you on the vendor side, this post will be of interest and importance. The Product of the Year Awards were recently launched, and this is a great way to gain recognition in an exploding market space and at an event that's poised to become a leading Smart Grid showcase in 2010.

In that regard, I have a bit of news. The final deadline for submitting applications is Monday - January 18. The Early Bird deadline has passed, so you have to pay the full fare, but if you win, I'm sure you won't think twice about that.

The winners will be announced in March, and TMC will publish this on the Smart Grid portal. Recognition like this is especially important in a newly developing market, and needless to say, TMC has a multitude of ways to help the winners maximize their 15 minutes of fame, which hopefully will soon become fortune. Isn't that how life works?

Wryness aside, it's a great program, and I want to be sure you know about it. You can read more about the details and registration process here, and I'll certainly be doing my bit blog-wise when the winners are announced.

Smart Grid Summit - Fly to Miami, Drive Home in a Honda Element

Well, I wouldn't say this if it wasn't true. Crappy economy be damned, Rich Tehrani and his never-stop-working team at TMC continue with the big prize draw hook to get you to Miami next week. Although it's been insanely cold there lately, the weather is usually reason enough to go in January.

The other day, I posted about 5 reasons to be at the ITExpo next week. Nothing has changed there, so I won't say anything more. Well, the Honda giveaway is a great reason #6, and if you want a 6B, they're also giving away a Honda motorcycle on Thursday. Maybe that's reason enough for you to go - if you're not sure, check it out for yourself here.

Our Smart Grid Summit is much smaller than the ITExpo, and we can't compete with that. I could offer something like one pick from my vinyl record collection, or an online guitar lesson by my shredder wiz son, Dean. He's only 13, but I've been taking him out with me to play to play at a local blues jam, and he's got the goods. I've been playing for decades, but he passed me by a long time ago. Remember his name - someday he'll do something cool....

Back to Smart Grid. With just a few days to go, we're tapping all channels to get the word out and hope you can join us in Miami. I just started writing a series of preview articles about the program, and you'll see those starting today on our portal. I've also been busy with shout-outs on my Linked In and Facebook pages and groups, and gained some good exposure on CircleID with my recent article about Google Energy.

By the way, if you haven't subscribed to our eNewsletter, you should do that now.

Finally, you may already be receiving eblasts from TMC with the latest news about the summit. Here's the latest one, and I think this will give you even more reasons to come. If you'd like to receive these eblasts, let me know and I can get you added to their database.

Five Reasons to be in Miami for the ITExpo

As it gets colder in Canada by the day, Miami is looking better by the minute. Weather, beach and Latin music aside, it's time to start thinking about why TMC's ITExpo is the place to be later this month for all things related to communications. Here are my fave five...

1. The ITExpo. Having cracked the 10 year barrier, TMC's flagship event has become a cornerstone of our market, especially for anyone focused on enterprise and SMB communications. Many shows have come and gone in this space, and ITExpo keeps getting bigger and better. There are lots reasons to be there, and you don't have to spend much time at the show's website to see why. Digium/Asterisk World is a reason all by itself, but there's much, much more to see and do. If you can only look at one quick link, try this one - it's a great summary from Rich Tehrani about who's coming and the sessions you can see there.

2. Smart Grid Summit. Self-promotion aside, this is our second summit with TMC, and it didn't take long to expand this into a three-day program. We know we're on to something good here, and I really believe this is one of the ways that the ITExpo experience is truly different from most any other communications conference. We have keynotes from Redline Communications, Fujitsu, the Secure Smart Grid Association, and Ron Sega, a former NASA astronaut. Our agenda and roster have pretty much filled out now, sponsorship and industry support has been strong, and we've added a BOF session with the SIP Forum to talk about their new Smart Grid working group.

3. 4GWE. We have followed in the footsteps of Carl Ford and Scott Kargman to partner with TMC for a vertical event. Their wireless event has been a success from the start, and provides a lot of depth into all things LTE and 4G. Whatever stolen moments I can take from my Smart Grid duties, I'll be checking out their sessions. A sidebar to this is the M2M event, which they also put together, and is another important vertical for emerging communications technologies.

4. Cloud Communications Summit. Just as we've followed 4GWE, our good buddy Thomas Howe has followed us. He's teamed up with TMC to put this one day event together during the Expo. Tom will always be Mr. Mashup to me, but this venture will be a great showcase for something much bigger. It's one of the big trends I'm following this year, and am hoping to contribute some content that will be included with material Tom is preparing for the attendees.

5. Telephony Startup Camp. I feel like I'm building a pyramid here. One step behind Tom is Larry Lisser - another colleague I've worked with on several occasions. Larry is one of the best guys out there for working with startups and getting them to market. He also had brought a new concept to TMC, and hats off to them for running with this is as well. The economy can't suck forever, and in time, startups will get their mojo back. There are lots of reasons to believe that we'll see momentum build in 2010, and Larry has put together a mini-event to showcase a series of startups. The lineup hasn't been announced yet, but it will be series of 15 minute pitches. I don't think ITExpo has done this before, and I think it's a great way to expand their reach and give startups a new platform to show their stuff. Larry's event runs Thursday evening, and I hope to catch it after we finish up our Smart Grid sessions.

smart grid summit - product of the year awards launched

The Smart Grid Summit is moving forward rapidly on many fronts, and it's all good. If you've been to the website recently, you'll see that the speaking roster is filling out nicely - same for our sponsors and media partners. There's a lot more coming, and soon we'll be adding info about our keynotes. We have four scheduled so far, including a former NASA astronaut (he was on the first mission that hooked up with the Soviet space station). Others are pending, and we'll be adding those to the website shortly.

I should also add that people have started registering for the summit, and the e-blasts are going out now on a regular basis. Over on the Smart Grid portal, the content continues to flow from many sources, including a guest article today from Brendan Herron of the Current Group, with his take on the Copenhagen Climate Conference. If you like his insights, then you'll definitely want to join us on the Smart Grid Initiatives panel, where he'll be speaking.

Before moving on, I have two more items about the portal of note. First, our traffic continues to be strong. Our November visits were up from October - not as dramatically as the previous months, but still going in the right direction. For anyone looking to get their message out to the Smart Grid space, this is the place to do it. Second, if you haven't subscribed to our Smart Grid eNewsletter, now is as good a time as any. It's free, and it just takes a minute - click here, and you're on your way.

This has become a long preamble, but I'm getting to the real news item. TMC knows how to run a conference, and they're starting to add the pieces that will make the Summit really distinct from other grid events. Today, we launched the Smart Grid Product of the Year Award, and it's open to anyone in this space - not just exhibitors. You can read all about it here, and for those of you who want to apply, here's the form.