ISPCON Keynote: The Noss and Searls Show

Get two people who have been involved with the web since its creation, put them on stage, and stir. Serves: one keynote.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [November 30, 2006]

It was something we'd been looking forward to for sometime. ISPCON's first keynote, Internet Service: The Fifth Utility?, featured Elliott Noss of Tucows and Doc Searls of the Linux Journal.

Noss, who runs a business that supplies key components of services to ISPs, addressed current events from the perspective of a large business.

Searls, famous for living an internet life, but known to the ISP industry as the author of a specific rant, Saving the Net: How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes, spoke from the point of view of a citizen of the United States and Santa Barbara.

The two therefore often talked past each other, but each had valuable insights.

Criticizing the utilities
"As a citizen of Santa Barbara," Searls said, "I'm looking for more bandwidth providers. We're not getting the bandwidth that we want."

He noted that the telcos and cablecos built asymmetric broadband to enable consumption but discourage production (uploading of content). But uploaded content is what's making headlines, in cases such as YouTube and MySpace.

Consumers want an infinite number of applications, but the cable and phone companies are focused on the past. "Phone and cable are only two of an infinite number of possible services," Searls said.

Noss pointed out that the phone company in Slovenia, T-2, offers a flexible array of bandwidth options, including both symmetrical and asymmetrical broadband.

Searls brought up another country that has innovative service. He had recently visited Indienet in Denmark (his photos of the visit are here). He said the company can run fiber to apartment buildings in part because of Copenhagen's cobble stone streets. He said the company can pick up the stones, run the fiber, and then replace the stones. "It's a single play company running fiber!"

"It ain't gonna happen here," Noss said.

"Well, it won't come from the carriers," said Searls, mindful of his audience.

Noss pointed out that people have won victories against the carriers. He said he'd been talking to Jim Baller (muni Wi-Fi activist and former ISPCON keynote speaker) who pointed out that the telcos and cable companies had tried to make municipal service illegal but had been prevented from doing so.

Rx for victory
Noss offered a simple prescription for beating the phone and cable companies. "I feel strongly that you win with better customer service than the cable and phone companies. The bar is not set very high! Not everyone has a tech support network like Doc Searls. If he has a domain problem, he calls me. Most people don't understand their own anti-spam, anti-virus, and e-mail service."

Searls affirmed that every individual wants technical support. "The single largest employer in Santa Barbara is 'self', so people need to know how to do business on the internet."

Searls said that people may be consumers for now, but if you show them how to do things, they'll soon be producers. Here's one example: Searls has over 10,000 photos on Flikr. That's a lot of content production!

Noss said that service providers need to move beyond seeing support as a cost. "Imagine if every time a customer signed up, they got to make an appointment with a CSR to learn how to post pictures to the internet. Do that and two things happen: first, the customer will never leave you; second: they now have a story to tell and will talk to 10 or 20 people about what you did for them. You could even teach people how to white list e-mail."

Searls said that people don't understand how to market services. "There's this relic from the VC world that everything needs its own revenue model. Hyperlinks don't have a revenue model, but they made Google possible. I bought my relatives pro accounts on Flikr. One said he doesn't use it because he, 'doesn't use passwords.'"

Noss immediately saw a revenue model. "I bet you could build a business from providing tech support for Flikr."

Question and answer session
One audience member asked about the importance of branding. Searls and Noss had very different answers.

"Branding is overrated," Searls said. "In the open source world, brand means nothing."

Noss said that customer service is the brand. "If you're a contractor, you have more work than you can handle." (See also his talk from last year, which we wrote up as Common Sense in Selling Services.)

"Don't get caught up in adwords to the point where you're not helping your customers use photos," Noss said. "1&1 and GoDaddy get over 60 percent of their customers from word of mouth."

Searls, whose life is its own advertisement, said that you should be your own brand. "You have to expose what you do. Blog about your business. Blogging like sending an e-mail cc:world."

Noss pointed out that Searls is suited to this because he writes exceptionally well.

Another audience member stood up to thank both speakers, and to critique the keynote. "Thanks, Elliott, for being an alternative to Network Solutions. And, Doc, I own one of your books. But I no longer do setup for old folks. I do sell applications, but not for residential customers, and certainly not blogs or photos."

Noss agreed. "I see the net as an end in and of itself. I'm just saying that you should solve your customers' problems but I'm not advocating solving any specific problem."

Searls said that ISPs should be looking for important applications that have not been invented yet, and had oracular advice on how to do so. "They say necessity is the mother of invention, but sometimes an invention can create its own necessity. My wife recently said to me that we're half way through a 100 year transition from analog to digital. I therefore think we can look forward to 50 more years of prosperity. And I think you guys can do it."

— End