Interview With Jon Price

Looking over the ISPCON program, we had a few questions. So we e-mailed them to the person in charge of the show.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [October 14, 2005]

Q) You managed to fit it all into five tracks, Wireless, Hosting, VoIP, Business, and a third track called Technology & Customers. Could you share any other track names or conference formats you considered but rejected?

Frankly, we just do our best to listen carefully and respond with our best anticipation of needs in an incredibly fast-changing market. Sometimes we nail it, sometimes we're off the mark by the time the show comes around.

For coming up with track titles, the first thing we do is develop a group of topics and trends that people are focused on, will need to learn about and will benefit from applying to their businesses. Then we build the track titles around the baseline issues from feedback given by attendees and our advisory board. So the track titles are almost secondary to the process and self-populate. This time around, several of the sessions were customer-centric, so the theme and track title of "Customers" just made perfect sense.

We shifted to five tracks this time around for a few reasons:

1. The last year has seen a relatively low volume of huge waves of emerging technologies and developments that call for additional, new conference tracks. If anything, some of the older topics have become less interesting to attendees and we're simply responding to that feedback.
   
   
2. Our paid conference registrations reflect the same plateau in emerging technologies that people need to drill down on and understand. If there are 1000 people clamoring for intensive training on 10 big topics, we'd be covering all ten for them. Generally, if there is a new topic like wireless or VoIP that everyone is really wanting to get up to speed on for three days straight, you see an increased number of conference pass sales to support that trend as you attempt to better serve their needs.
   
   
3. ISPCON was an 18 track conference back when the market demanded and supported that kind of volume. At a time when the attendance was perfect for 1 or 2 tracks in 2003, we expanded to 5 or 6 concurrent tracks and invested heavily in content and education in hopes that the demand would re-establish itself.
   
   Assuming the market supports those ongoing investments with paid conference registrations, we can keep doing so and have. When people feel like they know everything there is to know and the emerging markets aren't blowing huge holes in their existing knowledge base, that urgency to stay in the know tends to fade a bit, along with the corresponding conference pass sales.
   
   
4. To raise the bar a bit on the marginal selections, hone in on the most important issues, and see if we could pull it all off in a more manageable size and format.

What I might have done differently?

I can think of a million oddball issues and topics that would be great to throw into the mix, but none of them would have a really huge impact. I was very seriously considering a keynote from Michael Gerber, the author of The E-Myth because I think it is one of the most telling examples of why and how our industry continues to be what it is today.

I do get the sense that the early-stage VoIP content is not as big an issue these days as it was 6 to 12 months back. So I might have retracted on that slightly and if anything, we could expanded a bit more of the customer-centric issues and financial topics. In all, I'm very happy with the lineup of speakers and the issues we're covering this time around though.

Q) Last year, you told ISPs to GROW UP. It's true that ISPs still don't have even "a little administrative office" on K Street in DC, but the political process aside, are you seeing maturation? More business services, better attention to the customer, compliance and other high end products offered, for example?

Just to address the political topic head-on: I think ISPs are completely over the notion of affecting policy under the current regime. The majority just aren't interested and are looking for ways to survive. We won't see a polarizing drive to establish that office on K street anytime soon.

What we'll see is a shift toward the workaround business model like doing more hosting, development, wireless, IT services and the like. Those things will keep employees on payroll for now, those things are keeping the lights on for now. For many, those things have been an excellent upside in the face of declining or soon-to-be gone dialup and DSL revenues.

I've come to realize that we tend to cover topics before the market is actually ready to really pay attention to it and execute. I thought everyone was going to be focused on municipal broadband last spring; now people are starting to get seriously focused on the issue. Asterisk is a great tool that we've covered for several shows, but people are just now getting ready to start drilling down on it and deploy or integrate it as a service or extension of something they are developing. We decided to continue covering both of these subjects this time around and I think the real interest is finally building up in those areas.

The answer I have to "Grow Up" is "Read the E-Myth". If there is one universal concept that I believe could be employed to turn the lights on for this industry again, Gerber's book could do it. But only if someone were to actually employ it and execute. Otherwise, we'll forever remain the same industry of isolated SMEs serving niche markets, tinkering with our toys and filling in the coverage and customer service gaps of the bells and MSOs.

Go to page two: The speakers and the sessions