ISPCON: The People

We can learn from a website, but we go to conferences to meet people. Here are some great people you can meet at ISPCON, and some notes on a few companies as well.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [November 3, 2006]

ISPCON's coming up next week in Santa Clara California, November 7 through 9, and that's where we'll be. If you're going too, your reference for the sessions is the session grid.

ISPCON keynotes have been excellent in the past, but Jon Price has worked even harder than usual (his usual is 110 percent, so doing more is a we-like-the-results-but-worry-about-your-health level of effort). The results: superlative keynotes in addition to the usual slate of smart sessions.

Keynote: Noss and Searls
The first keynote is Doc Searls interviewed by Elliot Noss. If you can, read Doc Searls' essay, Saving the Net: How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes. It's long, but it's also great. Both have blogs: Doc Searls and Elliot Noss.

Searls needs no introduction, but here's his bio, just in case.

Noss is president and CEO of Tucows (I think of him as "guy in charge of"). I was particularly impressed by a talk he gave last fall, which I wrote up in Common Sense in Selling Services. Noss has many admirable qualities, the best of which is that common sense. He has a way of saying intelligent things that seem less perceptive only because he makes them seem obvious.

Keynote: Who do you want to be?
The second keynote features a smorgasbord of people you'd want to ask for advice. It's led by Paul Stapleton, the ISP broker who once had his own newsletter. Stapleton now works for New York City-based DH Capital from his office in Colorado.

He'll be talking with four service provider CEOs. Rich Bader of Portland, Ore.-based EasyStreet has an unusual background. He started the ISP after leaving Intel, where he had run a division. Now, as we reported in August, his ISP is growing as fast as ever (see EasyStreet Grows). Bader keynoted ISPCON in the ISP industry's darkest hour, Spring 2002, talking about survival. Now, he's talking about growth.

Dan Hoffman is an ISPCON regular, and has been talking to ISPs about VoIP for several years. He's local to New York City, and runs a successful business, M5, with a low employee count and an impressive customer list. I argue that as ISPs acquire high touch business customers (valuable accounts!), the business will become more local, even in large cities. That's why I called my profile of his company A Local VoIP Provider. People think that the business is global, and it can be, but every service provider will find it easiest to obtain local customers.

Dane Jasper runs a large, independent ISP in California, Sonic.net. He's currently the president of CISPA and is quite outspoken. The quote on ISP-Planet's home page is from this interview on BroadbandReports, which is well worth reading. If you're based in California, you should check out CISPA at ISPCON.

ISP-Planet profiled Jonathan Snyder's company, Las Vegas-based KeyOn, here. The company is a WISP that's growing through acquisition and has some proprietary network components.

Finding out about it at ISP-Planet
Over the previous few weeks, we've made an effort to introduce you to several of the most interesting companies at ISPCON:

• We told you about Vyatta's Open Source Routers. Who'd have thought open source routers were possible?
• We introduced you to OpenDNS' free anti-phishing database, PhishTank. Yes, free!
• We wrote a profile of a company that's so old it claims to have invented the term "remote backup" as well as the service. So it's The Original Remote Backup.
• We also profiled Streakwave, a wireless equipment distributor based in Silicon Valley.
• We provided an update on anti-spam service Reflexion.
• We had a fascinating chat with a malware expert from Aladdin.
• We met with an impressive malware team from Trend Micro.
• We talked to a small WISP, a happy customer of Digital Path.
• We learned about Coyote Point Systems' new partner program.

And expect news from several more companies after the show starts. . .

Speakers
We don't know all the ISPCON speakers—that's one reason we're going (the main reason is that we get to talk to people).

But we do know several of the speakers.

Dave Robertson of TISPA has been an ISPCON regular for over a decade.

Several people from WISPA will be speaking, including Matt Larsen and Jon Scrivner.

Tom DeReggi runs RapidDSL and Wireless, which is listed in the wireless section of our backbone directory.

Donny Smith is always worth listening to, and has insights on far too many topics to list here.

We've written about John McKown so often that we'll summarize it briefly: he's been six years ahead of the ISP industry since at least 1999, when ISP-Planet first noticed.

People doing VoIP are younger than many of the others at ISPCON. Tristan Degenhardt might be the only speaker who doesn't like to disclose how young she is. She has already had a career as impressive as any other engineer at the conference, having invented key multimedia technologies for MP3.com before co-founding SwitchVox with Joshua Stephens and her husband Brian.

Ivan Kohler has been doing open source billing as Freeside for longer than ISP-Planet's been around.

At press time, Avi Freedman had no bio on the website, but we're not sure he needs one. Google should suffice (although it may not go back in time far enough). His latest gig is Readnews.

WISPs should network
Finally, if you're a WISP, talk to the WISPA folks (such as Matt Larsen and Jon Scrivner) about their reception on Tuesday night. WISPA's own Mac Dearman will talk about his Katrina relief effort, the organization will hold a regular meeting, and will talk about projects completed this year and plans for next year. There's a lot of pending legislation, and WISPs need to get organized.

Other networking opportunities
Every attendee should be present at the Tuesday evening reception in the exhibit hall, which starts at 4:30PM.

If you have a conference pass, don't miss Wednesday's exchange sessions, also in the evening. For many, these evening sessions are the highlight of ISPCON.

— End