Carl Tyler's Blog :: Conferences...

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Lots of people are away at conferences at the moment, Peyton who I work with is currently in Amsterdam at The View Conference presenting a session on building Sametime Bots and tomorrow I arrive in San Jose for the Instant Messaging Planet conference. I am quite looking forward to this conference as I will get to meet one of our first customers face to face. The internet is an amazing thing, to have customers that you have never met in person. Pete Asprey of Sandia National Labs, is taking part on a panel "At Your Service: Buyer's Guide to Bots", where he'll be talking with others about the requirements his company had when purchasing and deploying Sametime Bots.

As for me, I'm taking part in a panel "Integrating Business Applications: The Collaborative Workplace", this session will take a close look at the new trends in integrating instant messaging and presence with enterprise applications. Who are the players here, and what are the benefits to businesses?
Moderator:
Michael Gartenberg, VP & Research Director, Jupiter Research
Panelists:
Taylor Collyer, Director of Product Management, Microsoft Corp.
Dan Graves, Group Product Manager, Real-Time Collaboration, Sun Microsystems
Shane Pearson, Director of Product Management for WebLogic Portal, BEA Systems
Paul Ritter, Program Manager - Collaboration and Content Management, The Yankee Group
Ramu V. Sunkara, Vice President, Oracle Real-Time Collaboration Products

I was suprised that IBM isn't involved in this one as it sounds like a play they are trying to make with Workplace. Kevin McLellan from IBM/Lotus is down to do another session, but I'm not sure if he'll be there as he was one of the unfortunates to be let go in the recent IBM resizing.

Comments

1 - "The internet is an amazing thing, to have customers that you have never met in person" Humm, it really is, but then what about LLBean, Land's end. I guess the Mail is an amazing thing, the same can probably apply to the telephone, and all those telemarketers. Pretty Amazing that these guys can Sell Chineese knives, or carpet cleaners over the telephone...... Having customers that you have never met in person, that's really ground breaking. On the same level as the Internal combustion engine, Peniciline and maybe semi conductors.....

Posted by At 12:35:20 PM On 10/14/2003 | - Website - |

2 - I don't think Kevin was let go....just coincidental timing. Shouldn't speak for him, but that's what I've heard.

Posted by Ed Brill At 03:06:49 PM On 10/14/2003 | - Website - |

3 - Response to the anonymous poster from France, I guess the thing is, I didn't have the LLBean, Sears, or Land's End budget to send thousands of catalogs out. In the same I never did telesales calls etc. The customer found us, we discussed product enhancements and requests all through email and Sametime chats and meetings. Sure I could have done that with snail mail, but I'd still be at it...

Thanks for your comment though it reminded me that I used to argue with people that the companies best positioned to take advantage of the internet were the mail order companies, some did and some didn't.

Posted by Carl At 05:09:07 PM On 10/14/2003 | - Website - |