LazyLion
King of de Jungle
Just got home from the day.
I'm gonna start with my run-up to the conference cos you know I am long-winded and nit-picky, If you want to just read about the conference you can scroll down a bit.
Getting to the Conference:
I left Alberton last night around 6:30 pm. Wife made me a nice Pork fillet so I had already had dinner. Drove up Klipriver to the M1 and the on the M1 to the Jan Smuts turn-off. Up Jan Smuts and William Nichol to my grandmother's place in Hurlingham.
Sat and chatted to her for a few hours, found out how the cousins are and heard how the poor lil doggie got run over in their driveway the night before (he was 18 years old). We watched SA's got talent and then she went off to bed. I watched Forrest Gump again on DSTV then retired to the guest room. There were sirens going off around William Nichol and Sandton Drive for around an hour at 10 pm.
Woke up around 7 am, got ready and had breakfast with my Ouma, fried eggs, tomato and a breadroll. Some coffee on the side.
I left her around 8:20 am and drove North up William Nichol to Main, the took Main (the M71) through to Midrand. Connected to New Road and then turned to Vodaworld. Got there just on 9 am.
The Conference itself:
Walked upstairs to the Vodaworld Events level. Met immediately by Cara who found me my name tag and gave me my conference packet. The Name Tags were just laid on the table not in any order, but we found mine pretty quick. It had my name and Company and Forum Nick on it. The name tags were sponsored by WebAfrica.
The paper bag was sponsored by Vox Telecom and inside was a Panda Anti-Virus Global Protection 2010 CD for 1 PC. There was a sports water-bottle from Neotel (haven't checked the coverage yet). Promotional literature from BlackBerry, G-Connect, Miro Distribution, and DigiChilli ISP. There was also a Conference Schedule in the bag.
Inside the Refreshments Hall there were booths for Telkom, BlackBerry, Miro, Panda, Dark Fibre Africa, Cisco, WebAfrica and Vodacom Data. Was nice to see them engaging the delegates as if it were an Exhibition or Expo. I chatted to the guys from DFA, WebAfrica and Vodacom. It sounds like WebAfrica still have some nice plans up their sleeves for us next year!
I went over to the Drinks Counter and bumped into Jannie Van Zyl from iBurst. He has a bright Orange iBurst shirt on so he was hard to miss! Was good to shake hands with him and give him greets again from all of us. Met some of the guys he works with at iBurst. Obviously he is swamped with all the cool changes they are implementing there at iBurst.
Chatted to a few other guys, had some Orange Juice and grabbed a bottle of water. Thanks for Vodacom for the drinks!
We filed into the Auditorium at 9:45, but sat around a few minutes. We kinda started a bit late. Aki Anistasiou arrived to start the conference. Rudolph and Cara were running around getting stuff ready. The Vodacom guys were playing some of the great Vodacom Ads on the Screens for us. There was the ad about Jan the Bok Supporter (player 23). The one with the guy who does the dance song for "you should have put the ring on it" and the one about the Bafana Training (The fans give the players their power). There were two big screens one on each side same as last year.
There were a lot more chairs set out this time. I dunno what the exact attendance figures were but it looked a lot more than last year.
So we only got started a little after 10 am. I think we were running about 20 mins late at that stage, but the schedule was much more streamlined this year, so it was not a worry. Aki introduced everybody, it was great to have him as the MC, you could see he loved it as well. Rudolph also welcomed everybody and we got underway.
The first speaker was John Holdsworth from ECN Telecoms and this was one of the highlights of the day. He gave a slick and well organised PowerPoint Slide show of what they do and where the market is today. He focused mainly on how Reducing telecoms Costs and how the high InterConnect Fees were holding back the market and how LLU and Roaming agreements should also play a fair role. He did an excellent job, was almost good enough to be the only talk for the conference.
The second speaker was Reshaad Sha from Cisco. He was a bit more soft spoken, but focused on the Connected Life. He gave stats of international usage, device usage, How mobile connections are outstripping fixed connections and what people are using them for. He fed a lot of info in from the recent survey they did. His poor slide show was not behaving so that threw him off kilter. But it was interesting nonetheless.
We then went into the first Panel Discussion on the topic of Broadband.
Brian Neilson was the chairperson here. there were also a few microphone problems here which was a bit distracting, but the length of these sessions was just perfect and actually made the day fly by. The main topic of discussion here seemed to me to revolved around reducing prices and so the blockages to price reduction were mentioned fairly frequently including LLU several times. There seemed to be a bit of overlap in questions here, but it was good to hear from the industry guys what they in their opinion thought was going on. Vox Telecom, iBurst, Web Africa, Neotel and Vodacom were all represented here.
Lunch was great. I ran out to my car first to drop off my bag of goodies, and I made a pit stop at the men's room. Then I returned back to the Refreshments hall. The way lunch was organised this year was much better and worked very well. People just filled the hall and the waiters walked in with smallish bowls of the food and people took a bowl and fork and ate while standing. At first I thought there was not going to be enough, but the waiters just kept coming and everybody had more than enough. There was Salad with a Spicy/Sweet dressing. Then a bowl of Penne Pasta with sauce. Then a lovely bowl of Lamb Stew with Veggies. Then finally dessert seemed to be some small truffle with cream. I also grabbed a can of Tab... and the drinks were flowing nicely again.
I bumped into Ginggs from here on the board. He had flown up from Cape Town the night before. The guys from WebAfrica had flown up early this morning. Also noticed a few other recogniseable Forum Nicks. Got to shake hands with Rudolph and introduce myself. The timing of lunch was just perfect. I dunno, but it seemed to me like the day flew by.
I grabbed another bottle of water and we went back for the last two sessions. The Vodacom Dancing Girls started us off with a dance to the same Beyonce song in the Advert. They had these nice little blue leotards on. You could tell the auditorium was quite full of geeks cos it took a while for the blood to flow from their brains to their lower extremities, but by the time the girls were finished there were loud whoops, cat calls and wolf whistles.
Rudolph then announced the winners of the MyBroadband Awards.
MTN for Mobile Provider of the year,
Telkom for Fixed line Provider,
Axxess for ISP of the year
ICASA for Mampara of the year
Well done to the winners.
The Second panel discussion was concerning Bandwidth and was reprsented by Seacom, SAT3/SAFE, WACS, MTN Data and DFA. Duncan McCleod very ably hosted the discussion! This was very interesting and we got to hear from these cable providers their perspective on why costs have not yet come down and when they expect them to come down.
The final panel discussion was around the topic of Telecoms and Rudolph chaired this session. The ISPA was there, the WUGS were represented, Ellipsis, Neology and IS also contributed. There was a lot of discussion around legal and regulatory issues. I was encouraged to hear how these guys viewed issues of piracy/copyright infringement and the policing of the internet. Suffice it to say they all have sane and rational views on that side of the Internet. there were a few questions about caps and costs and IPv6 etc. All in all very interesting.
Aki and Cara handed out lots of prizes, way more than last year! Well done to all the winners. Aki closed us out for the conference and thanked everyone for staying. We finished around 3:15 pm and everyone retired back to the refreshment hall for drinks. I had to leave to miss the traffic.
I went down the Ben Schoeman N1 and then down the M1. I was back at my office in Jeppestown by 4 pm.
Thanks rpm and Cara for a wonderful conference! Thanks to all the Sponsors and participants, it was truly a worth while day and I'm glad I went and privileged I got to go!
I'm gonna start with my run-up to the conference cos you know I am long-winded and nit-picky, If you want to just read about the conference you can scroll down a bit.
Getting to the Conference:
I left Alberton last night around 6:30 pm. Wife made me a nice Pork fillet so I had already had dinner. Drove up Klipriver to the M1 and the on the M1 to the Jan Smuts turn-off. Up Jan Smuts and William Nichol to my grandmother's place in Hurlingham.
Sat and chatted to her for a few hours, found out how the cousins are and heard how the poor lil doggie got run over in their driveway the night before (he was 18 years old). We watched SA's got talent and then she went off to bed. I watched Forrest Gump again on DSTV then retired to the guest room. There were sirens going off around William Nichol and Sandton Drive for around an hour at 10 pm.
Woke up around 7 am, got ready and had breakfast with my Ouma, fried eggs, tomato and a breadroll. Some coffee on the side.
I left her around 8:20 am and drove North up William Nichol to Main, the took Main (the M71) through to Midrand. Connected to New Road and then turned to Vodaworld. Got there just on 9 am.
The Conference itself:
Walked upstairs to the Vodaworld Events level. Met immediately by Cara who found me my name tag and gave me my conference packet. The Name Tags were just laid on the table not in any order, but we found mine pretty quick. It had my name and Company and Forum Nick on it. The name tags were sponsored by WebAfrica.
The paper bag was sponsored by Vox Telecom and inside was a Panda Anti-Virus Global Protection 2010 CD for 1 PC. There was a sports water-bottle from Neotel (haven't checked the coverage yet). Promotional literature from BlackBerry, G-Connect, Miro Distribution, and DigiChilli ISP. There was also a Conference Schedule in the bag.
Inside the Refreshments Hall there were booths for Telkom, BlackBerry, Miro, Panda, Dark Fibre Africa, Cisco, WebAfrica and Vodacom Data. Was nice to see them engaging the delegates as if it were an Exhibition or Expo. I chatted to the guys from DFA, WebAfrica and Vodacom. It sounds like WebAfrica still have some nice plans up their sleeves for us next year!
I went over to the Drinks Counter and bumped into Jannie Van Zyl from iBurst. He has a bright Orange iBurst shirt on so he was hard to miss! Was good to shake hands with him and give him greets again from all of us. Met some of the guys he works with at iBurst. Obviously he is swamped with all the cool changes they are implementing there at iBurst.
Chatted to a few other guys, had some Orange Juice and grabbed a bottle of water. Thanks for Vodacom for the drinks!
We filed into the Auditorium at 9:45, but sat around a few minutes. We kinda started a bit late. Aki Anistasiou arrived to start the conference. Rudolph and Cara were running around getting stuff ready. The Vodacom guys were playing some of the great Vodacom Ads on the Screens for us. There was the ad about Jan the Bok Supporter (player 23). The one with the guy who does the dance song for "you should have put the ring on it" and the one about the Bafana Training (The fans give the players their power). There were two big screens one on each side same as last year.
There were a lot more chairs set out this time. I dunno what the exact attendance figures were but it looked a lot more than last year.
So we only got started a little after 10 am. I think we were running about 20 mins late at that stage, but the schedule was much more streamlined this year, so it was not a worry. Aki introduced everybody, it was great to have him as the MC, you could see he loved it as well. Rudolph also welcomed everybody and we got underway.
The first speaker was John Holdsworth from ECN Telecoms and this was one of the highlights of the day. He gave a slick and well organised PowerPoint Slide show of what they do and where the market is today. He focused mainly on how Reducing telecoms Costs and how the high InterConnect Fees were holding back the market and how LLU and Roaming agreements should also play a fair role. He did an excellent job, was almost good enough to be the only talk for the conference.
The second speaker was Reshaad Sha from Cisco. He was a bit more soft spoken, but focused on the Connected Life. He gave stats of international usage, device usage, How mobile connections are outstripping fixed connections and what people are using them for. He fed a lot of info in from the recent survey they did. His poor slide show was not behaving so that threw him off kilter. But it was interesting nonetheless.
We then went into the first Panel Discussion on the topic of Broadband.
Brian Neilson was the chairperson here. there were also a few microphone problems here which was a bit distracting, but the length of these sessions was just perfect and actually made the day fly by. The main topic of discussion here seemed to me to revolved around reducing prices and so the blockages to price reduction were mentioned fairly frequently including LLU several times. There seemed to be a bit of overlap in questions here, but it was good to hear from the industry guys what they in their opinion thought was going on. Vox Telecom, iBurst, Web Africa, Neotel and Vodacom were all represented here.
Lunch was great. I ran out to my car first to drop off my bag of goodies, and I made a pit stop at the men's room. Then I returned back to the Refreshments hall. The way lunch was organised this year was much better and worked very well. People just filled the hall and the waiters walked in with smallish bowls of the food and people took a bowl and fork and ate while standing. At first I thought there was not going to be enough, but the waiters just kept coming and everybody had more than enough. There was Salad with a Spicy/Sweet dressing. Then a bowl of Penne Pasta with sauce. Then a lovely bowl of Lamb Stew with Veggies. Then finally dessert seemed to be some small truffle with cream. I also grabbed a can of Tab... and the drinks were flowing nicely again.
I bumped into Ginggs from here on the board. He had flown up from Cape Town the night before. The guys from WebAfrica had flown up early this morning. Also noticed a few other recogniseable Forum Nicks. Got to shake hands with Rudolph and introduce myself. The timing of lunch was just perfect. I dunno, but it seemed to me like the day flew by.
I grabbed another bottle of water and we went back for the last two sessions. The Vodacom Dancing Girls started us off with a dance to the same Beyonce song in the Advert. They had these nice little blue leotards on. You could tell the auditorium was quite full of geeks cos it took a while for the blood to flow from their brains to their lower extremities, but by the time the girls were finished there were loud whoops, cat calls and wolf whistles.
Rudolph then announced the winners of the MyBroadband Awards.
MTN for Mobile Provider of the year,
Telkom for Fixed line Provider,
Axxess for ISP of the year
ICASA for Mampara of the year
Well done to the winners.
The Second panel discussion was concerning Bandwidth and was reprsented by Seacom, SAT3/SAFE, WACS, MTN Data and DFA. Duncan McCleod very ably hosted the discussion! This was very interesting and we got to hear from these cable providers their perspective on why costs have not yet come down and when they expect them to come down.
The final panel discussion was around the topic of Telecoms and Rudolph chaired this session. The ISPA was there, the WUGS were represented, Ellipsis, Neology and IS also contributed. There was a lot of discussion around legal and regulatory issues. I was encouraged to hear how these guys viewed issues of piracy/copyright infringement and the policing of the internet. Suffice it to say they all have sane and rational views on that side of the Internet. there were a few questions about caps and costs and IPv6 etc. All in all very interesting.
Aki and Cara handed out lots of prizes, way more than last year! Well done to all the winners. Aki closed us out for the conference and thanked everyone for staying. We finished around 3:15 pm and everyone retired back to the refreshment hall for drinks. I had to leave to miss the traffic.
I went down the Ben Schoeman N1 and then down the M1. I was back at my office in Jeppestown by 4 pm.
Thanks rpm and Cara for a wonderful conference! Thanks to all the Sponsors and participants, it was truly a worth while day and I'm glad I went and privileged I got to go!
Enjoyed it, nice to be able to hear the thing even though its far far away 
