Mobile World Congress 2016 – Too Big to Ignore

Posted by on Mar 8, 2016 This year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) broke 100,000 attendees. That’s up from 94,000 in 2015. The Barcelona-based event is too big to ignore, and too big for vendors to skip. Meanwhile, the event’s organizer, the GSMA, appears to be sitting pretty. According to Light Reading (LR), two years ago it generated $164 million, when attendees numbered only 85,000. Vendor angst is a reality, as the...
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3 College-Football, Tech-Writing Lessons

Posted by on Jan 9, 2016 Two football teams are about to play for the national championship. I grew up in the shadow of one. Which raises the question: What I did learn in that town that relates to what I do today? Here are three college-football, tech-writing lessons, and a few related questions: 1) Brands matter. The local university adopted a new logo when I was in grade school. Decades later, it still triggers...
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Screw the Valley – Review Essay

Posted by on Nov 13, 2015 Silicon Valley gets plenty of attention. The Santa Clara Valley itself is beautiful, and companies based there have created staggering amounts of innovation and value. I have reported on and been happy to collaborate with many of them. So business reporters and analysts are right to focus on the Valley. But as important as it is, there comes a time when you just need to look beyond. Even players...
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Cable-Tec Expo ’15 – A Return to New Orleans

Posted by on Oct 24, 2015 There’s a temptation to pack the passport when traveling to New Orleans. I left it at home, but upon arriving for Cable-Tec Expo ‘15, knew that I was once again in a place both familiar and strange. New Orleans is foreign for well-known reasons. It’s familiar for particular ones. My first visit was for Cable-Tec Expo 2000, fifteen years ago, and I’d been back several times. Other ties relate to...
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Data Centers, IoT and Connecting the Dots

Posted by on Sep 9, 2015 As a tech writer working mostly incognito on behalf a range of companies, I can identify myself much less often than I could when working as a journalist. Ghost writers under NDAs don’t have bylines. Two recent projects, however, bear my name. In one case, I wrote a position paper about advanced data centers. In another, I co-authored an article about the Internet of Things (IoT) for a...
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Going to IBC – or Not?

Posted by on Sep 4, 2015 It’s been several years since I last attended IBC. Registering late, I found a hotel in Zandvoort, a town on the North Sea about 30 km west of Amsterdam and the RAI Convention Center, where I spent a few days with colleagues at the online publication Videonet. A busy event for some 55,000 video pros, IBC is not nearly as crazed as CES, which draws more than three times as many people. But it’s...
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