It's always good to see Doc Searls, and I'm glad I had the chance to hang out with him at the recent ISPCON Fall 2006 conference. He's been a friend of Tucows since he first met us as ISPCON years ago, and he's been up to Toronto for a number of visits since then, the most recent one being last year's Christmas holiday party. In fact, it was a blogger get-together that he had during his visit in early 2003 that led to my getting a job here.

Doc's long time friendship with Tucows and Elliot is probably why their ISPCON opening keynote, Internet Service: The Fifth Utility? was more like a listening in on a casual conversation than attending a panel discussion. In their hour-long chat, Doc and Elliot talked about the internet not as a bonus service offered by telcos, but as a utility on par with things like roads, water, waste treatment and electricity. I attended this keynote and made a recording of their chat, which you can hear by downloading the podcast below.

We'd like to express our thanks to Jon Price, Denise Miller and the rest of the people behind ISPCON Fall 2006 for putting on a great conference, and to Doc for driving up to San Jose to take part in the keynote.

Podcast: The Internet: The Fifth Utility
File	Tucows Podcasts - Internet Service -- The Fifth Utility.mp3
Format	MP3 file
Length	57 minutes, 54 seconds
File size	28.9 MB

It was standing room only for this session. In what has become an ISPCON tradition, Mike Cassidy (site) (blog) a marketing consultant for service providers, presented the hottest products and services for 2007.

On the second day of ISPCON I managed to stop event organizer Jon Price for a few moments and asked him about why he's been blogging up a storm at the ISPCON Blog.

(If you're reading this in your feedreader you won't see the video, but you can catch it by clicking here.)

I've long been impressed by the success of Dreamhost's affiliate marketing program, so when I had a chance at ISPCON to talk to Josh and Dallas - co-founders of Dreamhost - I had to ask about the program. They gave some really candid insights. Enjoy!

(If you are reading the feed you won't see the embedded video, so click here to see it.)

I really enjoyed this panel discussion with four service providers who shared their insights. These guys are progressive examples of the evolution of the Internet service provider:

Dane Jasper, CEO, Sonic.net
Jonathan Snyder, president, CEO and director, KeyOn Communications
Dan Hoffman, president and CEO, M5 Networks
Rich Bader, president and CEO, EasyStreet Online Services

Moderator: Paul Stapleton, managing director, DH Capital LLC.

Call me a keener. I had two cups of coffee at breakfast and did this session at 8:45 a.m. Wednesday morning with David Snead and Isabel Wang.

The session focused on legal risks of the emerging opportunities for web hosts. While, I appreciate pragmatic legal counsel, the discussion of risk at this session far outweighed the discussion of opportunity. It was a bit of a buzz kill. The information and advice wasn't bad however, especially if you're a web host considering new opportunities.

Here's the recap.
The shift in web hosting services means:
- New contract issues
- Data retention is high risk
- Conduit status may be affected
- Pay attention to intellectual property

There's more detail after the jump.

As a Tucows newbie, I'm at ISPCON to soak up insights about the industry, meet our partners and pick up on trends.

The Hotshows in Hosting session was an interactive round-table featuring perspective from:
- Christian Dawson, director, corporate development, ServInt Internet Services
- Will Charnock, vice president, technology, EV1 Servers/The Planet
- Christopher Faulkner, founder, president & CEO, C I Host
- Ted Smith, vice president, dedicated hosting, Peer 1 Networks

Moderated the by Candice Rodriguez from Web Host Industry Review, the panel focused largely on how these companies became leaders in web hosting. Lots of inside scoop on how to build a leading hosting business after the jump.

A few weeks ago, over at One Degree I had the good fortunate to interview co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto David Weinberger about misperceptions people have of the message Cluetrain was meant to deliver. ISPCON gave me a chance to ask another cluetrain author, Doc Searls the same question...

(Apologies to Doc for cutting his reply short. The memory card in my camera seems to have given up the ghost. Sad yes, but this gives Joey and me a chance to check out the local Frys).

At ISPCON earlier today I talked to HostMySite.com CEO Lou Honick about how you use great customer service to attract new business.

Tucows as a large contingent at ISPCON in Santa Clara this week. Along with taking in the sessions, doing presentations, hanging out at our booth and generally connecting with customers and community, we're also looking forward to sharing much of the conference experience with you oh humble Tucows Blog reader. Watch for videos, podcasts and blog posts from and about the conference.

For most of this week, we'll be in Santa Clara, California, where we'll be making our presence known at ISPCON, the premier conference for internet service providers, hosting companies and VOIP providers. We'll be milling about the conferences, manning our booth on the exhibit floor and presenting at three different sessions, one on each day of the conference (which runs from Tuesday, November 7th through Thursday, November 9th).

We'll be blogging from the conference floor, so watch this space for updates!

Where the Conference Is, and How to Get In for Free

The conference takes place at the Santa Clara Convention Center (5001 Great America Parkway, Santa Clara).

As a sponsor of the conference, we've got an unlimited number of free passes to ISPCON for you to download. These passes will admit you to:

• The exhibit hall, where among other things, you'll find our booth. We'll have a number of product managers and our sales team here, who'll be more than happy to demonstrate our internet services.
• Keynotes, including the opening one featuring our very own CEO Elliot Noss and Doc Searls, Internet Service: The Fifth Utility?
• Networking events
• Vendor-sponsored education sessions

If you want a guest pass, click here for the PDF file [816K PDF file]. Print it out and bring it to the conference, where you'll be admitted for free.

In the Exhibit Hall - The Tucows Booth

We've got a booth on the exhibit hall (booth 501), where you can see demonstrations of Tucows' services, talk with us in person, and if you're very lucky, perhaps get your paws on some valuable Tucows swag. Come on down and say hi!

Here's a map of the exhibit hall, showing the location of the Tucows booth:

Tuesday, November 7th, 2:00 - 3:00 p.m. - Internet Service: The Fifth Utility?

Tucows CEO Elliot Noss will be one of the speakers at ISPCON's opening keynote, titled Internet Service: The Fifth Utility?. He'll be presenting with Cluetrain Manifesto co-author, Linux Journal editor and popular blogger Doc Searls. Here's the description of the keynote from the conference schedule:

The telco/cableco duopoly continues to see the Net as gravy on their basic services (and are more motivated to get into each other's business than do anything new with the Internet). Meanwhile, communities, competitors and customers are creating their own bypass while treating the Net as a "fifth utility" alongside water, waste treatment, roads and electric services. To make matters even more interesting, giants like Google and Microsoft are building massive computing clouds to support a shift toward on-demand services.

How is this all going to play out? Will the incumbents succeed in efforts to thwart muni networks? Does access even make sense as a utility? Are there benefits to incumbency other than creating scarcities everywhere they have a choke-hold? Who has the advantage or stands to thrive and survive in a this new utility-based infrastructure model? Where will ISPs, Hosts and WISPs fit in all this? Can you line up behind, alongside or in front of the citizens and elected officials or are you on a collision course? Once the service is deployed, what will it be like, who will use it and how?

Doc and Elliot will discuss the range of issues surrounding how this kind of accessibility to the net changes everything and why it matters to you. From changing patterns of use, new applications, shifting adoption and behavioral habits to altering the landscape of competition while favoring different services, unique models for varied applications and insight on how one should build a business around this redefined service relationship.

Wednesday, November 8th, 4:15 - 5:15 p.m. - What the Web 2.0?

Here's my session: I'll be moderating a panel What the Web 2.0? discussion about Web 2.0 from an ISP and hosting service point of view. Although it's at the end of the day, I think the audience will be awake for this one, as we've got a group of interesting panelists in addition to a scintillating moderator. Here's the description of the event:

You can talk all day long about blogs, tags, MySpace and YouTube without putting a single dollar in your pocket. We're going to spend this hour together doing the exact opposite. First we'll cover the "what and why" of the subject through an overview of the direct and indirect value these big trends represent for ISPs, Hosts and customers. Then, we'll address the "how" of providers and customers alike who are leveraging these technologies out in the wild with some best practices. Finally, the "wow" being the business impact it is having, it's potential, overall customer behavior/usage habits, effects on bandwidth, churn, ARPU, adoption and of course how this all translates into real dollars in your pocket, better customer relationships and unique value in the marketplace.

Here's the roster of people on the panel:

• Javier Hall, CCO, Userplane
• Kevin Henrikson, Director of Engineering, Zimbra
• Josh Jones, CJO and Co-Founder, DreamHost
• Ivaylo Lenkov, CTO and Founder, SiteKreator
• Dallas Bethune, Co-Founder / CTO, DreamHost

Thursday, November 9th, 12:45 - 1:45 p.m. - 30 Rapid-fire Website Wins, Guaranteed

On Thursday, Ken will make his presentation, 30 Rapid-fire Website Wins, Guaranteed, where he'll show you how to make the most of your website. Here's the official conference description:

Many ISPs and Hosts fail to realize the full potential of their own websites and spend little time updating, let alone optimizing them to achieve key business objectives. What's the desired outcome for your site? Serve as a local community portal, a customer extranet for support or webmail, a place to showcase solutions, convert new leads to customers or just tired brochureware for that snazzy $19.95 dial-up? During this fast-paced "no holds barred" session, Internet best practice expert Ken Schafer will guide you through 30 ways to make your site dramatically better and meet key business objectives. Using dozens of examples, we'll provide eye-opening insights into how these Quick Wins and Big Ideas can shape your site and provide an unfair advantage over your competitors. GUARANTEE: If at the end of the session you don't feel you have at least five techniques that will improve YOUR site, Ken will personally assess your site and give you five ways to improve it!