Welcome to PR Vibes™, created by Calysto Communications to provide you with key insights into the publications and events in the telecommunications industry. Today, we’re featuring a short interview with Jon Arnold, co-chair of the Smart Grid Summit.
To help you better understand The Smart Grid Summit’s focus this year and in the future, we asked Jon to share some of his insight on the event, and on the blending of telecommunications, IP and smart grid technologies in general. Enjoy!
What is your vision for the Smart Grid Summit?
Shidan Gouran, a serial technology entrepreneur in Toronto, and I both started seeing the smart grid opportunity starting to emerge over the last year, and we formed Intelligent Communications Partners (ICP) to take advantage of this opportunity. ICP has partnered with TMC to co-produce the Smart Grid Summit. We wanted to leverage our combined experience in the telecom, IT and IP communications worlds and find a way to connect with the smart grid sector.
This is VoIP all over again. The utility sector is going through the same modernization phase and facing the same challenges that telecom went through 10 years ago with the advent of IP communications technologies. We see a lot of patterns duplicating themselves. Our view is that smart grid can take in a lot of elements we see every day in our space. Telcos and vendors have a lot to offer to those in the smart grid space, and utilities need to learn about what opportunities are available.
We also want to emphasize that smart grid is a broadly used concept. Utilities tend to focus on infrastructure, but there is second part of equation, the smart home, which is more interesting and where utilities have to connect and interact with subscribers. Technologies like SIP provide new ways that utilities can engage with customers. Out of those opportunities come innovations, business models, new revenue streams and services. We want to bring those worlds together into one conference to share ideas and help smart grid technology move forward.
What is the main focus of the Smart Grid Summit?
We are taking a unique approach to this market by providing a forum for a unique combination of telecom, IP, IT and smart grid participants to exchange ideas and learn. We have developed a program that will focus on everything from smart grid basics to modern network solutions for a smart grid. Utilities can learn what telecom companies have done and how those actions apply to their situations. Telecomm companies can find opportunities for partnerships and share their expertise with utilities.
We bring a lot of our experience in telecom, IT and IP. Now that experience fits into the bigger picture of how to enter the smart grid and smart home market.
What is the benefit of being co-located with IT EXPO East? What does that mean?
Our core audience is going to be a mix of both worlds—utilities and telecom. There are also some who will purchase an overall ITExpo pass, which will give them access to all of the co-located events, so we expect to get our share of people who are ITExpo attendees coming to our sessions.
Who and how many are you expecting to attend?
Our first Summit was a one-day event in Los Angeles in September, co-located with ITExpo West. Forty people registered specifically for the Summit, and filled the room. We had a great level of energy the whole day. People didn’t leave and there was lots of talk that kept ideas flowing. We create a forum where people can learn and exchange ideas. To me that is more important than how many people we get. Still, I would like to see 100 specific Smart Grid attendees this time. A lot of speakers were willing to come back and speak at this event, which suggests that they had a good experience last time.
Who and how many are you expecting to exhibit?
About five or so exhibitors will exhibit in the Smart Grid Pavilion on the ITExpo show floor, and they will benefit from the exposure of the several thousand attendees expected to be walking the floor of the Expo.
What can attendees expect from the conference portion of the event?
We could easily have doubled the number of tracks but had to narrow the conference down to several sessions. Some of the highlights include a Smart Grid 101 panel, which will lead off the conference and explain smart grid basics, a session discussing utility market deployments and one explaining what opportunities are available for smart home applications. A couple of venture capitalists will speak about the opportunities for start-ups. Another panel will talk about what utilities can learn from telcos, and there will also be a green technology session.
What can attendees expect from the keynotes?
Our conference features four keynote speakers, including Kevin Suitor from Redline Communications, who will speak about WiMAX, one of telecom technologies well-suited for smart grid applications. Other speakers include Ryusuke Masuoka, Ph.D., Trusted Systems Innovation Group, Fujitsu Laboratories of America, Inc. and Ron Sega, Vice President for Energy, Environment and Applied Research with Colorado State University Research Foundation, and a former NASA astronaut, who flew aboard Space Shuttles Discovery (1994) and Atlantis (1996). John Bryan, president, Secure Smart Grid Association, will talk about the new association, as well as security issues.
What special features/events are you planning for the show?
Live cage has an agreement with TMC to offer on-site streaming video of selected speakers, interviews and panel sessions, which may include some of the Smart Grid content and will provide some real-time buzz and broaden the reach of event beyond those who are attending.
Along with our conference initiative is the Smart Grid portal, which we launched last summer in a joint venture with TMC. In December, we had 670,000 visitors, so we are already attracting substantial traffic. The portal ties into the goals of what are doing. It provides a combination of industry news and thought leadership, which Shidan and I provide. We regularly contribute articles to the portal, including interviews with smart grid and telecom execs. We are building a pipeline of contributors and are always looking for thought leaders in the industry who want a forum to reach this specific audience. We have a nice mix of content on the portal that complements our conference well.
What are your goals for the event?
First, the Summit has grown from a one-day launch event in September to a full three-day event including exhibitors. The Smart Grid Summit is at a critical mass. We now have all of the pieces in place to serve the space. Our goal is to show we have a viable event that works with the TMC audience.
The next goal to demonstrate that we have a good, strong community here by bringing this combination of worlds together in way not anybody else has done or can do.
The third goal is to establish that we can reach this market as effectively as anybody else. There are a lot of grid events out there, but even the established shows are small and none have the traffic that ITExpo brings. We can bring this broad audience together, and we have ability to grow it through the infrastructure of ITExpo. Doubling size the next time around is in the realm of possibility.