February 26th, 2007 |
Matt Russell has raised some interesting questions about HostingCon Connect in a recent blog posting. I’ll try to answer them and alleviate some of his (and possibly others’) concerns here.
Matt said:
“It looks like this will develop into some third party networking service from what I’ve read. I have to question the value of this though. Networking is effective when done directly. The involvement of a third party (and probably at a cost) diminishes this and is not attractive to me.”
HostingCon Connect does not have any cost associated with it. It is meant to enhance HostingCon participants ability to network and get things done at HostingCon. There are certainly aspects of the tools that could be used year-round to make getting in contact with the appropriate people from vendors and other industry players easier. But the goal of the HostingCon Connect tools is to enhance HostingCon participants’ effectiveness at the show. Some of the feedback we receive from attendees is that they wish it was easier to get in touch with people who are attending the show so they could get together. One attendee told me directly that they knew someone they wanted to talk to was at the show but didn’t have an easy way to set up a time to get together. Those are the types of things we’re trying to help with. Will we be successful this first year? Who knows. But that’s why we’re seeking feedback on the tools - so we can build out a toolset that will help people take advantage of HostingCon.
Matt went on to say:
“I also have privacy issues with people knowing who you are talking to and what about, imagine that being sold to a competitor to give them an advantage over you!”
We have a pretty strict privacy policy, which is linked to all the HostingCon 2007 and HostingCon Connect pages. We do not, and will not, sell any information about who HostingCon Connect users are networking with to anyone.
Finally, Matt said:
“If it makes networking and arranging meetings with industry peers, I’m all for it. Until we see exactly what it is though, I remain skeptical.”
And that, in a nutshell, is our goal — making networking and arranging meetings with industry peers easier. Matt (and others out there who may be thinking along the same lines), we don’t want you to be skeptical. We want you to let us know what we can add to or change in HostingCon Connect to make it work for you. What would help you more effectively network with others in the industry? What would help make your HostingCon experience more useful?
February 24th, 2007 |
Late last year we launched a section of hostingcon.com called HostingCon Connect. Just what is this all about?
Well, that’s not completely decided yet. We have some functionality there now and will be adding some more in the coming months, but we’re definately open to suggestions. In this post I’m going to detail what’s there now and what’s planned.
Let’s start with what’s there now. Right now, HostingCon Connect is the place where all of the content that isn’t related to a specific HostingCon show goes. That means this blog, management features for individuals and exhibitors, and the “Connect” functionality — social networking for the hosted services industry. The networking tools are still in development and pretty rough right now.
What’s coming? More enhancements to the social networking aspects, mainly. New ways to communicate and work with your network will be rolled out soon. New features like to-dos and calendaring will be coming in the next couple of months to help make your experience at the HostingCon 2007 show better. You’ll be able to do things like look at the conference schedule, find the sessions you like and quickly add them to your calendar on the site. Then you’ll be able to expose your calendar to your network so that they can see where you’ll be. You’ll also be able to set up meetings with people in your network.
We’re still exploring other features and functionality to add to the site. Are there things you think would be helpful to you before, during, and after HostingCon? Looking at the things I talked about above, are there features you think we need to make sure we have around networking, calendaring and to-dos?
Let me know by commenting on this post or emailing info@hostingcon.com. Thanks!
February 22nd, 2007 |
As some of you may have read, the HostingCon 2007 Advisory Board met yesterday to do some in depth planning for the show. One of the things we decided to do was set up a wiki so we could keep all the information about the conference topics and speakers in one place. This will make it easier for the board members to see who’s working on what, who’s contacted who, etc.
I figured that since I was setting up a wiki for use by the board members why not open it up to everyone who’s involved with HostingCon — attendees, exhibitors, speakers and press. The new HostingCon Connect Wiki is up and running, so feel free to start adding pages and editing pages.
I just installed TikiWiki today, so I may need to tweak some of the features of it. If you find something that’s not working right or a feature you think should be there that isn’t, let me know with a comment here or via email to groberts@hostingcon.com.
