July 27th, 2007 |

I had the opportunity to be interviewed by Brett Tabke of WebmasterWorld.com on the last day of the show.  Here’s the interview:

There is an accompanying article on WebmasterWorld.com.

July 26th, 2007 |

The staff at Interjuncture would like to extend a thank you to all the exhibitors, speakers and attendees who helped to create another great HostingCon!

There are some pictures available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/sirtwist/sets/72157600985561496/.  I’ll post more as I get them in.

Thanks again and we look forward to seeing you at HostingCon 2008, July 28-30, 2008 at Navy Pier in Chicago!

June 19th, 2007 |

For those members of the press and analyst community who have been waiting for registration to open, the wait is over.  Please visit our press/analyst registration area to get your press passes to HostingCon 2007 today.

March 20th, 2007 |

I briefly mentioned this in the email we sent out to past attendees, but I’d like to more fully explain what we’re doing with our Early Bird registration contest.

So, the important question: what are we giving away?

Two (2) hotel stays - Complimentary hotel stay (up to four [4] nights) at the official conference hotel that you reserved your room at; if you reserved your room at the W you’ll get that room for free, if you reserved at the Sheraton you’ll get that free.

Five (5) full conference passes - Complimentary Full Conference registration for five winners

So, what do you need to do to be eligible for this drawing?

It’s simple:

1. Register for HostingCon 2007 by 23:59:59 CDT (central daylight savings time), June 8, 2007.
2. Reserve Your Room at one of the two official conference hotels by 23:59:59 CDT, June 8, 2007.
3. Log in to hostingcon.com and go to Account Management.  On that page is a place where you can enter your hotel confirmation code that you received when you reserved your room.  If you are sharing a room with another attendee, you can both enter the same confirmation code.

On or shortly after June 15, 2007, we will randomly pick the seven winners and will notify them via email.  Once they have been notified, we’ll post the winners here on the blog.

Exhibitors and their staff, speakers, and those with press registrations are not eligible and will not be included in the drawing.

Remember, the deadline is June 8th, so get your registrations and hotel room reservations in today!

March 9th, 2007 |

I’ve just corrected a problem with the registration system, so if you were experiencing the following behavior, it has been corrected.

What was happening was if you were not logged into the system and tried to use the login form on the registration page it was not logging you in properly.  It would take you to the HostingCon Connect signup page, which of course would not allow you to sign up again because you already have an account.

The problem has been corrected and if you use the login form on the registration page it will log you in properly and take you to the registration process.

Please let us know at info@hostingcon.com if you have any questions or have any problems registering.

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 1st, 2007 |

I know I’ve received a lot of questions about which hotel we’d be getting discounted rates at for the HostingCon 2007 show.  Well, we’ve been hard at work trying to get great hotels at the best price we can for our attendees.  And I’m now happy to announce… (drumroll please)

Our official conference hotels will be the W Chicago Lakeshore and the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers.  The rates for the W will be $229 a night and the Sheraton will be $179 a night.  The W’s normal rates for the dates of HostingCon 2007 are $339 a night and up and the Sheraton’s are $259 a night and up, so we’re getting some significant savings.

We’ve also gotten a discount on Internet Access for those staying at the W or Sheraton.  I’ll need to double check, but I believe the rate is $7.50 per day at both which is a 50% savings off the normal daily rate.  There’s also a discount on parking if you’re driving.  As I get a chance to go through everything I’ll update our Hotel & Travel page with more information.

Reservations are not yet open for the two hotels but will be shortly.  We’re working with both properties to get online and phone reservations set up and I hope they’ll be up and available within the next week or two.  When they are available we’ll open up the conference registration at the same time.  I will, of course, announce it here.

As we’re now a little under 6 months away from HostingCon 2007 you’ll start to see me post more regularly here in the blog to keep people up to date on the latest show information.  I recommend that you subscribe to our RSS feed with your favorite feedreader.  All the feeds are listed in the right navigation box.

January 29th, 2007 |

Isabel Wang had a very interesting post today about Six Apart’s integration with Windows Vista and how they want every company to have a blog.  Isabel went on to ask whether hosted service providers should expect customers to adjust their thinking to be in line with the service provider’s or the other way around.

I believe that service providers offering hosted services need to take a big step back and look at what their customers and potential customers want.  Customers who have become accustomed to “standard” terminology and service packaging in the industry would probably be satisfied with the status quo.  But service providers don’t want to just exchange customers back and forth, do they?

In order to be understandable and relevant to the potential customers currently sitting on the sidelines, service providers are going to have to start marketing their services in ways that make sense to those customers.  Isabel said “the average consumer probably doesn’t know how to install scripts.”  Some of you may be thinking that you have a “simple” script installer.  Really?  They may seem simple to you but I would venture to say that a large number of people would still find them confusing.

Why do people like services like Flickr?  Because they do what they want them to do (in this case, host photos) and they do it simply and easily.  Is Flickr (part of Yahoo) a hosting company?  In the traditional sense of the term, no.  But you may have noticed that we’ve started using the term “hosted services” instead of “hosting” here on the HostingCon website.  Why?  Because there are many different facets to hosted services today.  Website hosting, hosted messaging, hosted VOIP, hosted applications and more are now considered “hosting.”

Our conference program for HostingCon 2007 is going to talk pretty heavily about the new face of “hosting.”  Expect a lot of discussions about new services that hosted service providers are offering.

November 8th, 2006 |

The Sponsorship and Exhibitor Prospectus and Contract are now available for the HostingCon 2007 show at Navy Pier in Chicago.  More information on additional marketing opportunities will be coming in the next few days.

See the Exhibit section for more information.