This video is a perfect summation of how I feel about twitter… It’s a hilarious 4 minutes on the absurdity of it all. Granted it’s a little extreme, but for the most part it hits the nail on the head.
Props to Tom Keating from TMC posting it at his VoIP and Gadget blog site…
I really love when companies that I don’t think are completely approachable completely prove me wrong… Well that’s how I feel about TMC this week, I received a response from Greg Galitzine, Editorial Director of INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine, via his blog regarding the Best in Show award that they gave to Interactive Intelligence at the 2009 IT Expo East. (Read my initial thoughts.) To break it down quickly I agree with him, on the surface it seems funny for Interactive Intelligence to receive an “SMB” award. But as Greg points out: “While small and medium business, or SMB, generally implies companies on the smaller end of the spectrum, we often tend to forget the “M” or mid-size group of businesses.” (Click here to read the full story at tmcnet.com.)
Well that makes sense to me… I am man enough to admit when I’m wrong, and in this case, I admit it. So thank you Greg for the clarification.
Well, I didn’t win the Jeep this year at ITExpo… One of the 8,309 people that did attend drove it home… It’s no surprise to me that the attendance numbers for this year’s ITExpo were up 15%. I was busy the whole show and barely had time to attend the sessions that I had mapped out for myself. However, the show also felt smaller a little more compressed than last year. Exhibit space square footage just didn’t seem like it compared to a year ago… Maybe the bus that was parked on the show floor last year made it feel bigger… Well in my opinion it’s still a heck of a show, and definitely the place to be if you play in this communications space. Click here for Rich Tehrani’s breakdown of the final numbers for 2009.
So I feel I need to clear up the the stink that I caused with Interactive Intelligence and their Best In Show Award that was issued to them by the show’s editors for “Best SMB Solution”. As I mentioned in the previous blog post, InIn was given the award at the 2009 IT Expo East show in Miami. (Click here for a complete list of winners.) Here is my excerpt if you didn’t read the whole post (It was a little lengthy):
“Shortly before the show closed I attended a “Bullseye routing” demo given by Interactive Intelligence. Now what caught my eye here is the award in the picture. “Best SMB Solution” was what it read… SMB Solution? There is nothing SMB about Interactive Intelligence and their solution. They don’t pretend to be SMB and will always claim to be an enterprise solution. I asked one of the InIn folks and she wasn’t sure what that was all about but would look into it. I even approached TMC’s Greg Galitzine about it and he told me he’d look into it. Greg I’m going to hold you to that and expect a response…”
Well I didn’t get a response from Greg yet but I did speak with an Interactive Intelligence representative working the booth and she told me that their PR representative made a mistake and entered them into that category. Now I don’t think she was giving me lip service and that this was an honest mistake on the PR rep’s part, but I still have a problem here.
So where’s the beef do you ask? Well in my humble opinion, the editors at TMC should have caught this mistake. They live and die in this communications space and should know that II solutions are not SMB but rather definitivly enterprise. There is not even a blend where it could cross the chasm and maybe, even remotely be SMB designed, etc. So TMC editors, I ask that if you want these awards to really mean something, which I think do, please, please, please make sure you review your applications a little more closely, and make sure the shoe fits, so to speak, before you issue the next round of awards. I understand that you guys are busy at these shows and that may be a difficult task, but a glaring error like this should not go undetected until after the fact.
The show was fantastic otherwise, I spoke with more people then I expected, and attendance seems like it was record breaking. So hats off to TMC in that respect. You guys do know how to put on a communications conference and I can’t wait to see what the show in Los Angeles in October will bring.
Editors note: Click here to read the outcome.