Mark Evans

VON Canada Buzz: Not VoIP but Slingbox

So, you want to know what people are talking about at VON Canada? Well, it's not Vonage because they're not here. It's not Skype because Niklas Zennstrom bailed on his keynote. The most buzz is about…wait for it….Slingbox. Jim Courtney is walking around showing off Slingbox on his new Dell laptop and his Dell Axim. He was tempting Jon Arnold by showing the Boston Red Sox home opener. The Slingbox was officially unveiled in Canada last week - buy one at your local Future Shop or Best Buy for $299. The one question I have is: who's the target market? Is it just road warriors? Iotum's Howard Thaw said he believes it's anyone who wants to watch TV while away from home - whether it's teenagers with laptops and wireless devices, or people waiting for a doctor's appointment. Perhaps the most intriguing comment about Slingbox was made by Manitoba Telecom's Kelvin Shepherd who speculated about striking a partnership deal. This makes complete sense because Slingbox encourages people to use their broadband service more often and consumer more bytes, which is just the kind of consumption habits that broadband service providers like to see.
Update: In response to a comment about highlights from the first day of VON Canada. To be frank, there wasn't much to get excited about.Alec Saunders of Iotum talked about the changing landscape within the telecom industry and the growing importance of applications vs. connectivity. Bell Canada's Ron Close delivered a peppy sales pitch for Bell Digital Voice, which he described as "simply better" than offered by rivals such as Rogers, Videotron and Vonage. And there appeared to be some buzz about building APIs for Skype.
     To be honest, the most interesting "news" was delivered by Jeff Pulver, who opened a panel on blogging (on which I participated) by talking about how he's moving the "V" in VON from voice to video. This makes total sense given VoIP is losing some of its buzz and, more important for Pulver, its ability to attract people to conferences. Pulver clearly sees the writing on the wall and he's scrambling to embrace video as quickly as possible. He's had a wonderful 10-year run with VoIP and, in the process, build a thriving conference, consulting and publishing empire. But Pulver is also smart enough to realize if he doesn't morph VON out of voice, the business is going to fade away. Hence, the aggressive move into video because video=growth=$$.
Update: IP Democracy has a post on an interview that the L.A. Times did with Jeff Pulver on his move from voice to video. Give Pulver credit, he's a first-rate marketer.