Sipping vs Guzzling - ISTE 2010

I attended my first ISTE then NECC in Seattle in 1997. I paid for the opportunity to work with a great bunch of Seattle folks to learn how to properly terminate and pull both Cat 5 and fiber optic cable. We then pulled the connectivity throughout the Convention Center and work rooms for sessions and the actual convention. I learned so much and enjoyed getting to know people that we worked with, even getting to pull fiber optic cable up in the catwalk of the center. That year there were three T-1's coming in to the convention center and that was mainly for the vendors. we left all the cabling in place and then the CC was torn down 2 years later as Seattle built a new state of the art facility.

This year as I head to ISTE 2010, I wonder if the Convention Center knows who is coming to town and what is about to happen? Sure they have been working with ISTE and the University of Oregon prepping long and hard but do they really know this group of folks? While not all of the attendees are on the bleeding edge, many of these people are carrying laptops, wireless devices in their pockets and they will not be there sipping connectivity. These people will be guzzling at the trough of wireless connectivity. This is a group that uses streaming video, social networking for back channels, email, voicemail, cloud applications and I am sure many other things that I have not even mentioned here.

I am sure that if we had some way of being in what we called the War Room in Seattle in 1997, we might hear the equivalent of the Death Star dying on Monday. The question will be are the systems in place to handle the 15,000 members of the Geek Squad (with apologies to Best Buy) that are about to hit town and fully expect connectivity for every device they are carrying at the same time? I hope so otherwise I am sure the negativity on the evaluations will be loud and long.

I look forward to seeing folks and I look forward to the learning and conversations. May our connections be fast and strong.

So much to learn and so little time.