Before I drop...

Just back from a very interesting first day of the Telco 2.0 event in London. I would love to blog everything in detail, but frankly, it's late and I'm tired. Therefore, just a quick blurb on highlights so far. Generally speaking, it's interesting to me, having done the opening presentation at the inaugural event two years ago, to see the extent to which the original concepts have been grasped and expanded by the audience and the Telco 2.0 team, with the focus now seeming to turn from theory to the practicalities of specifically what needs to be done, how fast, and to what end. 

Top presentation today, in my view, was:

Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon, on the AWS platform strategy, which has many lessons for telcos, not least that there is growing interest from telcos in having sevices hosted in the AWS cloud. Also some interesting discussion of the challenges in conveying the AWS vision to the capital markets in the early days, when they were at first hostile, but now seem to "get it". This presentation really seemed to both challenge and inspire the audience, based on my straw poll afterward.

Top marks also to the always interesting Thomas Howe, who touched on many of the same themes I am hoping to address tomorrow, the unwaveringly challenging and thought-provoking Martin Geddes, Andrew Bud of mBlox, and Will Page's heartfelt refutation of the Long Tail - a fairly disconcerting prospect for telcos who think they can differentiate based on content portfolio.