Interview With Jon Price — continued

Q) I'm enthusiastic about your speakers, many of whom I have met before and recognize and key ISP industry players.

We've got some great names we haven't seen for a while like Paul Stapleton. Several new ones like GoDaddy, Covad, and Paul Butcher from Intel's Digital City group too.

a) I've never heard of tummy.com (E9). What can you tell me about them?

He did an open source session last spring that was well received. A smaller operator and consultant out here in Colorado that I took a chance on earlier. He had good reviews from the last show, so he's coming back to cover e-mail and Linux stuff.

b) In Charles Hoffman, you have an impressive keynote speaker who will talk about many of the services you mentioned in GROW UP. But you don't expect ISPs to morph into Covad. What do you expect an ISP to learn from Hoffman?

A few things:

1) Address the "now what" lingering in some people's minds about what to do in the Kevin Martin era and how they plan to deal with it.

2) Discuss their VoIP experiences post-GoBeam

3) As a wholesaler, they have quite a few customers in attendance that are interested in where Covad is headed and plans to go and grow next

4) They just bought NextWeb and have been trialing WiMAX and other wireless gear in SF and other markets, so that's huge for the industry for a number of reasons. Since a regional WISP now has a rather large distribution outlet for scaling the WISP model broadly, I consider them to be one to watch in the next year in this area. Also, I suspect there is solid potential for them to run at the ever-elusive national wireless wholesale play in all this that will become quite attractive if the economics work out in everyone's favor.

5) They've never been at ISPCON before, so in an odd way Covad is kind of a fresh face to see and hear from.

6) They have plenty of battle scars to show for their years in this business and continue to survive, that's worth recognizing and anyone can stand to learn from that

c) For the second keynote, you've created a panel of notaries

Very aggressive hosting companies, each with different approach and all doing quite well.

c1) I know the other panelists, but I don't know Peer 1. What can you tell me about them?

Peer1 just bought a huge portion of Interland's hosting assets and Serverbeach earlier in the year. They have been aggressively filling up their pipes with more hosting clients and are doing some work in hosted VoIP lately too. Many in the hosting realm are beginning to realize that hosting is just another hosted application or service they can offer and that they don't necessarily have to be a telco-sized company to make hosted voice work for customers. Peer1 also does some unique things like targeting the gaming industry for extremely low-latency connectivity and hosting and have been making a number of interesting financial moves over the last few years.

c2) Is creating or enlarging a hosting business the most important task for most ISPs?

It's one of those workaround tactics and a serious option in today's market. Many are finding an increasing number of dollars in it, so we're highlighting 1) the fact that someone is actually aggressive out there and 2) it's really paying off for them.

You can't be married to the notion of pipe=service on this. So most WISPs, for instance, could care less about anything but RF, CPE costs, and installation times. If you subscribe to the notion of services=service, then uncovering different applications and hosting economies is a central focus that can't be ignored.

The most successful providers are able to unemotionally and fearlessly shift their businesses and portfolios back and forth over the long term between the connection or value-added services representing the "S" in ISP, as policy and market conditions change. If you fall in love with one technology or strategy for too long, stop listening for opportunities and resist change, you're dead in this business. The people in this hosting keynote are aggressive, accept change, and are incredibly successful.

c3) I haven't spoken to Paul Stapleton in years, but I remember he used to cover ISPs, instead of webhosts. I see he's on two panels. Is selling the business still an important topic for ISPCON attendees?

Paul has a lot of P&Ls for ISPs and webhosts sitting on his desk each day. The guy is super-smart and knows a good, sound business when he sees it. Everyone used to wonder what they were worth and Paul helped hundreds of ISPs and webhosts figure it out years ago. Lately, he's seen people turning the keys to their business over when they really didn't need to or just didn't have it all together to maximize their value. He's simply going to help them do a better job valuing themselves and their options. I think he'll have a great crowd and some solid advice, no question.

Q) Organizations meeting at ISPCON. Will other groups meet at ISPCON in the future? Have you been talking to these organizations for some time?

CISPA has been involved with the shows for a few years now, they had a meeting last year at the show and are pretty involved in the CA show. Great organization and some really good people there.

The WCA—Wireless Communications Alliance—is not to be confused with the WCAI out in DC that Andy Kreig runs. For whatever reason, Andy Kreig and the DC-based WCAI want nothing to do with us or the unlicensed plays. I've tried to work with him and several of his members, but I think he's concerned that we'd be competing with his show.

The WCA out in California has been around since 1993 and has in the neighborhood of 1,000 members. They've been very open to working together and are good, smart people that I hope we'll have the fortune of working with for years to come. They are having a meeting on site at the show and are involved in the conference.

Q) I see you got Doug McDonald and Greg Boehnlien leading the two exchanges. Magnificent people, both of them. But the CEO session, which has, recently, run over 6 hours sometimes, will surely be more popular? Do you expect ISPs to send one person to each of the two sessions?

One change this time around is that these sessions are only open to paid conference attendees. So I suspect attendance will stay about the same or possibly be a bit smaller and SNR will only improve as the speculators and riff-raff go away. The Asterisk and open source topic is generally more technical and less business-centric, so I think the topics will help qualify who will attend which one. Both were really well attended last time and I'm looking forward to them again—they should be great.

Q) Just tested your chat with registration. Worked nifty. Has that helped? I guess that's a service that every ISP should offer, if at all possible?

Yes, I've blogged that tool—it's called PHP LiveSupport and I know a few ISPs have since picked it up and used it. I've also seen it on some hosts' sites and it does help in the process, assuming you have plenty of people available and on call at all times to chat. PHPLS is one of those great services that just seems to work pretty consistently for us. We can improve our own websites, but we're getting there, bit by bit.

The only frustration with the chat is the person who owns an ISP and has been to the shows for years who chats with us simply to complain about having to pay that whopping $25 for a pass to walk around the hall. Look, I run a business.

Q) Anything else to say to ISPCON attendees?

Have you read the E-Myth yet? ;-)

I know I've rambled a lot here, so thanks for bearing with me. I look forward to seeing you all at the show.

— End

Note: The parent company of this website, Jupitermedia, has a minority interest in ISPCON.

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