I can’t keep nominating TokBox

From the WebRTC Expo in Santa Clara, congratulations to all for better attendance (more than 800), better presentations and and the demos, well they were marginally improved.  We have to, though, keep things in prospective. Up the road in Mountain View, Google was holding their invitation only Chrome Developer Conference attracting 300 with probably 3,000 wanting to come (hint always get the coconut ice cream when visiting the Google campus). The hurricane Dreamforce event in San Francisco which exhausted all hotels within a 50 miles radius with more than 100,000 attendees. So it’s relevant.

During WebRTC Expo, I like to sit at the back of the room, munching on Zanax, I mostly focus on how many people enter or leave the room during a presentation. The more ‘net new, the more I give points to the presenter. Ian Small, CEO @ TokBox once again stole the show with his matter of fact, entertaining and story about how a financial institute might use WebRTC. Of note, Ian barely even mentions Tokbox and almost never delves into techo speak. Yet the audience was alert (I briefly stopped eating Zanax) and we all got the message from the presentation (using Sesame street characters).

So Ian here is your small award. Now for the rest of you, besting Ian should be like stealing candy from a baby! It’s not hard, but it does take work. Dressing like a Steve Jobs wannabe is not the first step. Reading Mark Suster’s Group Presentation article is.  Read it, embrace it and please don’t repeat what you did last time. With a room full of techies, it’s easy to focus on underbelly techno elements and wave your hand on the “someone else can pretty this up.” WebRTC is all about the pretty up piece, looks do in fact matter.  It’d better be pretty.

For readers of this blog (not applicable to non-readers), you’re part of the founding (and representative) group for WebRTC. Much as I love all of you, imagine if you attended the event for the first time – what impression would you have left with? More excited? Less? Or in an bewildered state? The onus is on all of us, me included, to up our game. The Internet is littered with technology mavens who are now technology spinsters, arguing in an ever smaller group about something that has long since past (note I didn’t mention XMPP). Our opportunity is much larger. WebRTC Expo Atlanta is coming in 6 months, more events in between and more than enough time for make our representative demonstrations exciting and compelling.

I’m not nominating Ian again, I’m not sure that’s a warning or a threat. Treat it as both.