eComm09 - Going, Going, Going...

Prompted by Alan Quayle here I thought I'd put up a few reasons we are interested in going to eComm09 in March.

Ed Fontana of the Android Developer, Commuter Community Android App is speaking about "Intervals of Interest" and how it affects the design of mobile applications. I have a background (both practical and research based) in the Lean Production values of the Automotive industry, so I think this talk should be fascinating because it has as its centre the concept of reducing friction in social interactions.

Shai Berger from Fonolo will be looking back on a year of "deep dialing" . Fonolo is a great favourite with the guys from Telco2.0 because it also "reduced friction" in the interaction. The problem is kind-of simple (which all great problems are): you want to speak to a particular part of the customer service organisation, but you have to go through all the IVR menu's to get there. Fonolo enables you to direct dial the desired destination because they have mapped that company's system.  At VoiceSage we've taken advantage of this kind of thinking as well because when we map out a process (or more to the point, when you map out your own process) you can assign a deep dial as one of the process steps. One instance where this is used is where a person has been called and asked if they wish to make a payment as part of a process. Previous steps may have specified how much that person wishes to pay, their account details, or the currency etc. When linking to an Autopay solution we "deep dial" that IVR and forward the relevant details so you don't have to ask for them again.

Irv Shapiro of IfByPhone will be speaking about Voice Services in the cloud. IfByPhone grabbed some attention last year by integrating their click2call capability with Google Analytics so that you could evaluate the ultimate effectiveness of your click strategy. Irv will be demonstrating some of his business cases and speaking about the technology architecture.

There are some "hardcore network" sessions and some pretty cutting edge ones on mobile wireless that I would love to sit in on, and mostly not understand. One good reason why we are sending our CTO Graham Brierton to the conference where he will be giving a very, very interesting talk on some of our next generation thinking.

The Picture?: If you are wondering what the picture is about, some of the things you will see at eComm09 are the early evidence of some big shifts that are lurking their under the Telco waters....