STREAMING MEDIA WEST

The next Streaming Media West meeting will be held November 15-17, 2005, in San Jose McEnery Convention Center.

They are developing the speakers and programs now.

Streaming Media Conferences are always very interesting -- both the programs and the product demonstrations in the booths -- but I have one reservation about their policy:

At SMW, when scheduling speakers, they prefer end users to development companies. On the one hand, that weeds out speakers who have dubious products to promote. But on the other hand, speakers with new product announcements are the most passionate presenters; the ability to promote new products there stimulates competition and excitement; and end-users may really be more interested in hearing what's new and coming, and how that will solve their problems, than they are in hearing how other people used last year's products to solve other problems.

They do have some vendor presentations at a special track. But I've found these presentations to be less vital than "main-stage" panel discussions with several vendors discussing a particular problem area and how they approach the solution.

I'd like to suggest they consider expanding the use of well chosen vendor representatives in more panel sessions.

For more information:
http://www.streamingmedia.com/west