Winds of Change

Change does seem to get people talking. We received a number of letters about last week’s lead story on the show date changes coming in 2009: who made up the Trade Show Task Force, how the particular dates were chosen, host cities after 2009, and more. Here are SCTE Chairman Tom Gorman’s responses to the many questions:

The Task Force was made up of a small group, who assembled all the various entities to discuss the desire to consolidate. As has been published many times throughout the process, the Task Force was made up of Glenn Britt of Time Warner, Steve Burke of Comcast, Phil Kent of Turner, Bob Stanzione of ARRIS and Tony Vinciquerra of Fox, representing MSOs, programmers and vendors.



All heads of every group gathered and shared their calendars. All worked to see if and how all events could layer on top of and alongside each other. The SCTE board spent countless hours discussing and reviewing the best place for Cable-Tec Expo and the Conference on Emerging Technologies to be, and the reasons why. We developed an Expo fact sheet to show all the groups exactly what goes on at Expo, what our members gain by attending, and why we need to ensure that Expo and ET are viable events for the future. Some of the groups may have abbreviated events as a result, but Expo’s full schedule will remain as is.

 

We then determined that what is now the published schedule would be best for the Society and its members. After that, it was up to the other groups to determine their course of action. The SCTE Board of Directors approved this plan, and it was presented to the Task Force by John Clark, who ensured that we were represented well. The board and John personally contacted many of the CTOs to gain their agreement on the plan and get their input, too. There were several options presented that ended with the selection of the schedule that has now been published.

 

As for the cities to come, the events will be held in different cities each year and will move around as in the past. We haven’t established which ones completely, but Orlando certainly will be one of them. Currently on the docket is the NCTA‘s Cable Show in New Orleans this year, Expo in Philadelphia, then next year we’ll see the Cable Show in Washington DC and Expo in Denver. All events scheduled for the spring or fall week will be in the same city.