This is the second day of HostingCon 2009, and there have been many great educational sessions, a sold out exhibit hall filled with hosting vendors, and plenty of opportunities for networking with other web hosting professionals – many of them from other countries. The WHIR networking booth saw heavy activity as the exhibit hall opened today.
According to show organizers, iNET Interactive, this year’s HostingCon event attracted fully ten percent more attendees than last year – no small feat in this down economy. While I’ll let others get into the specific details of the sessions, there were excellent presentations over the last day on metrics and how to use them to mange a hosting operation, how to manage a web hosting business for success in this down economy, and what’s to come for the future of cloud hosting. Many of web hosting’s biggest names have presented and delivered tremendous value with practical and actionable information.
A couple of specific comments that provoked thought are below.
Emil Sayegh from the Mosso Rackspace Cloud Division stated, ”Shared hosting will be obsoleted by the Cloud.”
Stephen Cho who represented Google on the Cloud panel mentioned that Cloud providers ”Can’t provide SMB advice, support and care.” Local providers will be required to do this.
One attendee, Mr. Stuart Melling of UK website hosting firm 34SP.com who traveled from the UK to attend this year’s event offered this summary, ”With the first morning of HostingCon 2009 over, a few things strike me as I relax over lunch. First up, attendances seem good this year, higher than last year, or so I hear. This was born out by two of this morning’s sessions being standing room-only affairs very quickly. I hope this continues throughout the conference and we don’t see the dreaded drop off by Wednesday.”
Mr. Melling continued, ”A second thing that occurs to me is the seemingly increased international presence this year. This is my fourth year at Hosting Con and it does seem like the number of accents and languages has risen dramatically. As a Brit myself, my ears always prick up whenever I hear another person from over the pond; and there does seem to be an especial abundance of us in attendance this year! It’s great to see the conference is now attracting such a broad spectrum of professionalism from across the globe. I think that alone speaks to the value of this fantastic yearly event. Here’s hoping to a great afternoon which promises some interesting keynotes.”
More updates as the show continues and tonight’s networking events get underway.
About Derek Vaughan
Derek Vaughan has been actively marketing on the Internet since 1995. His extensive online marketing experience includes the online direct marketing of books for $300 million per year NYSE traded book publisher Thomas Nelson. Mr. Vaughan also marketed products online at the Walt Disney Company as the online marketing manager of ecommerce for ESPN.com. He was also the marketing manager for the launch of the NASCAR Online Store in October of 1999.
More recently Mr. Vaughan turned his attention to online marketing for the Affinity Internet, Inc. family of companies - which owns a broad portfolio of web hosting brands. Additionally, Mr. Vaughan served as Vice President of Marketing for Aplus.Net and helped them establish a strong position in the web hosting field. Derek has also serverd as the VP of Marketing at HostMySite.com.
Derek Vaughan holds undergraduate degrees from both Indiana University and Purdue University, and has earned a Master of Business Administration degree from the Owen School at Vanderbilt University.
Through his theWHIR blog, Derek will touch upon online marketing in the Web hosting space, web hosting events and industry trends.
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