Tomorrow is the first day for HostingCon2010 in Austin, TX. To ensure that we all make the most of the event I interviewed Rob Farrell from iNet Interactive to see what they have in store for us this year.
Stacy – There have been a lot of changes to HostingCon this year; can you tell us some of the new features that attendees should look out for?
Rob – Improving the attendee experience each year is a key goal for the HostingCon team. For HostingCon 2010, we’ve made numerous improvements and additions to the conference experience. These include a breakfast networking event, networking happy hour in the exhibit hall on Tuesday, more speaking panels, fewer more powerful keynotes, and a brand new backend and registration system for HostingCon.com.
Stacy – Looking at the schedule there are some excellent sessions, can you give my readers some tips on some sessions you are particularly excited about?
Rob – Selecting sessions was a difficult process, as the number and quality of ones to pick from far outnumbered the available slots we had. A few of the sessions I’m personally excited to see include Enabling ISVs to Go SaaS with Hosted Infrastructure as Service Solutions, Hosting and Cloud Computing: The United States Defense Department, Strategies for Building a Customer-Focused Company and What Tomorrow Brings – Open Q&A to Prepare for the Future.
Stacy – This night life at HostingCon is always excellent, what do you have in store for us this year?
Rob – We have the usual opening and closing networking events that we do every year. As I mentioned earlier, we added a happy hour networking event in the exhibit hall on Tuesday. There are a ton of parties going on at the end of each conference day. I know a lot of people are excited about the CPanel event on Tuesday night. Austin is a great city for music and nightlife so there’s plenty for people to get into each night.
Stacy – I see HostingCon has significantly enhanced its social media and mobile experience for this year. Can you give us some info on twitter feeds, your mobile site and anything else you are doing to enhance the attendee’s experience?
Rob – We conscientiously made the decision to start dabbling into social media more this year with HostingCon. The conference has always had a Twitter account, but this year we wanted to provide followers with valuable content from HostingCon speakers as well as do more than just announcements. Our mobile site was developed in partnership with dotMobi. They really did a great job with the site and we believe it will provide attendees with an easy way to access anything they need to know about HostingCon 2010 while on-the-go at the show. There are other things in-store for attendees at the conference but I won’t spoil everything here.
About Stacy Griggs
Stacy Griggs is Sr. Director of Customer Experience for Cbeyond Cloud Services , previously Stacy was the Vice President of Sales for MaximumASP which was acquired by Cbeyond in 2011. Cbeyond (NASD-CBEY) is a publicly traded provider of telecommunication and cloud services, which has been recognized by Microsoft at its 2009 Worldwide Hosting Partner of the Year and 2010 Hyper-V Cloud Provider of the Year. Prior to Cbeyond Stacy held a series of positions at Hosting.com including Chief Sales Officer, Chief Service Officer and General Manager for their flagship Delaware data center.
Stacy has led several information technology services companies over the last 15 years. He was a Managing Director for KForce a $1 Billion publicly traded professional services firm. At KForce Stacy managed 5 business units that collectively generated $18 Million in revenue and had 140 employees. Prior to KForce Stacy was a Vice President and part-owner of Diamond Technologies, an 80 employee custom software development firm. Previously Stacy held management positions at TMP Worldwide, the University of Pennsylvania, and Humana.
Through his theWHIR blog, Stacy will touch upon sales and service in the Web hosting space, web hosting events, cloud computing and industry trends.
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