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NORWALK, CT- August 31, 2009 - Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) today announced that their editorial and conference teams have completed final preparations for this week's ITEXPO West 2009 at the L.A Convention Center in Los Angeles. The conference and EXPO, being held for the 20^th time since its launch in 1999, features a robust conference program, keynotes by industry leaders and visionaries, and networking opportunities where buyers and sellers can meet and forge relationships.

ITEXPO officially opens Tuesday, September 1 with a full-day of conference sessions, workshops, keynotes, and a networking reception.

The ITEXPO exhibit hall is open during the following hours:

Wednesday, September 2: 4:00pm - 8:00pm
Thursday, September 3: 11:15am - 5:00pm

TMC also reported that all dedicated hotel room blocks at the Westin Bonaventure, the official show hotel, have completely sold out.

"The hotels are sold out, pre-registered exhibit hall attendance is up over 2008, and the exhibit hall is filled with companies displaying some of the most innovative communications technologies. All elements are pointing toward a terrific event," proclaimed TMC CEO Rich Tehrani.

Tehrani added, "And what's most exciting is that the registration figures that are trending ahead of last year suggests that companies are ready once again serious about investing in technologies that can help be more productive. It appears that buyers and sellers are once again poised to gather in L.A. to close deals, form partnerships and develop new relationships - the hallmarks of the ITEXPO experience."

Highlights of ITEXPO West 2009 include:

• Conference tracks covering Enterprise and Service Provider solutions, unified communications, SIP, and Wireless/Mobility solutions
• TMCUniversity Certification Courses: IP Network Security and Microsoft OCS
• Fonality trixbox Open Communication Certification (FtOCC)
• Ingate's Free SIP Trunking Workshop
• Sipera's UC Security Workshop
• Collocated M2M Evolution Conference
• Collocated Smart Grid Summit Conference
• Collocated 4GWE Conference
• Asterisk Training Courses
• Reseller Solutions Day free workshop
• Keynotes by ShoreTel, Aspect, Paetec, Alvarion, Sir Terry Matthews of Wesley Clover, Clearwire, and Interactive Intelligence
• Open Source Pavilion on the exhibit floor, showcasing open source solutions

In addition to the educational and networking opportunities, attendees have the chance to win a brand new Jeep, an iPhone, Slingbox, or HP Netbook.

Visit www.itexpo.com for more information or to register for ITEXPO West 2009.

Contact Information:

I spent the night having dinner with the TMC team at the new LA Live area of shops and restaurants by the Los Angeles Convention Center and Staples Center. We were in ESPN Sports Zone which sports a pair of 103 inch Panasonic TVs with stunning picture quality.

But getting back to downtown Los Angeles, I have been coming to the Los Angeles Convention Center for over a decade and am happy to see such a large amount of investment is taking place in the area. It will probably be unrecognizable to most people who have not seen the area in a while.

Much more of the team are arriving tomorrow and there will certainly be much more to share in the morning. Good night for now.

We are heading into ITEXPO with one day to go and today I got great news from my team who all arrived safely in Los Angeles and are busy preparing the Los Angeles Convention Center for the best ITEXPO ever. The good news? The preregistration for Avaya's social networking kick-off event is over 3X greater than last year's Avaya conference so far. Either this is an indication of the interest in social networking or there are more people coming to the show. Hopefully it's a bit of both.

My weekend in Los Angeles has been great... I have spent time with many relatives - at least 100 and counting. Yes, I have a huge family.

As always, we are looking forward to welcoming you all to what promised to be a great show - full of collaboration tools, videoconferencing solutions, IP communications tools and more. Moreover, there are new areas of the show such as Smart Grid, M2M, 4G and WINOG which I just can't wait to learn more about.

Then there are open source certifications (Digium/Asterisk, Fonality/Trixbox) on all the important flavors of open source communications solutions.

I have said it repeatedly - the way to get the most out of any conference is to not only attend sessions and the exhibit hall but also network with people who can help you. Perhaps they can help you purchase a product or service or even land that lucrative consulting gig. Maybe you are looking for potential customers or partners at the show. Whatever you seek, if it is in the communications space, there is no better place than ITEXPO to find it.

And before the show kicks off this Tuesday, September 1 in Los Angeles I wanted to share the fourth installment of interviews from the show. These interviews provide guidance, allowing you to get a feel for who will be at the show and more importantly, who can help you learn valuable information.rise-voip/articles/63128-dangers-ubiquitous-wireless-networks.htm%20

As a reference, here are interviews, one, two and three.

It's just what you have been waiting for - the 76-page show directory for ITEXPO which will give you lots of needed information regarding the show (Sept 1-3 in LA) . Virtually everything you need is in here - sponsors, floor plan, exhibitor list, TMC University, Trixbox training, Ingate's SIP trunking workshop, Reseller solutions day, keynotes, Asterisk Training, WiNOG, Sipera SIP Security, Wireless Broadband training, M2M, Smart Grid Summit, 4GWE, agenda and Q&As with industry thought leaders. Get it while it's hot and download it to your smartphone or laptop/netbook so you can refer to it often.

Last night in a post about Gmortgage I discussed how Google is helping to kill off the newspaper business with the help of others in the space such as eBay and Craigslist. Today I learned of an antitrust investigation against Google in Italy which was brought on by FIEG or the Italian federation of newspaper editors who are troubled because they feel they have no control over how Google presents their news on its site. Their only options are to block Google or give them full access.

Other than reading this article from the Wall Street Journal I haven't done investigation or read the complaint but on the face of it seems like a weak argument against Google. It is unclear what the search company is doing wrong - after all if you want traffic from Google you need to play by their rules.

Virtually all companies with websites know they need to work on their search engine strategies and improve them which basically means playing by the rules of Google, Bing, Yahoo! and others.

If Google loses this suit does that open up the door for all Italian companies to sue Google because they aren't happy with the lack of transparency in PageRank and where their results are? How about the rest of the world? Imagine a free-for-all of lawsuits claiming websites and specific pages should rank differently.

A colleague of mine here at TMC made an excellent point recently. He said the web is democratic and in the end, if a search engine doesn't present the most relevant content in the way a searcher wants it, they will switch search engines. In other words Google is forced in general to offer the most important and relevant content to searchers and news viewers.

Having said that, it is obvious the Google Adwords model is killing off newspaper revenue but this doesn't seem to be related directly to the suit.

It is almost here - one of the largest global events in communications - ITEXPO West 2009 taking place in Los Angeles September 1-3 2009 at the LA Convention Center. Networking is one of the best reasons to come to any event and in order to properly figure out who you should meet with at the show and which sessions and booths you should visit, we have conducted interviews with many of the companies coming to the show so you can get an idea what people are thinking and moreover help align the expertise of others with your needs. The goal of course is to help all attendees make good use of their time at the show.

With that I posted links to interviews one and two and now here is the third installment. I hope you find them useful.

As a follow-up to the ITEXPO interviews I posted links to last week, here are the latest responses from the industry. Of particular interest are answers from Doug Mohney who explains how he got into the business by being employee number 11 or 12 at DIGEX. I also found the responses from Eli Katz of XConnect enlightening... If you are interested in peering or IP communications you want to give them a read.

There is so much great information here and I suggest you click all the interviews and read them - these are some of the true thought-leaders in our spaces and they have a wealth of useful information to share. I hope to meet you as well as all the speakers and exhibitors very soon at the show. We are officially 13 days away.

Be sure to register now if you haven't already.

The team and I will be out this afternoon enjoying our annual picnic. I apologize if we are slow to react while away but we promise to come back more refreshed than ever and will get back to you all soon. I hope to post a photo when I get there.