Suzanne Bowen : Monetizing IP Communications
Suzanne Bowen
37 yrs in telecom, teaching, blog & grant writing, biz development, marketing, & PR. Favorite moments in life involve time w/ family & friends, networking, IP communications industry verticals & horizontals, running, traveling, foreign languages
| 1. "Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition..." Barack Obama ..... 2. "One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain." By Thomas Sowell

August 2008

You are browsing the archive for August 2008.

How do you define an IT professional?

August 24, 2008

I read some of the wildest comments in my email. The most recent I will list here but the names have been substituted for others to avoid any declared defamation of character...

"As discussed, XXX City Chapter in collobration with XSHX and your own company can hold a session on "Monetizing Communications." XXX members are IT professionals, while the XSHX members will cover the SW houses."

WT#O? Hmm... okay, so let's play a game and if you win, you get to $tize IP communications.

Which is the IT professional, software house member or could not possibly be either?

   
 

Must Read Bootstrapping your Business

August 18, 2008

It's one thing to invent a new technology or a new way to work with an existing technology but it's another thing to figure out how to make money from it so that we can pay our bills and take care of our families and enjoy life. A friend on Facebook just bought me the book Bootstrapping your Business by Greg Gianforte. I'm finishing up Surfing on the Edge of Chaos right now and Greg's book is next. 

Want to read more regarding Greg? Check out Sramana Mitra's blog interview.

Bionic Arm, SSUE students including Ali Imtiaz

August 16, 2008

There were over 100,000 registered attendees at ITCN Asia 2008 and at least 125 exhibitors spread over three halls. The Karachi Expo Center was filled with energy, innovation, debate, and collaborations. Our company walked away with new business development in Pakistan, China, USA, UK, UAE, and more. 

One of the highlights of my booth visits was the bionic arm project by Ali Imtiaz and other students at SSUE. (I will try to come back and revise this post with the full name of the university.) What was unique about it?

Suzanne Interviews Secretary of IT/Telecom Government Pakistan

August 16, 2008



After a meeting of PASHA (Pakistan Software Houses Assocation), PSEB (Pakistan Software Export Board) and government officials of Pakistan in informaton technology and telecom, I interviewed the Secretary IT/Telecom of the government of Pakistan Mr Hifz-ur-Rahman while sharing some excellent kulfi-type ice-cream. 

We discussed the initiatives of Pakistan to enable the people of Pakistan to improve their standard of living with new work opportunities and access to Internet and other technologies as well as each of our speeches we shared on the first day of ITCN Asia during the conference.

This was during ITCN Asia 2008. You can watch the interview on Youtube.

Orgoo, All in One!

August 15, 2008

I met Ahmed Sajjad Zaidi at ITCN Asia this week. He's the serious, thoughtful guy behind Orgoo, the one place for all your IM, video chat, SMS, email and I can't wait to see what else next. Orgoo has been reviewed by all the big names: TechCrunch, Webware, VentureBeat, Podtech, PCWorld, ZDnet, Digital Daily, Barron's...

Jehan Ara, President of PASHA, listed his company as one of the most innovative startups in the South Central Asian area during her presentation on day 2 at ITCN Asia 2008.

Sign up here for Orgoo.

Zomma Mohiuddin, PTCL first in Pakistan with IPTV

August 15, 2008

Zomma Mohiuddin, executive director of PTCL, shares the excitement of Pakistan's first IPTV service in the form of smartPTCL. Watch and listen on one of my video Google galleries. (I recorded this during ITCN Asia 2008 where I was also a speaker.)

What is IPTV? Find out at http://en.wikipeda.org/wiki/IPtv.

Monetizing FWD

August 10, 2008

Jeff Pulver and Daniel Berninger and the rest at FWD (also known as FreeWorldDialup) have decided to monetize with a $30 annual membership fee beginning Aug 1, 2008. See the blog post and an interesting rebuttal.

Free mobile roaming in 22 countries

August 10, 2008

There are no USA mobile companies who offer me this opportunity, but I found it somewhere else. Zain.

Zain Group ( formerly MTC or Mobile Telecommunications Company) is Multinational Corporation specializing in Mobile Telecommunications. Its area of operations include the seven countries in the Middle East, Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, Sudan ,and in Lebanon as mtc touch, and in 15 sub-Saharan countries in Africa Burkina Faso, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Gabon,Ghana Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. Free roaming in 22 countries!
 


USF funds and issues, quite global

August 7, 2008

First, in case, you're not familiar with USF. Wikipedia does a good job among its global contributors in defining and describing it. USA "was created by the United States Federal Communications Commission in 1997 to meet the goals of Universal Service as mandated by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The 1996 Act states that all providers of telecommunications services should contribute to federal universal service in some equitable and nondiscriminatory manner; there should be specific, predictable, and sufficient Federal and State mechanisms to preserve and advance universal service; all schools, classrooms, health care providers, and libraries should, generally, have access to advanced telecommunications services; and finally, that the Federal-State Joint Board and the FCC should determine those other principles that, consistent with the 1996 Act, are necessary to protect the public interest."

I'm in Karachi for a couple weeks to participate in ITCN Asia and visit with some of the 10,000 or so extremely valuable ITSPs we serve with DIDX.

Ethnocentricity De-$tizes IP Communcations...

August 6, 2008

and really just about anything. I first participated in a debate regarding the concept, benefits, and disadvantages of ethnocentrism in 1980 during an Economic Geography class under a professor Dr. Doerr at the University of West Florida. In Wikipedia, it is defined as "Ethnocentrism is the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one's own culture. Ethnocentrism often entails the belief that one's own race or ethnic group is the most important and/or that some or all aspects of its culture are superior to those of other groups." Laura Guevin refers to it in her 2000 article, in a positive way.

This is one of the biggest blocks to moving a company ahead in the global economy of IP communications.

Featured Events