I’m not sure I was really in Houston this week: no stereotypes fulfilled. We never had a traffic problem and the weather was comfortable rather than hot and muggy. But since I saw the Astrodome, it wasn’t a dream: I was in Houston. There may be many reasons to go to Houston in the future: they’ve announced a huge WiFi project covering the city. A conference on July 26-28 called “IMPACT: The Digital Revolution” will jump-start the process of leveraging the city’s municipal WiFi project (600 square mile service area) for everyone’s benefit. Since this is politics, it could get “interesting” if all goes normally. The ITEC Houston show was new to me – I wasn’t there last year. Microsoft had their huge RV parked in the middle of the show floor, not far from the Nortel Voice over Internet Protocol RV. Dueling smart phones from RIM (the Blackberry people) and Verizon generated thumb cramps during a text message war, but no one was seriously hurt.
My favorite booths are the local companies servicing local customers. You’ll see a video interview with Tony Hodgson of Cap5 soon as he explains new ways to leverage Web 2.0 results from surprisingly familiar Web tools. They provide network infrastructure, communications, and Web applications. As an experiment, I included music clips in my keynote presentation and offered a free Posers Guide to anyone who could name a group, and a $10 bill to anyone who could name the song playing. Since I still have both, I guess the clips were too short or too obscure. If no one catches on in Dallas the first Wednesday of June at my next ITEC keynote speech, I’ll consider adding some more mainstream songs. Maybe.
