Until relatively recently, voice was the key to business communications.
We lived on the phone. As a natural result, the leading annual conference covering enterprise communications primarily catered to voice/phone technology and products. Named the PBX Conference throughout the 90s, it became VoiceCon in 2000.
During the next decade, it became increasingly clear that a new name would soon be needed. A walk on the show floor would quickly reveal that video, unified communications, web conferencing, and other collaboration technologies had shifted from novelties, to mainstream business communication tools. Hence, in 2010 Fred Knight and Eric Krapf announced that VoiceCon would become Enterprise Connect.
In Enterprise Connect, we believe we have a name that expresses the essence of what our audience and sponsors are all about – and indeed what our event is all about. Terms like “Unified Communications” or “Collaboration” — while essential in characterizing important industry developments and goals — do not adequately encompass the vision that we believe our industry is striving to fulfill with the next generation of technology. We believe the technology and products must Connect people with each other and with business processes, so that they can communicate, collaborate, work, and fulfill business objectives anywhere, anytime. – Fred Knight/Eric Knapf
If anything, we have continued this trend of focusing less on the technology for its own sake and more on the actual goal of “connecting” our working teams, clients, partners, and business associates. Whether it be through videoconferencing, webcasting, one of the hot new persistent team messaging solutions, or even the good old phone, we have a much higher regard for the user experience and workflow than ever before. This focus, as much as anything else, is a big reason behind our industry’s current success and growth.
Always fun to “throwback” to the voice days, to see how far we have come! If you have any good VoiceCon stories, please be sure to share them in the comments below.
