| In October I
made my fourth trek to Chicago to attend the
annual conference of the National Communications
Forum (NCF 2000), an event sponsored by the
International Engineering Consortium (IEC) and a
host of telecommunications industry leaders. Associated
with the conference every year are the Infovision
vendor exhibits and awards for the newest and
best technologies, applications, products and
services in the telecommunications field. Aside
from the traffic in Chicago (I spent five days
there with six of my students and drove a large
van around the O’Hare and downtown areas
quite a bit), it was a satisfying and educational
trip.
The
conference consists of two main components. Eight
in-depth, daylong TecForums take place, four each
day, from Monday through Thursday - you pick one
each day. On Tuesday and Wednesday, there are 62
hour-and-a-half sessions on a wide variety of
topics are offered – you can make six of
those.
There were
also also several conference-wide plenary
sessions on the state of the industry and special
sessions for faculty and students. And did I
mention the Infovision exhibition hall? Dozens of
service providers and equipment manufacturers are
on hand to hawk their wares, give away lots of
cool promotional items, and provide even more
free food and drink.
NCF is a
high-level and valuable event – the industry
executives, managers and engineers who attend
shell out (or their companies do) $2,995 to
attend the full four days of TecForums and
technology sessions. After all, presenters
included researchers and developers on the
cutting edge of the industry and CEOs,
presidents, and VPs of the major
telecommunications firms in the world.
Fortunately,
the IEC runs a University Program whose 35
industry participants (including such luminaries
as Cisco Systems, IBM, Nortel Networks,
BellSouth, and Lucent Technologies) make it
possible for faculty members like me to attend
for an affordable $50 fee.
Through the
University Program, the IEC works to disseminate
the latest industry information to its 73
domestic and international member universities
(the University of Kentucky is associated through
the School of Journalism and Telecommunications).
The reason, of course, is because hundreds of
thousands of high-tech jobs, including
networking-related positions, will go unfilled in
the United States this year.
The
telecommunications industry and the IEC are
acutely aware of that fact and are doing their
best to help alleviate the problem by furthering
telecommunications education. In my experience, a
little of the right kind of education goes a long
way.
My voice and
data networking students have no problem landing
jobs upon graduation that are in the $35,000 to
$60,000 range. And then most of them can count on
their companies to pay for their various
certifications.
One of the
ways the IEC attempts to fulfill its mission is
by mass distribution of leading-edge information
that is nearly impossible to obtain otherwise.
All NCF attendees are provided with CD-ROMs
containing all the slide presentations from the
sessions and scores of industry tutorials
covering topics such as Voice over IP (Internet
Protocol), wireless standards and issues,
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL),
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), and many
others.
The tutorials
can also be accessed through the IEC’s
website (www.iec.org), which has proved to be a
significant benefit for my students. Feel free to
check it out – it’s not a restricted
site.
Next month
I’ll relate some of the latest in
telecommunications services and equipment.
|
Leading
the Way The following
companies were winners of InfoVision Awards at
this year’s National Communications Forum.
The awards recognize technologies, applications,
products, and services selected based on
technological advancement, industry impact, and
end-user marketability and adoption. The awards
also honor corporations and individuals for
innovative contributions and developments from
the past year that have proven to be important to
society and beneficial to the industry.
Agilent
Technologies
Alcatel
Optronics
AT&T
Cisco
Systems
Enron
Broadband Systems
Genuity
IBM
InfoLibria
Lockheed
Martin Global
Telecommunications
Lucent
Technologies
Mayan
Networks
MetaSolv
Software, Inc.
Motorola,
Inc.
NEC
America
NightFire
Software, Inc.
Nortel
Networks
NorthPoint
Communications
Paradyne
Corporation
Red
Hat
Siemens
Solect:
A Division of Amdocs
Sonus
Networks
Telcordia
Technologies
Tellabs
TeraBeam
Corporation
Teradyne
Visual
Networks
WildPackets,
Inc.
|
