Thanks for dropping by the Interop Blog - we have some news for you. We’re hard at work getting ready for the upcoming Vegas show in April, and as part of our new focus on community building, we’ve launched a new site called MyInterop. Among other features, MyInterop lets you interact with speakers, exhibitors, and other Interop attendees, construct a conference schedule for yourself, watch event videos, post/view jobs, and more. Some content is for conference attendees only, but there is much to see for everyone.

Of particular relevance here, it is also where we are now blogging!

Please bookmark http://my.interop.com and see what’s going on.

At a large event like Interop Las Vegas, we see a lot of exhibitors pull out the stops with their pre-show marketing in an effort to drive booth traffic, build awareness around their products/services, get visibility for execs that might be speaking, etc. We on the Interop team are seeing a lot more marketing videos being produced by exhibitors to help with this.

Here’s one we just got our hands on from Dynamic Network Services, which takes a different approach - it’s a wrap up video. Since we’re still wrapping up the show ourselves it seemed appropriate to post, and I thought it might inspire others to do their own vids. If you have a post-ILV09 vid, let me know. I’ll try to post them here.

Interop’s Hot Stage is where the InteropNet equipment is set up and optimized before being disassembled and shipped out to the show site in Vegas.  The event is always a major undertaking, but Geoff Horne and Val Bojarski, the folks running Hot Stage, make it look easy.  Of course, they have enormous help from the Interop NOC team and staff from InteropNet sponsors.  I’m sure the issues that these folks deal with to get the enormous Interop network cranked up would make my head spin.

And this time around, we’ll all get a chance to see it first hand!

I’m excited to announce that long-time Interop volunteer Brian Chee will be at the Interop warehouse in Fremont, CA, with videocamera in hand, documenting the process.  Brian’s going to capture much the action - he’ll be interviewing the NOC members and equipment manufacturers, and posting 10-20 short videos to our upcoming creation, “InteropTV”.

What’s that, you’ve never heard of InteropTV?  Well, it’s a new project we’ve been working on.  It’s not live yet, but if you’re reading the Interop Blog, you can get a sneak preview of it here. InteropTV will be the show’s repository for the event’s video content, pre-show and on-site interviews of exhibitors and speakers, videos of conference sessions and keynotes, and so on.  Let me know what you think about InteropTV and/or if you have ideas for video segments we should produce for it either pre-show, or on site in Vegas.  I’m at adunne@techweb.com.

I’ve been managing the Interop web site for a few years, and one project that I’ve been dying to work on from the beginning something I call the “NOC Yearbook”.  As you may know, there is a large team of volunteers who build the InteropNet at all the shows.  It’s a huge undertaking, as the InteropNet is one of the largest temporary corporate networks constructed.  And while the Interop team is quite aware of, and hugely appreciates, the NOC team, there wasn’t too much about these folks on the Interop.com site. But that’s been remedied, finally.

Last month we rolled out the Interop NOC Yearbook, and as of this writing, there are 23 NOC member profiles from that outstanding team.  If you’re on the NOC team this year and you haven’t uploaded your profile, contact Val Bojarski to get your login info.

Once the LV09 show is over, we’ll archive the LV09 NOC Yearbook page on the Interop site, and start a new NOC Yearbook for Interop New York 2009.  The idea is to build a historical record of NOC team participation for every show.

Let me know if you have any ideas for the Interop site, or the NOC Yearbook specifically. We’re always looking to make the site better and give credit where it’s due.

This podcast is the second in a two-part conversation I had with Richard Wolf, the General Manager for Office Graphics Services at Microsoft. Wolf oversees Visio and Powerpoint, and in this podcast, he talks about the new features and capabilities of Powerpoint 2007.

(In case you missed it, here is part 1, which focuses on Visio.)

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In this podcast, I talk to Richard Wolf, the General Manager for Office Graphics Services at Microsoft. Wolf oversees two major business applications within the Microsoft Office suite: Visio and Powerpoint. In this podcast, which is the first in a two-part series, Wolf talks about the new features and capabilities of Visio 2007, the upcoming version of Microsoft’s drawing and diagramming application. Wolf and I met at Interop New York, where he was showing off the upcoming version and all of the great new features it has for IT managers. In part 2 of this podcast interview, which will be released next Monday, Wolf will explain what users can expect from Powerpoint 2007.

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In this podcast, Steve Hultquist, the team lead for the Network Access Control (NAC) Initiative in the Interop Labs, explains what his team is presenting at Interop New York. If you haven’t heard about it, the NAC Initiative is exploring the NAC frameworks from Microsoft, Cisco and Trusted Computing Group, and presenting their findings at the InteropLabs booth on the expo floor. Hultquist tells a bit about what they’ve learned. (Note: there is also an earlier podcast with Steve, which took place last Spring prior to Interop Las Vegas. Here’s that one.)

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One of the aspects of Interop that makes it unique is the show’s network — the InteropNet. Every exhibitor is connected to it, via cables that drop down from the ceiling and the many wireless access points around the convention center. The conference rooms are hooked into it as well. And of course it’s all managed from the NOCs on the expo floor. But what is it, exactly? We have an interactive diagram that shows you — check it out…

Here at Interop New York, Tideway Systems is showing off Foundation — an appliance that plugs into a network, and then autodiscovers and catalogs all the IP-facing devices on it. Foundation can model enterprise networks from the perspective of business applications and services, right down into the technology layers. Today Kosten Metreweli, Tideway’s VP of Marketing & Alliances, explained to me how Foundation can help companies, and talked up a new managed service his company is announcing this week at the show.

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Have you heard of Augur Systems? Augur is 9 years old, but it’s been flying under the radar most of that time — getting business mostly by word-of-mouth. At Interop New York, the company is hoping to change that — it’s launching verion 4 of its event management and notification system. Augur 4 is designed to handle lots of events requiring the expertise of lots of people, and has a number of built-in tools for qualifying its alerts, as CEO Chris Janicki explains.

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