Do we need foreigners to lecture us on "The Tyranny of Distance"?

Stuart Corner
Sunday, 19 November 2006 11:54

IT Industry - Deals

Australia, or to be precise, Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey, invented the concept of "the tyranny of distance" but an overseas telecoms conference coming to Australia in 2007 is bringing international experts to tell us what it means for IP communications.

The Wainhouse Collaboration Summit - which bills itself as "the leading international conference on IP communications and the merger of voice, video and web conferencing" – is coming to Australia for the first time in 2007 following six years of what the organisers say were sell-out events in San Francisco and Berlin.

The organisers say that "International and local experts will give sessions and workshops warning that the 'tyranny of distance' means Australian corporations and federal government departments – particularly Defence, Immigration and Trade - will need to continually educate themselves on the very latest state of the art communication technology being introduced by governments and multinationals in the capitals of Europe, the United States and Asia – or risk being marginalised and mistrusted in a top secret world where the need for totally secure distance communications has become critical."

Wainhouse Research says it accepted an invitation from Canberra based video conference specialist ServicePoint to bring the event to Australia. It promises that the program "will explore current and next-generation enterprise conferencing solutions and implementation strategies including video, IP telephony, enterprise workflow applications, and collaboration portals.

"The 2007 Sydney event will focus on new solutions for unified collaborative communications in government, education, and health, including IP telephony-based solutions (IPT), stand-alone rich media collaboration portals, and voice-video-web applications embedded in enterprise software as well as new initiatives in videoconferencing, including high definition and telepresence," the company said.

The Summit will be led by Andrew W Davis, founder and managing partner of Boston based Wainhouse Research and will be held in Sydney from 14 to 16 February 2007. Details: http://www.wainhouse.com/sydney07