Last year the O’Reilly ETel event was perhaps the most exciting conference venue in the industry. O’Reilly wasn’t able to continue the event, but that’s not enough to let something so exciting and powerful fade away. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Lee Dryburgh, this year we’ll see the kickoff of eComm2008. It’s what we believe will be the first of a revitalized, high-energy conference that will set the industry aflame with passion and innovation.

The conference takes place at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA from March 12th-14th.

Established in 1996, the Computer History Museum is a public benefit organization dedicated to the preservation and celebration of computing history. It is home to one of the largest collections of computing artifacts in the world, a collection comprising over 13,000 objects, 20,000 images, 5,000 moving images, 4,000 linear feet of cataloged documentation and 5,000 titles or several hundred gigabytes of software. The mission of the Computer History Museum is to preserve and present for posterity the artifacts and stories of the information age. As such, the Museum plays a unique role in the history of the computing revolution and its worldwide impact on the human experience.

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Here’s just a small sampling of speakers on the agenda. These are just a few that are my personal highlights. Check the speakers page for a complete list.

Bob Frankston

Frankston Innovating, Achieving connectivity from the edge.

Bob Frankston may be best known for writing VisiCalc. He has been working on online services and networks since 1966 and while at Microsoft initiated the home networking effort. Since then he’s focus his attention on a post-telecom model that builds on the Internet dynamic to achieve connectivity from the edge rather than the center.

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Brough Turner

NMS Communications, SVP and CTO

Brough Turner is SVP, CTO and co-founder of NMS Communications wherehe oversees evolution of technology and product architectures andworks on business strategy and new market development. Brough writesand is quoted widely on telecommunications topics in trade and generalbusiness publications and he is a frequent speaker at telecom industryevents around the world. His current interests include mobilewireless access, broadband policy, mobile video, and user createdcontent and communities. Brough blogs athttp://blogs.nmss.com/communications/ on the technology, economic andsocial issues of communications at the intersection of telecom,mobility and the Internet.

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David Isenberg

Awaiting…, Founder

David S. Isenberg spent 12 years at AT&T Bell Labs until his 1997 essay,”The Rise of the Stupid Network,” was received with acclaim everywhere in the global telecommunications community with one exception — at AT&T itself! So Isenberg left AT&T in 1998 to found isen.com, LLC (an independent telecom analysis firm based in Cos Cob, Connecticut) and to publish The SMART Letter, an open-minded commentary on the communications revolution and its enemies.

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Jeff Bonforte

Yahoo! Inc., Vice President, Product Management

Jeff has founded a few startups including i-drive, an online storage pioneer, in 1998. He served as President for SIPphone, where he lead the development and release of Gizmo Project (www.gizmo5.com). He began working at Yahoo! in 2005, where he initially lead Voice. Shortly after, he was promoted to run Messenger, Voice and Chat. He was promoted to Vice President in 2007. Today he works in early product development in Search.

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Lee S Dryburgh

SS7 Networks Limited, Director

Lee S. Dryburgh is a person-to-person communications technologist. He is an engineering doctoral candidate at UCL (with sponsorship from Cisco), SS7 consulting engineer via his company SS7 Networks and the initiator of the Emerging Communications (eComm) conference. He has performed work for numerous operators including British Telecom, O2, Sprint, T-Mobile, Orange, Verisign, Hutchinson, as well as vendors including Marconi, Nokia, Alcatel-Lucent, Nortel, and Cisco. He is an acknowledged expert in the telecommunication protocol suite Signaling System #7 and lead-authored the bestselling book on the topic. His research focus is the future of telephony and enabling conversation between relevant strangers.

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Martin Geddes

STL, Chief Analyst

Martin Geddes is author of the popular telecom strategy blog Telepocalypse, as well as chief analyst at STL and co-instigator of the Telco 2.0 initiative (www.telco2.net) — helping network operators and vendors make money in an all-IP world.

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Thomas McCarthy-Howe

The Thomas Howe Company, CEO

Thomas McCarthy-Howe has nineteen years of experience in telecommunications product development. He is currently an independent consultant to service providers, enterprises and equipment vendors in the design and development of next generation communications equipment and services. Thomas has held senior management and engineering positions at industry leaders such as Comverse, Versatel Networks, PictureTel and Aware. As a member of the PictureTel engineering team, Mr. Howe designed audio and video software of the first PC-based video conferencing system, as well as software for the original version of NetMeeting, and as Aware Inc.’s software architect for the first commercially available ADSL chipset. In 2007, Thomas won the O’Reilly Emerging Telephony Mashup Contest. In addition to his writing and teaching, he currently serves on several technical advisory boards and boards of directors.

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That list is just a few of the fabulous speakers on the eComm agenda. Yes, those were chosen because they represent some personal friends we look foward to spending time with, but they’re also trusted colleagues who represent the voice of wisdom in the industry. The speaker’s list for this event is incomparable with that of many conferences.

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Looking over the agenda yields such a depth and breadth of conversations that this is truly an even not to be missed.My partner Ken and I are making sure we won’t miss it. We’ll be there, and expect to be presenting one of the lightning talks on the last day. We’ll be talking about why enabling a hyperconnected state with voice and data services is one of the most vital competitive differentiators in the industry.

We’re also lined up to speak should schedules change or anyone’s travel plans go awry. We will definitely be there blogging, interviewing, podcasting, doing video, and sharing the excitement and frenzy of action from the conference.

We hope you’ll look for us and come say hello. We want to meet and talk with as many of you as possible.

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Special BonusThe cost of this conference is already low, one of the lowest cost conferences in the industry. Early bird registration is still in effect right now, for another $300 off.

As a special bonus if you email either Sheryl or Ken, we’ll provide a special discount code that will get an additional 15% discount. The early bird registration will end soon, so make your plans now.

Drop us an email to let us know if you’re going to be there so we can set aside time to meet in person.