The Big Telecom Event: Have Your Say

What's going to really matter to communications service provider executives in 2014? For months now, the teams at Light Reading and Heavy Reading have been thinking long and hard about that during the early planning stages for our inaugural Big Telecom Event, which is happening June 17-18, 2014, in my neck of the woods, Chicago.

The event was announced, you may recall, in September, replete with the flashy pitch "Specs & Plugs & Rock & Roll." The concept, as we outlined at the time, is to not only provide show attendees with top class Heavy Reading analyst insights, CXO-level keynote presentations, and challenging panel debates focused on the latest trends and developments -- think SDN, NFV, Big Data/analytics, mobile security, multimode small cells, packet/optical transport -- but also replicate the conference agenda with focused demonstrations of real-world applications on the show floor. (See Light Reading to Host 'Big Telecom Event' Debuting in June 2014 and Get Ready for the Big Telecom Event.)

That hasn't changed. But following three months of conversations with key industry decision-makers from sponsors, partners and speakers, we realized there was one group of folks we hadn't yet brought into the conversation -- you, our community members.

As we embark on building a show around proof-of-concept demos of practical applications for service providers, I think it's time to ask: What would you like to see on the BTE demo floor?

If you have thoughts on what we're planning -- positive, negative, inquisitive or even silly -- now is the time to share. Because the momentum is already building behind what we believe is going to be a groundbreaking telecom industry event and I'm open to any ideas about how to make it better or more relevant, while there's still time to incorporate those new ideas.

You'll be hearing a lot more about BTE in the coming months as we add keynote speakers and finalize the details for the event -- make sure you're a part of it.

— Carol Wilson, Editor-at-Large, Light Reading