2020 Virtual Fiber Connect Preview - ETI
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December 11, 2020

2020 Virtual Fiber Connect Preview

The following transcript has been edited for length and readability. Listen to the entire discussion here on The Broadband Bunch

Craig Corbin:

Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of the Broadband Bunch. Thanks so much for joining me, Craig and my colleague, Brad Hine.   One of the highlights each year on the broadband industry calendar is the Fiber Broadband Association’s annual conference, Fiber Connect. Just as most trade shows worldwide have done over the past nine months, Fiber Connect 2020 will take place on a virtual platform.

Craig:

Our guest today has participated in Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) activities for the past 13 years in a number of capacities and has served as Conference Committee Chair since 2016. A 24 year veteran of the telecommunications industry and Executive Vice President with On Trac Inc. It is a pleasure to welcome Mr. Joseph (J.J.) Jones.

J.J.:

Thank you so much for having me, I’m excited to be here.  I wanted to say also, thank you to ETI and what you guys are doing with this podcast.  It’s helping the industry by what you’re doing with continued education and highlighting what’s going on in our industry. I just want to say thank you to your entire team for putting together such a great program. I’m excited. I’m excited about what’s going on in the industry. I’m excited about Fiber Connect. I’m just looking forward to, whatever’s next?  For you guys, for us, for the industry…it’s exciting time to be a part of fiber broadband!

Fiber Broadband Fulfillment – On Trac Inc.

Craig:

Thank you so much for those kind words. We want to focus this conversation on Fiber Connect 2020, but before we do that, I would love to be able to provide a window on your full-time job. So, as Executive Vice President with On Trac Inc, for those that might not be familiar, give us the 30,000-foot overview of your organization.

J.J.:

I’d be glad to, On Trac Incorporated is going on 20 years and our core focus is broadband fulfillment services concentrating primarily on the aerial and underground drops from the pole to the house. We handle all the in-home installations, connecting all the subscribed services along with customer education. We’re in ten different markets, our primary client partners, as we like to call them, are primarily in the Muni and Co-Op space.

J.J.:

We’re all about service. We’re all about local. And for us, it’s about partnerships too. We call our clients partners because it takes an entire team effort to pull together and deploy fiber. For us, it’s hiring local, it’s training local, it’s becoming part of the local presence. It means that On Trac is going to support those local golf foundations, those 5k runs, become part of the Chamber [of Commerce] because we’re all about becoming part of the community that we serve in and deploying fiber. That’s a little bit about us. That’s our core focus. We do a lot of other professional services, but if you get down to it, it’s all about the aerial and underground drops and in-home installations.

Fiber Connect 2020 – Going Virtual

Craig:

It’s a strong tradition in the industry. Thanks for sharing that. You have worked tirelessly over the years with the Fiber Connect conference in your position with the Fiber Broadband Association as has my colleague, Mr. Hine, but this year is obviously unique from the standpoint of having to transition into a virtual platform. Tell us about how that process began.

J.J.:

The theme of this year has been flexibility for sure. We’ve had for the past several years very successful, what I would call now, live in-person events. We’ve been very fortunate, the [Fiber Broadband] Association has had a focus of supplying a great conference year in and year out. We went from wrapping up 2019 in Orlando, Florida, there at the Gaylord Palms, straight into planning ahead for Nashville 2020.

J.J.:

But reality 2020 happened, COVID hit and not just us but everybody in the industry had to pivot. Everybody went to a virtual model. Originally, about March and April, we were hoping that by the summertime, what had happened with COVID, would really be lessened and that just didn’t happen.

J.J.:

We rescheduled, we were fortunate to reschedule to December with the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville, and then reality sunk in late summer/early fall that we were not going to be able to have an in-person event. Like I said, many other industry conferences had to go virtual as well. We’ve looked at it as an opportunity – an opportunity to still provide what we think is the industry leading all fiber conference.

J.J.:

My hat goes off and just so grateful to our conference committee, which Brad has served faithfully for many years now. It’s just been a great team effort to get to this point. Fiber Connect is taking place next Monday, December 14th, 15th and 16th. We’ve got an incredible lineup Craig. I’m excited to share with you some of the highlights, but it’s taken a while to get here. It seems like forever ago that we actually had a conference! We’re just excited to be able to offer this virtual model on this platform and we feel like it’s going to serve the attendees.

Brad Hine:

Summer of 2019 was the last time we all congregated in Orlando for Fiber Connect and it’s hard to believe right now that a year and a half has passed since then.

J.J.:

It really is. In June of 2019, we were wrapping up and then started planning in August of last year for 2020. We all met in Chicago for a planning meeting with business as usual. We’ll have Nashville, Gaylord Opryland again, which is also always an incredible draw.  Then 2020 happened – for us and everyone else. But yeah, it’s hard to believe it’s been a year and a half. It’s been a long time.

Brad:

It has. Broadband Bunch and ETI Software were used to being at the main Fiber Connect conference as well as the regional ones around the country and also at some of the ones abroad and in LATAM.  From what I’ve seen, things seem to be coming together. I’m also very excited about the conference next week. What’s amazing to me is, when COVID-19 thrust upon us this whole virtual environment, everybody bought into it! We had to rely on tools that we’ve always had or at least we’ve had for many years, but people are getting really good at communicating remotely.

Brad:

It’s interesting to see that as the year goes on, there are more and more virtual conferences. I know the meetings that you and I have had with a lot of the partners seem to have gotten better and better. People are just, they’re just glued in now it seems.

J.J.:

They really are. It’s become the norm. It’s just become who we all are now in the business world and even personally, just communicating with family over virtual networks. I honestly think that we’re going to see more of this in the future, we’re not going to jump completely back in to live events. There’s a vaccine that’s going to be dispersed very soon. But I think that this whole virtual model, at least portions of it are here to stay for a foreseeable future.

Fiber Connect 2020 Conference Tracks & Sessions

Brad:

You made a comment about the content earlier, but I know in traditional conferences in the past, it’s usually been sectioned into the Business track, Engineering track…there’s Operations, Safety, we have Customer Connections and always the very popular Fiber Starter Kit, is this what we should expect next week?

J.J.:

It is. Again, I’m excited because we have 30 sessions over the three days and we’ve got over a hundred speakers! I’m so grateful for all these speakers to commit to this virtual format! 30 sessions, a hundred speakers! Something else I’m real excited about – we’ve done these events year in and year out – when you go to an event, you look at the session lineup, and you’re like, you’re making your check marks. “I want to go to this session, that session, when the Expo Hall is open, I’m going to go check out this booth and that booth.”

Fiber Connect 2020 “On Demand”

J.J.:

The incredible thing that we have the ability to do this year is, every single session is going to be on demand for 30 days post-conference. Now, you don’t got that struggle with where you need to go, there’s only one of me. I can only go to so many sessions within a day. You’re going to be able to see every single session that we offer over the next 30 days, which is incredible. To me it’s just an incredible platform that we’re able to do that with. Not only are the sessions going to be on demand, but all the exhibit halls, all the exhibitors are going to have on demand access also.

J.J.:

You can actually go to someone’s booth, the exhibitors booth over the next 30 days and access content, reach out to them. They’ll get pinged. The exhibitors will get pinged that you’re interested in them. To me, the virtual format being “on demand” is a win in of itself. It’s a great opportunity for all participants to see all of our content and experience all the great speakers.

Brad:

I’ve been attending Fiber Connect for about 13 years now. I know in the early days you’d go into a session, there’d be hundreds of people in there, and you’re trying to take notes. Now you’re saying we can capture that session in time and share it virtually with everybody. We can share it with team members and get more concepts rolling in our organizations. The platform will allow for making vendors more credible, nurturing partnerships, educating service providers, from all different levels and stages of the fiber business life cycle.

J.J.:

Something else that’s a neat function is if you need to pause a session for a phone call for example.  You can hit pause, take your phone call, take care of business and come back, un-pause it and start right where you left off. To me that’s just an awesome function to have and I know that, with everyone’s schedule here at the end of the year that, many people will take advantage of the pause button for sure, and still be able to come back to see what you missed. It’s great.

Fiber Broadband Starter Kit

J.J.:

We’ve got incredible content. You mentioned the Fiber Broadband Bunch Starter Kit and Customer Connections. I’m so excited about the Fiber Broadband Starter Kit. This is content that the Association has been working on refining since 2013. We’ve got eight sessions that are going to cover the fiber business from A to Z, from funding to legal, to planning, designing, engineering all the way to construction and installation.

Fiber Broadband Marketing Trends

J.J.:

We’ve got eight sessions that are going to walk those communities, those service providers, through the fiber business from A to Z. Here’s how you deploy fiber in your community. We’re excited about that. Also, I’m really excited about Customer Connections too.  In Orlando 2019, we had overwhelming feedback from a lot of service providers, not only post-conference but during the conference – coming up to me and a lot of our conference committee team members – saying, “Hey, you guys put on a great conference, but there’s one thing missing…it’s content that covers brand image, it’s content that covers marketing, customer experience, customer service. If you guys would have that content at your conference, I would bring my entire customer service team or my entire marketing team to your conference to experience that.”

J.J.:

We listened and we came up with some content that’s just going to be incredible. We’ve got Melanie Griffith, who is the Vice President of Customer Engagement at Google Fiber. She’s could be talking about creating an authentic customer experience from acquisition to ongoing customer engagement.

J.J.:

We’ve also got a session on the overall customer experience. We’ve got one on establishing your brand image and then we’re wrapping it up with marketing trends and changes. That content is so beneficial to the service providers to compete in a retail market. We’re excited about providing that new content and just waiting to get feedback from that. Again, I’m so excited about all the sessions and all the speakers we’ve got for Fiber Connect. It’s going to be a great event.

Brad:

Normally, you and I are used to getting there on Saturday night, preparing for an all-day Sunday session and going through late in the next week. I think we still have enough content virtually to actually share that in a much easier way now too, without having to have all the travel. I’m really looking forward to 9:00 am EDT next Monday (December 14th), we will have our opening keynote speaker.

Fiber Connect Keynote Speakers

J.J.:

We’ve got a great lineup of keynotes. We’ve got Bill Routt, who is president and COO of MobiTV. MobiTV is doing such a great job in the OTT, he’s going to be talking about OTT video and its future. Tuesday, we’ve got a strong lineup. We’ve got a conversation with RUS administrator, Chad Rupe. And then we’re going to go straight into a conversation with FCC Commissioner, Brendan Carr.  And then Wednesday, as I mentioned, Melanie Griffith from Google Fiber is going to be kicking us off talking about the authentic customer experience.

J.J.:

I’m very grateful for our lineup of keynotes and just all of our speakers in general. We’ve got a lot of content on the hot topic right now, that everyone wants to talk about, 5G. We don’t have just one, but we have two sessions covering 5G. We’ve got a smart cities panel. We’ve got fiber broadband research sessions. We’ve got next generation PON. We’ve got an incredible lineup of speakers and content to share with the industry.

Fiber Connect Interaction

Brad:

After each session can the virtual attendees expect some kind of interaction maybe through the chat sessions and tools like that?

J.J.:

We’re going to have live Q&A. As soon as the session is over, we’re going to go into a chat room. There’ll be a link that you’ll click that will go into the chat room. One thing that’s great is, you’ll be able to send your questions to that during the session. You send in your questions and we’ll have about, anywhere from ten to 15 minute Q&A time to wrap up each session. Also, within our virtual lobby, you’re going to be able to look at the attendee list. You’re going to see everyone who’s in attendance and who have registered for this event.

J.J.:

There’s also a neat function where you can choose someone to have a conversation with through chat. You’ll be able to find a certain attendee and try to enter into a conversation with them, be able to send a direct message. There’s just a lot of great options and we’re using a platform called Hubb, and we’re excited about just the, not aesthetically even how it looks, which is great, but the functionality and usability for our attendees. We’re looking forward to letting everybody test drive that next week.

Brad:

That sounds awesome. It sounds like we’ve thought of everything except for maybe a function for that welcoming social cocktail party and maybe a dinner app, where we can be “face-to-face” with all of our customers and partners.

J.J.:

I was joking with our CEO last week about how we participated in the Fiber Broadband Associations’ Premier Members event and we had a break and I left my office looking for the buffet, the lunch and it wasn’t there! I’m so used to having it. I’m like, “How are we virtually going to have cocktail hour and some food?!”. We’ll have to make do with what we got. But the virtual model is giving us a lot of capabilities that we didn’t have in the past, which I’m really looking forward to.

Fiber Connect Virtual Event Silver Linings

Craig:

Even though it is a dramatic change, there are silver linings, the ability to access the content for a period of time after the event, the ability to interact with the Q&A. I think it probably gives more access to the speakers, from the attendees perspective, than they would normally have at the in-person version.

Craig:

Fiber Connect really holds a special place in my heart. Two years ago, it was one of the first industry trade shows I attended with ETI Software. And then of course, the genesis of the Broadband Bunch was last year, 18 months ago, at Fiber Connect. A lot of great memories there. Before we let you go, I would be remiss if I didn’t ask about what it’s been like to have Brad on your committee for so many years? The interactions?  There have to be some great stories there.

J.J.:

Brad is one of many volunteers that I am so thankful for because this entire team is a volunteer team. We all have day jobs and at this time of year, it’s hard to distinguish which one is what? But Brad has been incredible volunteer. He’s a faithful helper. He oversees become a track leader, helps coordinate sessions. I think Brad could attest to this – that it is harder to plan and execute a virtual event than it is an in-person live event.

Brad:

Amen brother.

J.J.:

I’m thankful for Brad and his leadership on this team. He’s been a faithful committee member. I’m thankful for ETI allowing Brad to spend the time and resources to serve. I’m just thankful and I appreciate you guys. Like I said, this is a team effort to pull this off and is only can be done by volunteers like Brad and I.

Craig:

It will be great to see the culmination of those efforts, the tireless work that will be manifested next week, at 2020 Virtual Fiber Connect, December 14, 15 and 16.   J.J., thank you so much for taking the time to share with us today.

J.J.:

I appreciate the opportunity. And I’ll make this last little plug as we sign off…to all the listeners here and all the attendees of 2020 Virtual Fiber Connect, there’s no rest for the weary as soon as Brad and I wrap this up, we’re going to be looking for a call for presentations for 2021 Fiber Connect!

J.J.:

Keep an eye out for that email that’s going to come across your inbox after next week, because we will be jumping straight into 2021 Fiber Connect. Thank you for allowing me to come on to talk a little bit about On Trac Inc., Fiber Connect and also what the Fiber Broadband Association means to On Trac and ETI, and what it means to this industry.  I’m very grateful to be a part of this experience.

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