The call for speakers for the Streaming Media East conference and exhibition taking place Nov. 6-8th in San Jose is now open. I typically receive ten times the number of speaking submissions I have available so I strongly suggest you submit your proposal early, as they are reviewed and possibly confirmed upon receipt. The submission deadline is May 11th.

It should be noted that we are always looking for speakers from the media who cover and track this industry via print, web and blogging. For the East show in May we have speakers from Economist, Business Week, Wall Street Journal, eWeek, ClickZ News, MarketWatch and About.com amongst other media outlets.

If you are interested in moderating your own round-table session at the show and are looking to help organize and participate in the topic and creation of a session, contact me immediately via e-mail with your idea.

As you are all aware, the online video market is hotter than ever and our shows continue to grow each year and continue to attract more and more speakers. The demand continues to grow for speaking spots so I can’t stress enough how important it is to get your submissions in on time.

AT&T Inc., Ericsson, France Telecom, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Siemens Networks, Sony, and Telecom Italia today announced the founding of the Open IPTV Forum, an industry consortium that will work to define an interoperable end-to-end specification for delivery of IPTV services.

The release says that the forum, which is fully open to participation across the communications and entertainment industries, will focus on development of open standards that could help to streamline and accelerate deployments of IPTV technologies, and help to maximize the benefits of IPTV for consumers, network operators, content providers, service providers, consumer electronics manufacturers and infrastructure providers.

As with any organization or association, I’m skeptical only because we have seen so many of these types of groups launch with big fanfare but they end up having little impact on the industry. Many don’t end up actually doing anything or get so caught up in their own internal politics that they can’t get out of their own way. That being said, I give these companies credit for joining together to try and accomplish something instead of just sitting on the side and doing nothing. I hope to see them succeed.

Other companies in the online video industry should take note. There is no where near enough co-opetition going on amongst vendors in this industry which in many cases is just short sighted thinking. There are way too many important decisions being made about our industry, by those outside our industry.

Years ago, I’ve used to be on a lot of boards of companies from hardware manufactures and content creators to non-profits and service based providers. I really enjoyed the positions as it gave me insight into other segments of the industry and allowed me to continue to always learn more. I’m looking to do more of that again and have been getting a bunch of offers as of late. If you know of an interesting board position or have one at your company and think it’s a fit, please drop me a line. I am more interested in companies who have an actual product or service out on the market as opposed to companies who are still in stealth mode and have no proof of concept.

I’m open to any ideas and will be evaluating all of the offers and picking two or three companies to work with starting this year. It could a company involved in any form of IP based video content/service across any kind of network. I like working with companies who want to build a real long term business and who’s business model is not to build something in twelve months and then try and sell it.

I know I am not the only one that struggles when it comes to using the correct term to classify this industry. Now some would argue that streaming media or online video is not even an industry to begin with and they are right. Streaming media is a technology and online video could be an industry but it also describes the technology used.

So how do we classify this industry? Clearly there is a need to come up with a term that the industry settles on because as this market grows, there are times the industry is going to need to work together on many fronts. For some time it seems the "digital media" term is what’s used, but to me that’s completely generic and really does not describe what we do.

So how would you classify this industry? What terminology do you think best represents what we are doing as a collective group?

Roger Ehrenberg had a great article last week on the SeekingAlpha.com website talking about what companies are best positioned to win in an IPTV-enabled world. As Roger points out, "the trend towards an on-demand, take-it-with-me world was seeded over 20 years ago, and is just now being more fully played out."

I couldn’t agree with him more. The idea that IPTV is some sort of "new" concept is far from the truth. IPTV as a term is fairly new, but the whole idea of IPTV has been around for some time and many companies have been working on this form on content distribution for more than just the past year.

That’s the focus for discussion on the P2P session taking place at the Streaming Media East show in May. With the recent offerings by BitTorrent, VeriSign, Joost and others, is legal P2P finally ready for prime-time? This panel of content owners and technology experts will discuss whether P2P will finally revolutionize online video distribution. They will discuss whether the cost savings advantage with P2P is real, how P2P will translate into a competitive advantage, how P2P distribution may affect the networks and CDNs and what some of the potential problems are that P2P technology may face from the telco’s. Come hear the debate on whether P2P is the answer to the fundamental capacity limitations for large-scale video audiences for today’s Internet.

• Moderator: Rich Mavrogeanes, Founder And CTO, VBrick Systems
• Panelist: Brian Taptich, VP, Business Development, BitTorrent
• Panelist: Nick Rockwell, CTO, MTV Networks
• Panelist: Monty Mullig, SVP, Internet Technologies, Turner Broadcasting System
• Panelist: Christopher Levy, Chairman, Digital Media Management Working Group, DCIA

What topics or points would you like to see discussed at this session? Please include them in the comments section for your chance to win a free conference pass to the show.

Was sorry to hear from Counse Broders over at Current Analysis that one of their analysts, John O’Keefe, passed away three weeks ago. John was a Sr. Analyst covering the Internet/Managed Services industries. The company has a small memoriam about his passing on their home page. I can’t say I really knew John personally, but I don’t know of anyone who didn’t talk about him in the nicest manner.

Counse says they are looking to hire a Sr. Analyst that has a combination of writing talent and analysis skill-set especially in the hosting, streaming media, and CDN markets. If you are interested, contact Counse Broders directly.