I first met Mark Fishburn at the Convergence Technology Council (CTC) in Calabasas, California. Mark was a director in the organization, and had very strong ideas about networking and Ethernet. Going beyond the standard role we all play at professional networking venues, he distinguished himself from the group by presenting a passion for teaching others, and presenting his ideas in language nearly anybody could easily understand. Mark was always easy to find at CTC meetings, as he was the center of the largest groups of people who wanted to hear what he had to say.

Mark is a true innovator, and generates a lot of inspiration among CTC members with his visions and thought leadership in a variety of technology and business-related topics. I met Mark in Tarzana, California, to learn more about his vision related to Carrier Ethernet, as well as to gather some advice for entrepreneurs.

Pacific-Tier: Mark, tell us a little about yourself. How did you come to the San Fernando Valley, and what do you do?

NOTE:  The CTC invites guest bloggers to provide articles that would be of interest, and benefit to our readers. This week we are happy to introduce Mr. Andy Slater, CMO, Presence Networks.

‘‘The ‘Command and Control' management style enjoyed by many CEOs in the past has gone. Today teamwork and collaboration are the norm. Leadership the accepted management style, people orientated collaboration the culture, people centric technology the facilitator.'' 

We stand at a transition point in business. As the global economy starts to work its way out of recession CEO's and management teams around the world are beginning to plan for growth. But they won't do that by simply taking back into their businesses the bottom line costs they just spent 18 painful months getting rid of. The enlightened are looking for a new ways of working, how to unlock the people power in their organization in a secure and focused manner, to accelerate speed of decision making, reduce costs, and drive productivity. 

I first met Matt Hiles while he was director of business development with Looking Glass Networks in Los Angeles. As a customer looking for telecom services, navigating the providers, technologies, and deal structures can be confusing. Matt took the time to explain all aspects of the business, cost structures, and how he would get us a great deal - while still making money for his company. Matt stood out alone from a world of "wheeling and dealing" telecom sales people, unique in providing the customer a level of confidence they were getting the best product, for the best price, with the best service.

Pacific-Tier: Today we have Matt Hiles, managing partner with Mosaic Networx. Hello Matt! So tell us a little about yourself, how did you get into this business?

Matt Hiles: I started in telecommunications right out of college, and I've been in the business, in one form or another, since - which is about 20 years. I've been in a variety of telecommunications, voice, and service providers. I've also spent a period of time in the data center side of the industry as well.

Another incident on the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) hits YouTube, and the world is once again asking the question if BART Police are using too much force, the police acted appropriately, or if BART passengers simply recorded a snapshot in time that could be interpreted at a later date. In the past, to find out what happened during an incident such as the most recent BART scuffle, you would be dependent on a newspaper's beat journalist to hang around a police station. He'd get a copy of the official police report, perhaps talk with one of his friends on the force, and transcribe what he gathered.

Now news and media are real time. You can get Twitter tweets and video feeds from mobile phones, laptop computers, and reporters on the scene with CNN (or other international news sources). In many cases even established news outlets are starting to heavily rely on "stringers," or freelancers to provide on-scene raw video for later interpretation by news readers. Nearly every news outlet today asks for viewers to send their "i-Reports" and videos to supplement news reports, and to reduce the amount of time from incident to broadcast.

A very different world from the days of Walter Cronkite, when the evening news would be a well-edited account from a distant reporter, formatted for the time allotted by network news, and face news competition by only a couple other networks (in the United States that would include CBS, NBC, ABC, and PBS).

Pacific-Tier Communications and the CTC are pleased to present our series highlighting and introducing entrepreneurs providing thought leadership and innovative ideas in technology, communications, and environment-related industries.

Pacific-Tier met up with Chris Ueland at his offices in Studio City, California

Pacific-Tier: Chris, can you tell us a little about yourself? Where did you come from?

How attractive is San Diego as a place to start a company compared with the Silicon Valley? Santa Barbara? Los Angeles?

On Thursday evening the "Sweat Equity" series of seminars sponsored by San Diego's Software Industry Council (SDSIC) brought together a distinguished panel with a venture capitalist and successful entrepreneurs answering questions, drilling into their experiences, as well as exploring perceptions they've developed over several years doing business in San Diego. More than 50 interested attendees with the hope and aspiration of either starting their own company, or breaking away from the corporate world with a startup, provided an enthusiastic audience to support the discussion and Q&A.

Panel members included:

I met up with Lynne Gallagher, President of Telecom Telematique, in Milpitas, California, while giving a tour of data centers and information technology vendors in the Silicon Valley to a delegation of IT business people from Ramallah, Palestine.

Telecom Telematique consults in four broad categories of international telecommunications-Infrastructure, including policy and regulation, applications, and business strategy, conducting feasibility studies, technical assistance, education, and training to people in the developing and under-privileged world.

Lynne is one of those unique people who is tireless, preferring to hop on an airplane and go nose-to-nose with international agencies holding up a project, than live the comfortable life of retirement most of us aspire. It is not often we have an opportunity to meet people who are truly dedicated to helping others, with little or no regard to their own comfort.

Lynne is one of those rare people who have dedicated her life to delivering the tools needed to achieve the hopes and dreams of thousands of young people around the world.

Us "Baby Boomers" tend to believe we have accomplished a lot in the years ranging from our roots of hard rock, to the birth of basic internet technologies in the early 1970s. We started our generation with black and white television, experiencing everything from the assassination of President Kennedy to absorbing the wonders of man walking on the moon. We end our generation with 7.6 Terabit submarine cables connecting every continent with high speed many-to-many interactive communications and applications.

Communications for many during the early 1960s consisted of telephone party lines, daily newspapers, telegraph, and radio broadcast. While in high school (Richfield, Minnesota), some of us privileged students in more opulent areas had access to computer classes. This consisted of having a teletype terminal attached via low capacity lines to a central mainframe computer - using a service called "time sharing." Very cool, and very exotic.

Competition for a place in computer class was aggressive, and only a few of us were able to indulge in the excitement of connecting to a machine someplace outside of our class. We didn't waste a moment of time learning some rudimentary programming routines, and were considered very strange by a majority of students in school, who either did not make the grade for computer class, or simply did not care.

What? Leveling the intellectual playing field with Stanford? The home of elite, wealthy, and over-privileged?

While eLearning is nothing new to the Internet generation, traditionally eLearning content was dull, "uninspirational," and in many cases an ineffective alternative to residence or classroom learning. Commercialized or neutralized to make lessons suitable for the masses, or in a worst case part of an uninspired project by religious or international organizations with motives more focused internally than for the benefit of their own organization - rather than the ultimate users of their product.

So we compare access to intellectual stimulation and development a student may have in residence at Stanford, UC Berkeley, or MIT to a kid growing up in Ramallah (Palestine), and the playing field appears far from level. Stanford will continue to pump out global business leaders, and the kid in Ramallah will learn to survive.