HostingCon 2011 Preview

If you have never attended a HostingCon event, then you are in for a real treat in San Diego, California in a few weeks. HostingCon 2011 will convene on August 8th 2011 and continue for 3 solid days through August10th 2011 at the San Diego Convention Center. 

HostingCon has a tradition of attracting the best and the brightest in the web hosting industry for several days of educational sessions, a vast exhibit area populated by web hosting industry vendors, and a plethora of parties and social events that leave ample room for networking with influential industry leaders. 

So what can we expect from HostingCon 2011? First off, according to HostingCon organizers iNET Interactive, there will be around 2,000 attendees in San Diego. As every hosting company representative represents potentially tens of thousands of hosting accounts, the number of small businesses, web developers and online retailers influencing the event will be enormous.

We caught up with a few exhibitors and registered attendees to see what else we can look forward to at HostingCon 2011. 

Monish Sood is organizing the HostingCon activities for Platinum Sponsor Microsoft. Here's what Mr. Sood revealed as far as current plans for this year's event. ''Microsoft is a Platinum Sponsor again at HostingCon. You can find us at booth number 115 with the Xbox Kinect available to all attendees to try. We have two sessions focused on helping service providers connect to the growing demand for cloud services from Enterprises. Going with tradition we will be giving away an Xbox with Kinect.'' Mr. Sood also suggests that interested hosting companies and experts check out facebook.com/partnercloud to ''see what other Cloud Ninjas are up to''.

Stuart Melling is a long time attendee from overseas. Co-founder of the UK dedicated hosting company 34SP.com, Mr. Melling explained, ''The opportunity to meet and talk with peers in the industry is always an unmissable opportunity at HostingCon. Over the years I've made a number of great contacts so each year HostingCon represents a useful time to catch up with many industry experts, not to mention meet more! Even if you think you have every element of your business perfected, hosting con offers a wonderful time to reflect upon it, while amongst some of the brightest in the industry. I can't think of a year where I've left HostingCon not energized and fired up to tackle challenges and meet opportunities in new ways.''

William Toll is VP, Marketing at Yottaa – The Web Performance Company. Yottaa enables website owners to determine their website speed, page load times, and more; and automatically optimize the website for better performance. Here are Mr. Toll's comments, ''I am speaking on behalf of Yottaa, my session will help Web hosters learn how to improve their marketing ROI with faster websites. In competitive markets, a faster web site speed may mean the difference between a new customer or a website visitor that bounces away. The session is titled ''Every Millisecond Counts! Faster Websites Matter – Help Your Company and Your Clients Get Better ROI from Their Websites''. 2:00pm on Wednesday 8/10.

Mr. Toll added, ''2011 is a transformational year in the hosting industry. From shared hosting where there are many new entrants in the space which are built around a content management platform, to the transition of VPS offerings to more on-demand and usage based packages to the massive shift from dedicated hosting to cloud – this year's HostingCon will spotlight these shifts. It's exciting to see new approaches, new messaging and to have the world’s technology focus back on what hoster's do best – automation and the billing and support of recurring Internet infrastructure services. This will be my seventh HostingCon, every year I find a tremendous value from attending – from meeting vendors, to learning and observing from competitors to networking and sharing stories with other hosting professionals – this is a ''do not miss'' event. Over the years I have left HostingCon with a good sense of where the industry is and where it could be – which all of my employers have benefited from.''

David Snead is an attorney in private practice in Washington D.C. with a practice that focuses exclusively on representing web hosting companies and other entities active in the Internet infrastructure. Mr. Snead has moderated numerous panels and spoken individually on key legal topics since the founding of HostingCon. Mr. Snead added, ''As always, I'm looking forward to hearing about new products and services that hosts are rolling out at HostingCon 2011. The program this year is the best I've seen. So many new speakers and a great focus on content that is missing from other conferences, some of which have a "pay to speak" requirement.''

If you need any further details on HostingCon 2011 please visit the HostingCon website at: http://www.hostingcon.com. You can also click here to view a list of the participating HostingCon exhibitors. You can also follow the latest HostingCon developments on the HostingCon blog.