All bets on CTIA

Pulling ahead of PCIA as the biggest wireless show in town, the CTIA Wireless 2001 event is arguably a must for anyone in the industry, and organizers expect more than 30,000 attendees, 700 exhibitors and 200 speakers. Microsoft President Steve Ballmer, Dell Computer Chairman Michael Dell and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang are among the corporate and political luminaries slated as keynote speakers. A gala event Wednesday night will feature comedian Dana Carvey, who will likely drag his recently resurrected President Bush impression to town. Ironically, at last year's event the former president himself gave a speech in which he did his impression of Carvey's impression of him. Not to be outdone, sources said this year would feature Carvey doing Bush's impression of Carvey doing Bush.

VON singular sensation

The Spring 2001 Voice on the Net conference is widely acknowledged as the frontrunner event for those interested in staying on top of the technological and business issues facing the VoIP industry. A combination of industry professionals will come together to meet, greet and benefit from educational sessions that address developments in soft switching and next gen billing. The who's who event will feature 275 high-level speakers, including Level 3 CEO Jim Crowe, Zhone Technologies CTO Jeanette Symons and pulver.com CEO Jeff Pulver, all offering industry perspective. And if all this weren't enough, Thursday night's blowout bash will feature a performance from the stars of the movie “The Commitments.”

ISP love-in

More than 10,000 ISP professionals are expected to attend the spring installment of the ISPCon 2001 conference for an “intensely educational” experience on how to effectively run an ISP business. Unlike other events in the industry, this one is actually geared toward ISPs and not those shopping around for one. This spring's theme is “Making connections, building empires,” which more or less translates into ISP executives and engineers coming together to network, teach, learn and collectively bask in the wisdom that comes from hearing one another's tales of success and failure. Keynote speakers for the event are Gregory Maffei, president and CEO of 360 networks, Graham Rance, CEO of Caspian Networks and Jerry Patrick of Yipes Communications.