Love is in the air

Before I came to France this week (for the first time) to attend TeleManagement World in Nice, I presumed I would somehow insult the French in my Thursday newsletter. I contemplated the wisdom of doing so before getting out of town on Friday, but I was sure that the abundance of material I would find for abusing the people, the country, the food and/or the attitudes of my fellow planet dwellers from Europe would make it irresistible.

No such luck. I'm sure there was plenty of fodder. If only I had looked harder. But that would have been like looking for a bug at the bottom of my "avec jambon." If it's at the bottom, who cares?

Suffice it to say, the enchantment of this country is strong. But I was not the only one lured by the touch of a Mediterranean breeze. Approximately 2000 others came this week to be seduced by a stronger wind, a different temptress. They came to learn. They came to network. They came to showboat and to plead. They came with something to prove and a sense that things were about to change. They were tired of waiting and came ready to do business -- which, I have to say, is not always the case at TMW events in the states (or most events for that matter.)

The forum said their attendance was the best since 2001. That is a bigger statement than it first appears. In 2001, people were working from false assumptions: that they would all soon be filthy rich, that the gravy train would never stop, that CORBA was the interface of the future, that DSL would change the world, that carriers would have by now transformed their networks to IP and that the love fest with the venture capital community was true and everlasting.

The assumptions turned out to be false, the technology supplanted, the love fest unconsumatable.

A lot of lessons have been learned since then. Many of the companies whose assumptions were most misguided are no longer around. The VCs took their heads out of the clouds and turned rightfully plutonic on their misty-eyed entrepreneurs. Carriers grew wise to vendors' unproven claims. And everyone got real. Times got lean.

Yet, here, this week, 2000 operators and their software suppliers are back at it, determined this time to get it right. That's more than just an attendance record.

E-mail me at tmcelligott@primediabusiness.com