Bigger and better every year

This was the comment that many delegates made after RadioComms Connect was held at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre on 4-5 December.

The ongoing growth of the event meant it had to take place at the new venue. There were over 600 delegates and visitors were up 35% on 2011.

This year, workshops were held for the first time with Arvind Sharma from RMIT University and Steve Wilson and Peter Gundersen from Ericsson covering the topics of IP technologies and RoIP.

The presentation streams on Tuesday and Wednesday were very well attended, with the keynote presentations filling the 480-seat meeting room.

The speakers covered a large variety of topics, from underground mining communications to safety and compliance to PMR’s vulnerabilities. Notable mentions go out to Christian Kelly from ARCIA, who provided an overview of the event and Chris Chapman from ACMA for his speech on the upcoming changes to the 400 MHz band and beyond.

The event, run by Paul Davis and his WF Events team, has been growing since its inception six years ago when there were only a few stands and around 80 attendees. The enormous growth is a token to not only the effort of the team but also the radio industry, which in itself has been re-energised over the past few years.

The exhibition hall held over 80 exhibitors, almost filling the new space. The partner of the event, Auria Wireless, and platinum sponsors GMG/Sepura, Hytera, Harris Corporation, CSE/Cassidian were among them. The catering and coffee kept everyone buzzing, with both days swarming with exhibition visitors.

More details on the event and the ARCIA annual gala dinner will be featured in the January/February issue of Radio Comms Asia-Pacific magazine.

For more information about the 2012 and next year’s conference and exhibition, please visit the RadioComms Connect website.