Comms Connect a critical success

The annual Comms Connect conference has wrapped up for another year, having surpassed last year’s event and exceeded the expectations of delegates, speakers and exhibitors.

Comms Connect 2013 was held last week at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, and by all accounts was a resounding success. The workshops and speaker sessions were packed and the exhibition hall was overflowing into the adjacent entrance area.

“We are hearing from the attendees - speakers, exhibitors, delegates - that it was our best yet. It was also our biggest in numerous ways - more exhibition space, 35% more attendees, and we ran for three full days with almost 70 speakers and panel members,” says Paul Davis, the conference organiser.

Your writer spoke with many dozens of attendees, all of whom agreed that it was a great opportunity to network, learn from the experts, and engage with manufacturers and vendors in the critical communications industry.

Workshops and speakers

A full day of workshops on the Wednesday saw well over 100 industry professionals attend a series of presentations from experts in many fields of critical communications. As there were two simultaneous streams, it wasn’t possible to be everywhere at once, but the conference organisers had split the topics into logical divides, meaning that there was something for everyone. Your writer was able to attend the ‘Mobile broadband and LTE for critical communications’ and ‘TETRA masterclass’ workshops, and came away a great deal wiser and better informed.

The conference proper kicked off with two special presentations. The first was by Len Ricardo, operations manager at NASA’s Tidbinbilla tracking station near Canberra. Len delighted the audience with his ‘big picture’ view of interplanetary communications, where - unlike here on Earth - signals can take an awfully long time to reach their destination … more than 17 hours in case of the Voyager 1 spacecraft.

He was followed by Lance Valcour, a highly distinguished retired Canadian police officer and head of CITIG, the Canadian Interoperability Technology Interest Group. He gave a masterful overview of the critical communications field in Canada, the USA, Australia and New Zealand, pointing out many similarities and some differences. (Did you know that the USA has 17,000 police jurisdictions?)

There were dozens of other speakers of note during the course of the two days, including Peter Clemons, head of TETRA Business, Americas, for Hytera Mobilfunk GmbH, who gave the keynote presentation on the topic of ‘Safe cities will be smarter cities’.

All of the presentations were videotaped and will be available for viewing on YouTube in a couple of weeks, once some video post-production work has been completed. Powerpoint presentations will also be available for download. Keep an eye on the Comms Connect and Critical Comms magazine websites for details.

Exhibition

The exhibition hall was absolutely packed, with more than 80 different companies represented - from the largest international communications companies to the smallest, local, specialist firms. A wide range of fields was covered, from the traditional digital radio providers, to console manufacturers, microwave link manufacturers and providers, test and measurement suppliers, antenna companies, power supply providers and many more. The full list of companies is available on the Comms Connect website.

Gala dinner and awards

A highlight of the conference was the associated gala dinner on the Thursday night, held by ARCIA - the Australian Radio Communications Industry Association. A packed hall at the MCEC enjoyed fine food and wine, entertainment provided by singer Chloe Maggs. Master of ceremonies was Paul Stathis, who kept the evening moving along with wit and charm.

The highlight of the dinner was the presentation of ARCIA’s Industry Excellence Awards. There were a large number of nominations in each of the eight categories, demonstrating the high regard in which the awards are held. The winners were:

• Professional Sales Award - Roger Webber, Telechnics
• Engineering Elegance Award - Paul Whitfield, Omnitronics
• New Talent Award - Fahad Hassan, Vertel
• Customer Service Award - Ian Gibson, Airwave Solutions
• Technical Excellence Award - Adrian Caldiararo, Radlink Communications
• Apprentice or Trainee Award - Chris Pritchard, Icom
• Peter Wallace Award - Lee Watson, Tait Radio
• Community Service Award - Phil Holden, Gencom

The special Jonathan Livingston Seagull Award was presented to Albert Hazebroek, owner and managing director of Mobile Masters, for his charity work and the contributions he has made to his local community in Western Australia.

Photos of the dinner and awards ceremony can be found on the ARCIA gallery page.

Comms Connect in 2014

Next year will see two Comms Connect events: the traditional one in Melbourne, plus a new satellite event to be held in Sydney over 18-19 June.

For 2014, the main Melbourne Comms Connect will take place 30 September to 2 October instead of the usual November, but at the same venue - the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, located on the Yarra River at the southern end of the city.

The Sydney Comms Connect, which will be held at the Australian Technology Park in inner Sydney, will be an opportunity for those who find it difficult to get to Melbourne to experience first-hand the depth of speakers, exhibitors and workshops that attendees have come to expect.

The event “won’t be a carbon copy of the Melbourne event”, says Davis, “but it will be substantial in terms of depth of conference material and technologies available to exhibition visitors on the show floor”. He adds that it is attracting a lot of interest and bookings are already coming in.