Bob Metcalfe hosts Vortex '99, an invitation-only tech conference in California where industry leaders debate network convergence: the Internet, phones, and TV merging into one. Metcalfe predicts telephony over the Internet, always-on broadband, and MP3s becoming mainstream, with hundreds of billions in telephone revenue at stake. The real value, speakers agree, is the face-to-face networking that accelerates deals.
We will see more revolution in the next 5 years than we've seen in the last 20.
There's $200 billion worth of telephone revenues per year in the United States alone up for grabs, and the Internet's going to take it.
There's going to be an explosion of new devices, and we don't yet know which ones are going to be successful and which ones are going to be established and which ones, which ones aren't, and it's going to be highly unpredictable. If it were easy to predict, then we could all just immediately do the right thing, and not do the wrong things, and that's not what happens.
Everyone in technology markets today wants to know the answer to one simple question: What is the next big thing? Now, at Vortex '99, right here in beautiful Laguna Niguel, California, the next big thing is convergence. Bob Metcalfe has brought together 300 Forticians, These are technologists, strategists, venture capitalists, and even a few CEOs to review the bidding as to what kind of future convergence will bring. Join me. I'm Jeffrey Rayport, and I'll be your guide as we look back on the drama and the debate that is Vortex '99.
The internet, the telephone network, and the television network technically are converging. Convergence is a ubiquitous phenomenon.
This is the convergence.
This is everything over the internet.
It is happening. It has now reached critical mass such that there are things going on that change the way you do your business.
For 3 days, we worked the crowd, aiming to uncover just how network convergence is transforming business everywhere.
The opportunity is so huge that no one company can take it all. It's like surfing out on the ocean.
Yeah.
It is such a large wave that even if you're very mediocre in your surfing, you will still do very well because the wave is so large. You know, this wave we're looking at is completely going to revolutionize our economy, what works and doesn't work, and the way the world happens.
Staying on top means learning to love, or at least live with, an unprecedented rate of change. And that's the attraction for Nortel Networks' Dave House. My 2 hobbies are heli-skiing and race car driving. You think I'm worried about speed?
I love this!
I love this!
Faster, faster!
The real job of the CEO now then is to manage change. That, that is still a daunting problem.
You learn at the edge, you make decisions at the edge, and make large decisions quickly on half-complete information. You hope you're right.
Business is a war. It is one of the pure forms of war that is out there.
But for these 3 days, Vorticians have declared a ceasefire, marshaling forces for convergence of another kind. We're converging on a golf course. We're going to merge data, video, voice, all on— I think we're starting on the 6th tee box. At Vortex, networking takes on a whole new meaning. If you don't schmooze, you lose.
This is a very turbulent time.
Things are happening so quickly that unless you talk face-to-face with the people who are making them happen, you're behind.
Vortex is one of these places that gives you the opportunity to let serendipity take its chance in a sense of bringing people together who all have different kinds of visions and kind of bring those visions together and create new things that you wouldn't normally have This is the best place really to find all the convergence happening.
I don't plan it at all. You keep talking to people with great ideas that make— oh, oh, this guy can really make this thing happen. So if only you can go and just get that chip from that guy and that card from that other guy, then I can go and just offer that kind of service.
I had a list of 20 people I've been trying to get a hold of, and I think I talked to 15 of them here and got stuff done really fast.
I think the best thing about this conference is the networking.
I think there's more action goes on out here on the patio than inside the presentations.
General session is starting in a few moments.
Conference organizer Bob Metcalf needs more than chimes to keep the official program on track.
A conference like this with invitation-only attendance, the value shifts from the program, not entirely, but it shifts to the attendees. So the schmoozing becomes more valuable than the program, and you know it's working when you have a hard time getting people Some would-be vorticians were less likely to get back into the ballroom than others.
And whether they wound up on the patio or in the program, it's Metcalf who draws them into the show.
Anything Metcalf does is important to me.
Bob is also a great guy, and he knows everyone.
I live my life by Metcalf's law.
I'm trying to double my worth with every connection, right?
Throughout his career, Metcalf's been an inventor, an entrepreneur, and a CEO. But all of that pales in comparison to his latest ambition.
It's a pleasure to have you on my television program. Thank you.
To be recognized as the world's number one technology pundit.
I write columns, I give speeches, and I organize conferences just like this one. That's what pundit means to me, and I'm paid to be opinionated.
The more controversial his opinions, the better. Predicting, for example, the internet's catastrophic collapse in 1996. Alas, for Metcalfe, it never came to pass.
So as a result of that, I ate the column in which I predicted the gigalapse. I'm going to eat it, don't you worry.
In front of 1,000 people at the World Wide Web conference, Metcalfe actually ate his words. Preparing them in a blender, he devoured the entire column. But being wrong hasn't dissuaded Metcalfe from ruminating over other lofty predictions. His most recent one, that the stock market will crash on November 8th.
The prediction is based on there being disappointments in 3rd quarter financial results among the internet companies. It's also late enough in the year that the 4th quarter guidance on what the earnings for the 4th quarter will be will be out. And those would be disappointing compared to expectations. Year-end tax-selling pressures would have built. People will be looking to the year-end event. And then Y2K is December 31st, 1999, so it's looming, and people will, I guess, be terrified by that. So all of it points to November 8th.
It's Bob Metcalfe's role in life to predict disasters. He predicted the great internet meltdown.
An 80s column as a result of its not coming.
He's a pundit; he needs to be provocative. I think, sure, it's possible that there's some huge meltdown, but I do think that the best companies have very sustainable long-term businesses.
So when do I get to write about it?
Whether or not this forecast winds up in the blender, Metcalf is going to keep on dishing out those predictions.
Well, I'd like to quote Esther Dyson's father, Freeman Dyson, the famous physicist. Actually, he used to be a famous physicist. Now he's now he's a famous father. And he said recently, and I immediately recognized it as a secret to success, he says, it is much better to be wrong than to be vague. So now, that's one of the things I do with my punditry is to make it as specific as possible, which of course means it's likely to be wrong.
At a conference like this, we figured Metcalf wasn't the only one with an opinion, so we took the liberty to ask one final question. What is the next big thing?
Am I going to tell you? The next big thing? You don't want much, do you?
What's the next big thing?
Well, I would say, if I knew, then I wouldn't tell you.
After 3 days of wearing them down, we finally started to get some answers.
I think the next big thing is telephony working over the internet.
True interactivity in the entertainment medium.
I just think it's IP and optics everywhere.
MP3.
The next big thing is the internet becoming something that is It's so interwoven into our lives that we almost stop thinking about it as an it, right? It's no longer just— it becomes much more like electricity.
Well, I think the single most important thing from broadband probably won't be its speed.
It will be the fact that it's always on.
I agree with that. I think the always on is right now more important than the bandwidth itself. About this conference, it's not that people are whispering about the next big thing in the hallways. Not yet. It's too soon. Come back in a year, 2 years, 3 years.
So perhaps we'll all be back, since prediction is hard, especially when it comes to the future.
Unofficial Vortex 99 was produced by Monitor MarketSpace Center. To learn more, visit our website at www.tnbt.com.
