Pacific Telecommunications Council

by: Ed Simnett, Chair, PTC Advisory Council; Product Strategist, Windows Live Mobile Search, Microsoft, USA

What is the Advisory Council (AC)?

The Advisory Council for PTC exists to help or guide the Board of Governors (BG). Guide them in what way, you might ask, and the answer is simple -- in the interests of the members. By being a larger group than the BG and elected and selected to ensure that we have representation across types of organizations and geography, every effort is made to make sure PTC is delivering what its members want.

What’s new for 2007?

First of all I should note that the AC is not a new body (it was established in 2003). We are continuing the work lead by former chair Jay Gillette and vice-chair Gregg Daffner over the previous two years. Speaking personally I know that their work has been important in making the transition a good one, and best of luck to Gregg in his work as he has moved on to the Board of Governors. I am happy to say that Jay remains a valued member of the AC.

The biggest organizational change for 2007 has been the move from a single vice chair to four vice-chairs. We are going to use this broadening of the leadership to focus the vice-chairs on specific areas, each with the specific goal of advancing PTC and our members’ interests over the next two years. Those vice-chairs are Heather Hudson (University of San Francisco), Shuji Kusuda (J Wave, and also head of the PTC Japan Chapter), Hunter Newby (Telx), and Gene Spinelli (Verizon Business, Asia Pacific).

We have broadened the base of the AC by including industries from outside what we might regard as our core, including the software and investment management industries, but with the majority of the AC still absolutely based in the traditional telephony space. In a sense you could say that the AC is a microcosm of the PTC’07 “Beyond Telecom” event. At that event, David Lassner, President and BG Chair, was kind enough to mention my election to the chair of the AC as one piece of evidence for the shift in the industry. (In my day job, I focus on mobile search for a well-known software company based in Redmond, Washington.) At the same time we have also remained close to our roots in the industry, academia and research. Our AC vice-chairs are nicely distributed across next-generation communications, large telcos, academia and content.

Supporting the BG:

Whether giving feedback on events, advice on direction for upcoming events, or simply participating as an observer in BG meetings, the AC is positioned to be a bridge between the membership and the BG. The support we offer is by its nature advisory, but we aim to present actionable ideas and plans as well as higher level feedback.

Representing the members; Participating on other committees:

The AC also forms a body of volunteers (though in some cases we have to do a little more active volunteering of people than others!) that the BG and other elements of PTC can call on for specific projects. These include supporting our academic programs, succession planning, a new member complaints process, the steering committee for PTC’08 and others. We hope that by being available as a resource to PTC, we can all help shoulder burdens and build value for the community.

A test bed for new ideas:

One of the areas I am personally very passionate about is the introduction of newer communications technology into how people work and live their lives. Whether this is day to day in offices, or helping to better manage disaster relief, developments in communications can have huge impacts. In our own small way, the AC will be trialing some of these newer capabilities (I could say web 2.0, but I won’t) over the next few months, before rolling them out to the broader membership. We are focusing on social networking and ad hoc collaboration tools, and will also be working hard on the meeting management capabilities that we debuted this year, for PTC’08.

You should expect to see the benefits of some of these advances before next January --watch this space! The primary focus is around enabling PTC members to communicate and collaborate more effectively with each other year round.

Building value for the membership:

To conclude, the Advisory Council exists to support the PTC Board of Governors, with a focus on representing the interests of the members, and will also be directly working to benefit PTC and our membership. We are interested in your, the members, thoughts. Please feel free to contact me at acchair@ptc.org.

Ed Simnett was elected to a two-year term as Chair of the Advisory Council at the 14 January meeting of the AC at PTC’07. A complete list of members of the Advisory Council is available at http://www.ptc.org/aboutus/leadership.html