Interesting strategic shift for next weeks VON 2008 Spring conference, with Pulver Media renaming it to VON.x to signify the transition from voice to all forms of IP communications. VON has always been a VoIP-evangelist's conference. The rebranding to pick up the whole unified communications space is a recognition how VoIP--at least at the enterprise level--has been but an enabler for the introduction of a suite of IP communications features. With the UC space now the leading edge for IP comms, a conference limited to voice only was starting to look lame.

Jeff Pulver himself has become intrigued by social networking and the power of Facebook and others to create new communications paradigms. In an interesting podcast [1] he tells the Canada-based Squawk Box about the power of video and IP based widgets to enable users to "share life's moments." It is this community need Pulver believes will drive much of the next round of development.

For more:
Podcast [2] on why the change from VON to VON.x

Related articles:
We saw the same trend to UC when we surveyed [2] the VoIP leaders last year
Google releases UC for the masses Article [2]