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Communications Technology July 1999 Issue
From the SCTE-List
By David Devereaux-Weber

Find Convergence Answers

 
David Devereaux-Weber
David Devereaux-Weber

We are in the midst of the convergence of seven industries: the movie industry, broadcast TV, cable TV, consumer electronics, telephony, computers and the Internet. In addition, these industries are becoming global in scale.

How will cable engineers and technicians survive convergence? How will engineers and techs from other industries learn about cable?

You have eight ways to keep up with the changes: technical societies, industry associations, controlled-subscription ("free") print publications, paid-subscription print publications, educational institutions, industry conventions, industry laboratories and the Internet.

To succeed in this era of change, we need informationand lots of it. However, difficulty often arises in figuring out exactly where to find said info. To that end, this month Ill outline some of the technical societies, associations and labs, and where you can find them on the Net.

Societies

The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers, www.scte.org, provides training material for our converging industries. If you are not an SCTE member, you are missing the best way to communicate with others in our industry and improve your knowledge. The SCTE holds two major technical conferences each yearCable-Tec Expo and the Conference on Emerging Technologies.

Here follow several more societies, whose names are fairly self-explanatory:

Each of these societies holds annual conventions and publishes information both in print and on the Internet.

Associations

Industry associations exist to help focus industry direction, influence public policy, lobby regulators and disseminate information. If you have a specific question or area of interest, associations can be quite helpful. Here follow several sources:

  • Electronic Industries Alliance, www.eia.org (consumer electronics)
  • International Engineering Consortium, www.iec.org (nonprofit sponsored by universities and engineering societies)
  • National Cable Television Association, www.ncta.com
  • National Association of Broadcasters, www.nab.org
  • Telecommunications Industry Association, www.tiaonline.org (telecom manufacturers and suppliers)
  • United States Telephone Association, www.usta.org

Conventions

If you want to really get a feel for whats going on in a given industry, attending its conventions is a great help. Its especially valuable to visit noncable conventions to see what "those people" are thinking.

The major industry conventions are:

Research labs

Much like industry associations, laboratories are a great help in answering specific questions. The major industry laboratories are:

Keeping up with these separate industry associations, societies, laboratories and conventions is a full-time job in itself, but its worth it to keep up with the changing nature of our technological world.

Further, I suggest that our technical societies consider the effect of convergence. In the future, it may be useful for some societies to form partnerships or merge. - CT

Dave Devereaux-Weber, P.E., is a network engineer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a senior member of the SCTE, and he can be reached via e-mail at .

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