SubOptic – Influences on Conference Structure and Content By John Horne
In Stewart Ash’s excellent article in Issue 33 of Subtelforum “Did SubOptic 2007 Herald the Rise of Supplier Power”, Stewart identifies his view on the major drivers that manifested themselves during SubOptic 2007. He also identifies correctly one of the challenges SubOptic faces for the future, in how will we define our developing audience and therefore
what will be the appropriate content and structure for the next conference to add real value. I would however take issue with him that the Host and Sponsors from the supplier segment of the community allows suppliers to exercise undue influence over the content and structure of the conference.
The Constitution of SubOptic quite clearly states that our organisation should be run for the benefit of all the members of our community, who have an interest in undersea communication cables. The strategic governance of the organisation is undertaken by an Executive Committee, which currently comprises of 14-15 members of whom three are cable owners, seven are either traditional carriers or cable operators, four are system suppliers and one is a marine service provider. Our current President is from a cable owning company; our past President was from a carrier/cable owning company and the previous one to that was Jean Devos, who though his background was from the supplier base can be considered a “truly independent voice”. Each of these EC Members contributes an identical amount of pre-funding credit to help plan and organise a SubOptic conference and therefore have an identical influence in determining its strategic structure and content. The detailed programme for the conference is put together by our Program Committee, which is chosen to provide balance between the various elements of our community. For SubOptic 2007, whilst the chair came from Tyco Telecommunications, of the six other members, 38