Cloud Media tops CONNECTIONS 2011 Agenda

Parks Associates released the preliminary agenda for the 2011 CONNECTIONS Conference, featuring the core topic areas of mobility and communications, entertainment and content, connected consumer electronics, and cloud-based value-added services.

The three-day event, June 28-30 at Santa Clara, Californina, offers a unique mix of market research presentations, trending data, insight from industry leaders, and discussion of the current strategies and future challenges in providing connectivity and technology services for consumers.

Cloud media is an important topic at this year’s CONNECTIONS due to the challenges for this market in reaching its tremendous potential. Parks Associates research finds consumers are highly interested in the cloud concept, notably the prospect of having anytime, anywhere access to their media. However, less than one-third of U.S. broadband households see the value of the digital locker concept specifically for music, photo, or video content, due in large part to current fragmentation of the market.

For more information, visit www.connectionsus.com.

Sempra Energy Foundation Sets $1 Million Environmental Challenge for Southern California

If you had $100,000 what would you do to "green" Southern California? That is the challenge that the Sempra Energy Foundation has posed to non-profit organizations with an environmental focus.

Those chosen will receive between $25,000 and $100,000, as part of a new $1 million Environmental Champions Awards program created to recognize the environmental efforts of Southern California organizations.

Non-profits can submit their applications at http://www.sempraenergyfoundation.org/ from now until Sept. 4 in one of three categories: natural resource protection and conservation; environmental education; or environmental health.

For the full press release, click here.

New Austin Energy Keynote Announced

Parks Associates & the CONNECTIONS Conference welcomes a new keynote speaker, Andres E. Carvallo, the Chief Information Officer of Austin Energy. Andres will deliver the opening keynote address "Building the Smart Grid" at 10 AM on Thursday, June 4th.

Andres is responsible for the technology vision, planning, development and operations across the enterprise. Since February of 2003, Andres has been driving a wireless and SOA transformation to deliver a fully-integrated and self-healing enterprise. The current direction for the company is to deliver the first smart grid in the US by 2009.

Andres is a requested speaker on CleanTech, Smart Grid, SOA, Wireless, and Running IT as a Business. He is co-author of Information Technology Leadership and CTO Best Practices Collection. And he is an honoree to many awards, including IT Executive of the Year by the Association of Information Technology Professionals in 2005, Premier 100 IT Leader by Computerworld in 2006, Best in Class of Premier 100 by Computerworld in 2006, CIO 100 Award by CIO Magazine in 2006, InformationWeek 500 by InformationWeek Magazine in 2007 and 2008, Computerworld’s Top 12 Green IT Companies in 2008 and 2009, and Computerworld Honors Laureate in 2009.

Andres has over 23 years of experience and great knowledge of the Energy, Software, Computer, and Wireless industries.

Houston's CenterPoint Energy & GE partner to produce Smart Grid System

Houston's CenterPoint Energy and GE team up to produce the Advanced Metering System (AMS) enabling consumers to track and manage electric usage and costs. Utilizing GE Digital Energy's MDS Mercury 3650 radios, AMS will translate electric utility meter info from homes/businesses to the CenterPoint's data center.

With this real time technology, consumers will be able access energy usage/prices and remotely control appliances via the Internet. For March, CenterPoint began installing 145,000+ of these smart meters. By the end of 2009, CenterPoint hopes to update all existing equipment with these new smart meters.

In addition, retail electric providers can offer new consumers products and services after the AMS installation.

For more information, please read K.C. Jones's article "GE Wireless Radios Power Houston Smart Grid Systems" posted to InformationWeek.