Any thing new happening this year in HostingCon?

What all new companies participating?

According to you who is going to be eye catcher this year? or what attractions coming up this year?

I think 2010 and 2011 will be intense years which will probably lead to whether the domination of cloud hosting or its fall. I tend to think the cloud server industry is currently a bit to costly, but I believe in the next few years this wont be true anymore and cloud hosting will have overcome the common VPS and dedicated server industry.
But thats only my opinion :)

I'm personally excited about continued iNet involvement. Since they took over last year they have been learning and improving which is a huge plus. Big names continue to sprout lending to the rising significance of the convention by both exhibitors and attendees.

Thanks IRCCo Jeff for the compliment:D. We have certainly listened and have worked on integrating many new benefits into HostingCon 2010.

First - there are many new and improved benefits with the show program. We had an incredible number of submissions from speakers and for varying topics. As such, there are 35% more speaking panels and a roster of speakers that includes 40% new people. New speakers at the conference include thought-leaders from HP, Cisco, VMWare, Gartner, Dell, Digital Realty Trust, The United States Defense Information Systems Agency, and many more.

Although we added a specific "Cloud" track, we understand that all roads for hosters may not lead into the cloud. The majority of sessions offer plenty of great topics on unified communications, IPv6, legal issues, M&A panels, marketing, sales, customer service, data centers and so on.

The exhibit hall is sold out. More than 120 companies, 25% of which are new to HostingCon, are exhibiting. This means more opportunities to network, find partners, and learn about new products/services. 2009 attendee feedback stated, “networking and partnering” as the strongest benefit for attending HostingCon so we ramped it up this year!

We added a Happy Hour on the exhibit floor on Tuesday afternoon in addition to the opening and closing networking receptions.
Three (versus two last year) HostingCon events to help you network even more.

Austin is known for its high-tech convention center (SXSW is held in Austin every year) and therefore wireless access should be very good. The entertainment, restaurants and scenery is incredible. 2009 feedback requested more entertainment, dining and night life activity. Austin won’t let you down.

The keynotes are very strong. Lydia Leong from Gartner is speaking about the trends emerging across the Internet infrastructure services industry (it isn't just the "cloud".) Andy Rhodes from DELL is speaking about the total cost of ownership for a scalable infrastructure. This hits on the topic Rattlehost mentioned above. And on the third day, Serguei Beloussov from Parallels will share a NEW vision with hosts on how to launch new services, improve existing services, and reduce churn in their businesses.

There are a number of other New and Improved benefits that will continue flowing forth in the next 40 days. Stay tuned here or visit HostingCon.com to stay connected!

P.S. Remember- early bird ends today (June 7th.)

This years main attraction is of course Cloud Hosting as many big players are making move on cloud.

In Hosting tools I see Vision Helpdesk (http://thevisionworld.com) featuring their Satellite Helpdesk feature that is something I found new this year.

Also there are some new companies, this year its going to be learning several new things.

I will not attend, but from what I see on the websites and what friend who are going there say, the Con is focused more on CDN, cloud technologies. The word "Cloud" is used very often actually in the schedule.

The word "Cloud" is used very often actually in the schedule

Thats because bullsh!t and vapourware takes longer to typeset ;)

It's good to see some new names & faces on the lineup this year - it was in danger of becoming a parallels sales event like webhostingday.

It's good to see some new names & faces on the lineup this year - it was in danger of becoming a parallels sales event like webhostingday.

So true, I am personally sick of the parallels keynotes every single year. But, I guess money wins and parallels must be paying to have that same spot every year.

I hope this year is different. Last year was my first year at any of the classes, we've just exhibited in the past. I almost felt like I was at a timeshare presentation.

ah, who cares about the cloud if you can win a Heineken Beer tender at booth #220 ;)