Interop: bMighty Takes Manhattan

After a full day of sessions at the bMighty SMB Theater and Pavilion, we're ready to do it all over again on day two with another full slate of sessions for small and midsize businesses.

Everywhere I turned yesterday, there was a challenge to the assumption of Interop's enterprise-centric focus. From the majority of attendees at the Server Basics session who were thinking about their first server to the gaggle oohing and aahing over the SMB Server at the Lenovo booth right next door.

Then there were the gaggles at Spiceworks sessions digging into the nitty gritty of network management that quickly turned into freewheeling dialogue between audience and presenters about the realities of network management in business today.

Between the live blogging and the twitter updates, keeping up with the coverage can take as much time as attending sessions and cruising the show floor (this is a good time crunch to confront). One thing that's clear -- and undoubtedly influenced by the show being in New York -- is the specter of Wall Street woes that creeps into every conversation; there's palpable concern and uncertainty across the board.

What the markets will do, I don't know. What I do know is that I'll be delivering a server session and a cloud computing session today. My only regret is that being at the podium means that I can't attend "SMB SaaS: Leveling the Playing Field" so I'll be looking for blog coverage later in the day.

Drop by if you're at the show -- there's T-shirt potential! Hope to see you.