I think that this article caught my eye, as I was (this past November) the planning committee chair of a statewide university technology conference. The expectations of conference attendees are high, and rapidly growing higher in terms of connectivity expectations. Pervasive wireless (for hundreds or thousands of devices) is expected, as is a much greater need for specialized connectivity (high bandwidth and/or low latency). For the recent UNC CAUSE, we brought in a parallel network, including ‘net connection, routers, switches and wireless access points. It worked flawlessly. Back in 2004, though, we tried to leverage the hotel network (different location, same conference) and the network failed miserably under the load. Even non-techie conferences have a high “carry rate” of wifi enabled devices these days. We want our connectivity!