I also was one participant of ITS conference to share my findings on unlicensed spectrum. As other participants mentioned in below postings, the conference itself broadly covers many aspects which I was not even aware of their importance. Thus, it was a really good opportunity to myself to learn what other ICT worlds are going on in short time. An exposure in discussions with very different topics can also stimulate myself to think new dimensions connected to wireless, e.g., not only government regulations but also industries in fixed line Internets and bundling services, etc.
Nevertheless, I often felt there is still a big gap between engineers and business guys. I have believed that I are closer to business domains than other typical wireless engineers, at least mindset of approaching technical problems. But, what I found there is that most of audiences seem to perceive I am doing an engineering stuff. I realize that they do not much understand technical approaches, e.g., why do we need such complex simulations? or the importance of technology aspects that we think important. Perhaps, their belief could be that technologies are not that dominant problems any more in telecom services. Conversely, in most of technical conferences that I attended, people often thinks a business domain is almost independent from technologies despite of its importance. They usually think that the better technologies are always better and engineers should focus it without considering constraints from business domains.
I believe that there are still many technology-related problems in business and regulatory areas which were not so much considered as a traditional homeground of engineers. Nevertheless, with quite different mindsets, it still seems challenging to contribute as engineers to the business society. I think that the challenges are simply due to the lack of understanding views of business guys or business mindsets rather than complex technologies itself. In order to properly contribute the business domain problems as engineers, the first step could be understanding problems from their perspectives and identifying constraints in a business domain. These are sometimes too difficult especially when engineers lack a view of what real worlds look with a narrow viewpoint. However, this also means that we can make huge contributions if we can have broad view and spend efforts on understanding their perspectives. This can be one of things that we engineers can learn by participating ITS like conferences.
