There’s a temptation to pack the passport when traveling to New Orleans. I left it at home, but upon arriving for Cable-Tec Expo ‘15, knew that I was once again in a place both familiar and strange.

New Orleans is foreign for well-known reasons. It’s familiar for particular ones. My first visit was for Cable-Tec Expo 2000, fifteen years ago, and I’d been back several times. Other ties relate to my mother, who grew up in a home on St. Charles Ave., near Tulane University. The city left its imprint. That’s where her lifelong enthusiasm for the arts began, and growing up in South Carolina, I could always find a can of chicory coffee on the kitchen counter. So I almost felt like the host when I met some fellow Expo attendees at the original Cafe du Monde near Jackson Square.

The beignets and coffee remain constant, but there is always something new being concocted in this city. Invited to the media and analyst dinner (thank you, Bob Gold and Paul Schneider) I encountered a mind-bending fusion of Korean and Brazilian cuisine at the restaurant Rebellion. The technology at Cable-Tec Expo is like that, too: plenty of standbys that work extremely well, along with innovation that would surprise an outsider.

A relatively well-established technology would be DOCSIS, although that was still young when I attended my first Expo. The latest twist is DOCSIS 3.1, discussed in about one-fifth of the event’s technical proceedings. All told, this year’s Expo featured 77 papers. Given current interests, I’ve put a few on my reading list, including ones related to Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), SDN-enabled L1 virtual networks, virtual CPE, OTT video metrics, simplified testing and monitoring, distributed CCAP architectures, and residential IoT.

Having served in the past on three Expo program committees, I know how much work is involved in vetting and delivering a solid lineup. For anyone wanting to review these papers and see what’s cooking in the Cable-Tec kitchen, contact the SCTE to purchase a copy.