Stayed up too late again last night. Couldn’t tear myself from the tube; there was history being made in the Democratic Primaries. What kept me awake, though, was not the anticipation of Barack Obama closing the deal on the nomination; it was that the most famous woman of the evening was not getting the respect she deserved. I mean, how many times can MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell be passed up for sexiest woman on TV? And to Jennifer Love Hewitt?

I know Norah wants to be admired for her brains, but if you saw the dress she had on last night, you’d know she isn’t making it easy.

We’d all like to be remembered for something. Too often we are remembered for “something else.” Sprint would like to be remembered for all the times they were first-to-market with technology innovations rather than the struggles they are going through now. And who knows, a year from now people may have forgotten all about their missteps and be remembering the company for its gutsy move to WiMAX.

Joe Nacchio would like to be remembered for being the leader of the first and only CLEC to overtake and take over a Tier 1 Bell Operating Company. Alas, he won’t.

The husband of the second most famous woman on TV last night would like to be remembered for more than defiling a blue dress. He won’t, unless they remember him more for being first to let bin Laden get away.

Ex- Tellabs CEO, Krish Prabhu, would like to be known not just for being the first Bangalore-born executive to take over the reins of a U.S.-based telecom equipment maker, but also as the one who led the company to new heights on the wings of passive optical networking. Alas, he must settle for the former.

TeleStrategies might like to be remembered as the company that brought you the Billing & OSS World Conference & Expo. But based on the feedback we got last week and the plans we have for improving the event next year and the year after, we believe the name Virgo Publishing will be the one that sticks in your head.

So thank you to everyone who participated in the event. If you have any additional feedback or comments on the event or suggestions for future events, I welcome them here.

I, for one, would like to be remembered for that catch I made that helped get our softball team to the Nationals. Alas, I won’t. So BSS and OSS it is.

E-mail me at heyBOSS@vpico.com

Just as B/OSS began touting the burgeoning relationship between software vendors and the IMS community by way of HP’s and Amdocs’ participation in the IMS Forum Plugfests, service providers in more than one session at the Billing & OSS World Conference & Expo this week in Chicago responded with blank stares when asked what role IMS was playing in their business transformation projects.

What’s up with that? Is it a technology snub? Is it the bursting of another bubble built by the hyperbole of promises that this time we had a standard that would make us as nimble as an Internet company (the successful kind)?

Does this mean we are about to hit the restart button once again? Is this the death spiral of another buzz word? Are we throwing IMS overboard in favor of Web 2.0?

Not exactly. Although it didn’t go unnoticed that the buzz word was mostly absent from the discussion at B/OSS World, there is good reason not to make more out of it than necessary. For one, it was a billing and OSS event. We have our own buzzwords. But even they were not thrown around with the usual abandon. Yes, there was mention of SOA (service oriented architecture) and the eTOM, SID and NGOSS were given their due.

But the change, I think, was put into perspective best by Curtis Elswick, vice president of architecture at Echostar satellite, who said IMS and SOA are not the destination. They are just vehicles for taking you where you want to go. Consolidation is the destination. Or convergence is the destination. The buzzwords just get you there

So what this really means is we have stopped talking about the next generation architecture and have started talking about the next generation service provider. And that can’t be all bad.

Thanks for coming to Chicago.

E-mail me at heyboss@vpico.com

There is a lot to be said for Chicago, the 36 people shot over the weekend notwithstanding. It’s clean. It has better food than New York. It’s only halfway across the country for you east- and west-coasters. It’s not Philadelphia.

Granted, Chicago is a perpetual underdog in music, sports, art, technology, universities, celebrities, trade shows, wealth and basic trendiness. It’s the Rodney Dangerfield of big cities. But that’s what makes it so special. Because as much as we Americans boast of being winners at everything, we sure spend a lot of time and energy rooting for the underdog. First Barack, then Hillary. First Vonage, now Skype. Rocky Balboa. Phar Lap. Israel. The list goes on.

So, for no other reason than to experience the thrill of supporting an underdog, you should take a spring trip next week to Chicago, a city that despite being among the best at every category mentioned above — the 36 people shot over the weekend notwithstanding — struggles every day with its identity as a second banana.

But I’ll give you a better reason to come to Chicago. In fact, I’ll give you 75 of them. If you come to the lakefront next week and register on site for Virgo Publishing’s first production of the Billing & OSS World Conference and Expo at the Hyatt McCormick Place , you’ll hear experts from the following companies discuss their lessons learned and new solutions for surviving the transformation nightmare every telecom company is currently going through. Are you ready? Here goes:

Sprint Nextel, IBM, Oracle, RCN Metro, Tech Mahindra, Time Warner Cable, AT&T, the TM Forum, Motorola, Infonetics Research, Verizon, Subex, Fierce Telecom, OSS Observer, Stratecast, Yankee Group, Level 3, Global Crossing, Embarq, Citizens, XO Communications, US Cellular, HP, Psytechnics, OSG Billing, Intec, Einstein Wireless, Bearing Point, Convergys, CSG Systems, Deloitte & Touche, Rogers Communications, Starhub, Subex, TEOCO, Razorsight, EchosStar, IDC, Nakina Systems, Microsoft, Tata Consulting, CA Wily, Cisco, Openet, Omnitel, Qwest, Comverse, MetraTech, Cox Communications, Amdocs, Martin Group, NGT, Patni Consulting, Highdeal, Redwood Capital, CustomCall Data, ConceptWave, EMC, ROI International, Analysys Mason, CommSoft, Ace Communications Group, Sergei-TeliaSonera, PA Consulting, Security Innovation, Alcatel-Lucent, Acumen Solutions, SoundExchange, Crone Consulting, Kelley Drye & Warren, Sybase, Telcordia, Sigma Systems, DST Output, Primal Solutions...and more.

How can you not learn something from them?

As always, you can give me a shout-out at heyboss@vpico.com.