Tech experts hold conference to discuss USPS reboot

By Jeff Hughes Published May 6, 2011

Former Google VP Vint Cerf along with a handful of social media/e-commerce gurus are extending a helping hand to the snail mail service they’ve helped make obsolete. Together with some U.S. Postal Service decision makers, they’ll be discussing the future of the USPS institution at a conference in June.

John Callan, a private and public sector mailing consultant, is organizing the PostalVision 2020 conference. He says, “The Postal Service is suffering dramatic losses due primarily to electronic substitution for conventional mail…The traditional postal business operating model is clearly not sustainable. We must ask, ‘How should the Postal Service serve the future needs of the nation, if frankly, at all?’”

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The United States Postal Service is currently in the process of cutting 7.500 administrative and postmaster positions in anticipation of the $7 billion it expects to lose come September, the end of the fiscal year. The Postal Service also plans to close a few thousand post offices in the near future in order to cut costs. The Postal Regulatory Commission says it is concerned that the Postal Service hasn’t taken into account the impact and cost of closing these offices down.

Callan wants the conference to focus on long-term solutions rather than just solving the problems they have currently. Some of the topics that will be covered are: how digital communication alternatives have transformed the commerce and communication ecosystem, national information and security issues and transformative programs the Postal Service can explore solo or along with the Private Sector.

There’s no exact word on which USPS executives will be attending but the confirmed guests include Vint Cerf as the keynote speaker, associate journalism professor and blogger at BuzzMachine.com Jeff Jarvis, Larry Weber and Chairman of the PRC Ruth Goldway.

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