behalf of myself and abby as well as our stellar convention committee and the great staff here at ncta, we'd like to welcome all of you to the cable show 2013. [applause] >> and -- welcome. and you may have seen some of the industry's ads saying cable is how we connect, and i think we all plan to do a lot of connecting over the next three days. connecting with our amazing technology, with the stunning array of content we offer, with many of the great talent that appear on our screens, with key government officials and opinion leaders, and most importantly, connecting with each other. >> and, abbe, i plan on doing some of my own connecting here at the show. i plan to immerse myself in the observatory to get a bird's eye view of our industry's contributions. i'm going to take in some of the insightful discussions among the 40 suggestses in our educational track and at imagine park, and i'm going look at a little bit of the future at cable net which displays our future and is sponsored by cable labs. and i hope to connect with some of the nearly 300 companies who are displaying on the flo