Disruptive Telephony

eComm Starts June 27 - The Event Showcasing Emerging Communications

Will you be out in San Francisco next week for eComm, the "Emerging Communications Conference & Awards"? If so, I'll see you there, as I'm speaking on Wednesday. If not... are you interested in going? I still have a pass or two available as a speaker. (Drop me a note... quickly!)

I've always enjoyed eComm as it truly is a gathering of the thought leaders of the communications space... whether those people are working with VoIP or mobile or unified communications or whatever. It's where the "alpha geeks" of comms go to hang out... to network... to listen and learn as they share with each other what they are working on truly out there on the bleeding edge of communications.

Some people have called eComm the "TED of Telecom" and in many ways that's an apt comparison... quick, focused presentations to a high quality audience.

Check out the schedule and the long list of speakers... some truly great people will be there. I expect to be learning a good bit.

My own talk on Wednesday will be on the IPv6 theme I've been on lately. I titled it "How IPv6 Will Kill Telecom - And What We Need To Do About It". I'll be talking about many of the IPv6 issues I've blogged about or spoken about lately... but bringing that all together into a concise presentation. Should be a good bit of fun.

I'm also teaming up with Andy Abramson and Michael Graves to produce a series of daily audio interviews of speakers for the VoIP Users Conference (VUC). We'll be broadcasting live every morning at 7:45am Pacific. Stay tuned for more info.

eComm 2011 looks to be a great show again and I'm psyched to be heading out there to be part of it. If you're going, see you there!

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Speaking at SIPNOC Next Week on SIP Interoperability and Security (and Joining an IPv6 BOF)

Next week in the DC area (Herndon, VA) there will be a unique event taking place - SIPNOC: The SIP Network Operators Conference. This event is organized by the SIP Forum and will bring together a great collection of service providers and carriers to share and learn from each other about the realities behind providing SIP-based services today. It will be a great place for those providing real-time communications over IP networks to look at how we can continue to expand and improve the services.

There's a packed agenda at the event that includes many great sessions I'm looking forward to attending. I'll be there speaking about SIP interoperability and some of the lessons we've learned at Voxeo as we've interconnected our SIP cloud to that of so many carriers. I'll also be donning my VOIP Security Alliance (VOIPSA) hat to participate on a panel about security.

And naturally given my intense interest in IPv6 these days (and all my writing about IPv6, I'll of course be joining in to the "IPv6 Readiness" BOF planned for Tuesday, April 26.

I'm very much looking forward to this first SIPNOC event... if you are already planning to be there please do say hello, and if you are interested in attending, you can still register to attend.

We need events like these to help improve the overall IP infrastructure and help move us faster to the time when we can have even more of our connectivity all happen over IP. Great to see!

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Video: Walking the EnterpriseConnect show flow in March 2011

Last month down at Enterprise Connect in Orlando, Florida, I wanted to experiment a bit with using the iPhone 4 with Qik for recording videos. As you can see below, I shot a quick video (using Qik :-) ) of about a minute-and-a-half of me walking through the trade show flow. It was purely a test of using Qik on the iPhone... and ironically I actually forgot about creating the video for a bit.

Anyway, here it is... it's certainly not the best produced video I've ever done... in fact that was zero post-production. I just pointed the camera and started shooting (and undoubtedly look a bit silly walking through a trade show floor holding my iPhone in front of me!).

If you've never been on the exhibit hall floor of one of the various industry trade shows and conferences, this is the type of thing you will see...

Next event, I'll try to do a few more of these... perhaps if I can find one with good WiFi I'll even try some live streaming... :-)

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Photo of Geeks: Watching the Apple iPad2 Launch - From EnterpriseConnect

As you would know from watching my Twitter stream or the #enterprisecon hashtag on Twitter, this past week I was in Orlando, FL, speaking at the Enterprise Connect conference and trade show. Of course, that wasn't the only event happening last week... there was this wee little gathering happening in San Francisco to talk about a new bright, shiny object... :-)

So on Wednesday at 1pm Eastern, the attention of many of us at Enterprise Connect was not entirely on the speakers or presentations, but rather also on watching sites like the Engadget Live Blog of the iPad2 event. Analyst/blogger Dave Michels happened upon three of us in the press room who were watching the news... and naturally he had to take a picture (and naturally we had to ham it up a little bit)...

In the picture is InsideCTI author Eugene Liu, myself (Dan York), and Ovum analyst Ian Jacobs:

Thanks, Dave, for taking the fun picture.

P.S. And yes, of course I have a Voxeo sticker on the back of my MacBook Pro... would you expect anything less from me?

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I'll be in Miami next week speaking at ITEXPO, Cloud Communications Summit, etc.

If any of you will be in South Beach, Miami, next week I'll be there speaking as part of the Cloud Communications Summit and SIP Trunking Workshops. I've got a page up on Voxeo's site that shows my schedule at:

http://blogs.voxeo.com/events/itexpo-east-2011/

I know a good number of other folks from the VoIP/UC/Cloud Telecom/Voice Mashups/SIP/etc. world are all going to be down there, so I'm looking forward to catching up with some folks there.

If you are down in Miami for ITEXPO, the Cloud Communications Summit, Digium/Asterisk World or any of the other events, please do stop by and say hello... or find me down at one of the sessions I'm in (my schedule is online). You can always email me or ping me on Twitter.

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Want to Learn About SIP? Attend the SIP Tutorial at ITEXPO (50% Discount Code)

Do you want to learn more about the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and how it enables Voice over IP (VoIP) and Unified Communications? Want to learn how it works? What it does? How it can be used? How secure it is? How does SIP relate to HTML5 and what is going on with the "real-time web"?

If so, consider attending the SIP Tutorial at ITEXPO next week in South Beach, Miami, Florida, on Friday, February 4, 2011.

Taught by Dr. Alan Johnston and Dr. Henry Sinnreich, two veterans of SIP and IETF work, the day-long session covers a wide range of topics. In speaking to Alan Johnston, he said that for the first time this session next week will particularly get into some of the real-time communication coming into HTML5 and related technologies.

If you would like to attend the session you can still register. Alan passed along that the priority code "SIP" will get you a 50% discount.

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And Thus Dies The "VON" Name...

For those of us who have been around the "VoIP industry" for some time now, the "VON Conferences" put on by Jeff Pulver were the place to be in the early days of VoIP. We were all mostly early adopters and embraced with enthusiasm this idea of sending voice and later video over the IP networks... there was a real community of both attendees and speakers... all of us chasing that vision of real-time communications over the Internet and other IP networks.

"VON" as a name continued to morph and evolve... it became a series of conferences... the "V" included "video"... it spawned the VON Coalition on public policy issues... Jeff and his Pulvermedia team launched "VON Magazine", issues of which can still be found online in some places... www.von.com became a media hub around VoIP issues... "VON" became many things...

And then it all ended in early 2008 with Pulvermedia's investors seizing assets and then with Jeff's resignation. Fast forward to December 2008 and the VON brand was reborn through Virgo Publishing. I and many others wondered if Virgo could recapture and rebuild the VON community. They tried. They had a VON conference in 2009 (and I was a speaker there). They seemed to try a bit with online content.

But it never really worked. Times had changed... the industry had evolved. "VoIP" and even video are now mainstream and no longer solely the province of early adopters. Voice/video communication is not the only way we communicate... social media, in particular, as well as mobile communications and apps have changed what we do. While the conference industry in general declined, too, new conferences emerged, with many early adopters joining events like eComm or Jeff's own #140conf events... or the myriad of "____Camp" events happening on a smaller scale all over the world.

Virgo Publishing subsequently cancelled the VON 2010 show to focus on online content...

... and now, as of Monday, January 17, they've killed the VON name. Henceforth, all the VON URLs and content are under the "vision2mobile" brand. They provide a rationale which sounds reasonable on some level.

Still, for those of us who been in this industry for a while, it is sad to see the passing of the "VON" name, even though in many ways "VON" died a few years back.

R.I.P., VON... it was great to know you!

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Want to speak locally about Tropo.com voice/SMS/IM/Twitter mashups? Here's some free gear..

If you have become a fan of Tropo.com for creating applications that use voice, SMS, IM and Twitter and want to speak about Tropo to a local user group, meetup, BarCamp, WordCamp or other event, the Voxeo Labs team has put together a pretty cool "meetup kit" that you can request (for free) for your next event. It's got some T-shirts, stickers and even some USB drives.

The Tropo blog post has info about how to request a kit.

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Interested in Open Government? 24-Hour Open Gov Hackathon at GnomeDex this weekend

Are you interested in creating applications that can open up government? Apps that can give people better access to government data?

If so... and if you are in the Seattle area or are attending the GnomeDex event happening this weekend, you can join in to the 24 Hour Open Government Hackathon starting at 5pm tomorrow, August 21st, at the Edgewater Hotel in Seattle. Here's the basic info:

Who Should Attend?
Ruby, Python, PHP, web developers, coders and anyone who has a passion to code, hack or kluge applications that will free (or otherwise enhance) the accessability and usefulness of government-shared data. Although the sprint takes place August 21-22 during Gnomedex10 in Seattle, you don't have to be attending the conference to join us. Participation is free and open to anyone...we just ask that you register in advance so we know how many individuals or teams we need to accomodate. What's Going to Happen?
The nature of the Hackathon will be fairly free-form. Hackathon Partners will have organizers onsite to help get things rolling initially. At the end of the 24 hours, each app will be evaluated by the Hackathon Partners and prizes will be awarded to those teams or individuals that develop the best applications in the 24 hour period.

It sounds like a great time! I won't be there... but I know many of the folks attending. (The Tropo cloud communications service, one of the services of my employer, Voxeo, is one of the sponsors of the hackathon.)

Registration for the event is free... you just have to get to the Seattle hotel tomorrow at 5pm.

Here are some posts from others about the event:

• Hackathoning Government (from the CTO of the City of Seattle)
  
  
• Announcing the GnomeDex10 Open Government Hackathon

I'm very much looking forward to seeing what applications will emerge from the event.

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Calling all Ruby telephony developers -> AdhearsionConf 2010 starts this weekend in SF!

Just one day left until AdhearsionConf 2010 opens in San Francisco tomorrow. The schedule looks outstanding and I know that the Voxeo Labs team is already on site getting everything ready. I've seen via Twitter that some hardcore Ruby telephony developers are already enroute.... should be a great time!

Sadly, my schedule doesn't allow me to be there, but the good news is that if you are unable to get there in person, you can follow along on the UStream channel:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/adhearsionconf

If you are in the SF area, or can get there, check out more info about the conference at:

http://adhearsionconf.eventbrite.com/

Great to see an event like this happening!

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