October 21, 2007
Making your life easier one URL at a time
I have made bought a series of URLs for the benefit of people reaching out in the conference
The first is the total community site.
http://www.pulvermediacommunity.net
The second is the unconference VONCamp
http://www.voncamp.net
The third one is to see the Innovators track
http://www.invonate.net
In my head I see a little flash where the n and v keep circling around the o. But I am not good with dreamweaver so I am leaving it to you all.
If some does it I will give them a free pass to spring.
Kind Regards,
carl
Posted by carl at 07:41 PM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2007
VON is For Wireless
Pulvermedia Bolsters Mobile/Wireless Content at Fall 2007 VON Boston, October 29-November 1, 2007
New Speakers, Vendors, Conference Sessions and Tutorials Emphasize Mobile
and Wireless Technologies at Fall VON
BEVERLY, Mass., Oct. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Pulvermedia today announced the
addition of several new speakers, vendors, pre-conference tutorials and
breakout sessions at Fall 2007 VON that focus on mobile and wireless
content. Now in its eleventh year, VON continues to reflect the state of
the IP-communications industry -- and as such, the upcoming Fall 2007 VON
event will feature more Mobile-VoIP and wireless content than ever before.
"The war on the Internet is over, in the sense that broadband is
pervasive in the office, as well as in the home setting -- and today, the
next steps involve making us all one-in-the-same with the Mobile Internet,"
said Carl Ford, VP of Content and Community at Pulvermedia. "This is the
next major battle in our industry, and we'll be spending a lot of time
discussing this at Fall VON."
Mobile and Wireless sessions on Tuesday, October 30th include:
-- 10:00 AM - AT&T's Vice President of Product & Strategy Jeff Webber
-- 11:15 AM - Senior VP and GM of Intel's Ultra Mobility Group, Anad
Chandrasekher will deliver his Industry Perspective session
-- 1:30 PM - the VoIP over 3G breakout session will feature: Disruptive
Analysis' Dean Bubley; FirstHand Technology's David Hattey; QUALCOMM's
John Hannan; Truphone's James Tagg; and Fring's Boaz Zilberman
-- 3:15 PM - the 4G Wireless Mobility session will discuss numerous
alternative access points: it will be led by Sprint Nextel Corp's Ali
Tabassi
-- 3:15 PM - the Voice over Wi-Fi Breakout session will feature Meru
Network's Joe Epstein; Broadcom's Robert Franzo; Polycom's Ben
Guderian; Cisco's Sherman Scholten; and the Wi-Fi Alliance's Judy
Racino-Farrer
-- 4:30 PM - Motorola's Corporate VP, Senior Fellow and Chief Architect
Dr. Hamid Ahmadi will discuss the drive to communications convergence
and its impact on the future of telecommunications
-- 4:45 PM - A FemtoCell breakout session will discuss the impact to end
users, and will feature Thomson's Stan Class; Samsung's Jim Parker; and
several others.
On Wednesday, October 31st, additional Mobile and wireless sessions
will include:
-- 9:00 AM - an Industry perspective by Nokia's CTO and executive vice
president Tero Ojanpera, discussing how "Mobility Makes People Matter
More."
-- 9:30 AM - Sprint Nextel's Ali Tabassi will deliver an Industry
Perspective session entitled: "Mobilizing the Internet"
-- 11:15 AM - an additional FemtoCell session will feature PicoChip's
Rupert Baines, ip.access' Richard Henderson; AirWalk Communication's
Serge Pequeux, and Keener Law Group's Barlow Keener
-- 2:00 PM - The Wireless Founders Coalition for Innovation's Amol Sarva
will deliver a session entitled," Using Wireless Open Access to Change
the World."
On Thursday November 1, the Chief Technologist of Nokia's Mobile
Solutions Unit, Timothy Jasionowski will participate in a session entitled
"Trend Spotting," at 900 AM.
New to this year's program is the Mobile Security Conference, which
runs across both expo days, discussing an array of topics including:
assessing mobile threats, data leakage, and strategies for creating a
mobile security policy. The premier sponsor for the Mobile Security
Conference is Nokia, who is also participating in several other aspects of
VON.
Lastly, a Pre-Conference "Femtocell" Tutorial is scheduled to take
place from 9:00 AM until 5:00 PM on Monday, October 29th. To attend any of
these sessions, or for more information about Fall VON, please visit:
http://www.von.com/2007/boston/web/. Members of the media can obtain media
credentials by contacting ally.forbes@pulvermedia.com.
About Pulvermedia:
Pulvermedia is the leading integrated media company, building
communities and providing ready marketplace access through its unparalleled
blend of trade shows, publications, web channels, and progressive
cutting-edge media. And as the foremost integrated media company,
Pulvermedia is ideally poised to deliver a vast range of messages to a wide
variety of audiences, including technology buyers and sellers, government
regulators, industry analysts, luminaries, pundits and bloggers. For more
information, please visit http://www.pulvermedia.com.
Posted by carl at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)
September 25, 2007
Here I am in Rome
VON Europe Autumn, AKA VON Italy is getting started. Henry has been scaring the known world with equality for all as soon as the engineering meritocracy finishes the specs.
Bogdan and Adrian arrived in preparation for the openSER BOSS Integration tutorial.
And Malcolm Wardlaw from BT and I have been discussing the business of keeping the next generation and the old... I mean my generation working together.
Lots of work ahead of us.
Posted by carl at 11:18 AM | Comments (0)
September 21, 2007
An Invitation to our exhibitor community
VON used to be a show where the exhibitor and the conference attendee were in the sessions together. I would like have the exhibitors and the delegates in the conference better involved and for this purpose I am offering you a free delegate pass.
VON has grown to match the market. As you know VoIP has gone mainstream. The impact to VON is that we are following the threads a variety of ways. For our traditional community it can look confusing because the show has some the elements better segmented. Which makes the sum of the parts harder to see as a whole.
VON is covering Voice Communication, Video and IP, Wireless Mobility, Presence and Positioning and the Innovator’s Track.
We also have Video on the Net, an unconference going on for our developers in the Innovator's Track and VONDEX for the exhibitors expanding their channel.
Adjacent to VON are the events that match specific needs of business customers including SMB and Enterprise. These events include the open source Digium Asterisk World, Unified Communication, and Mobile Security.
I would love to get your feedback and hope to see you in the conference.
Posted by carl at 10:44 AM | Comments (0)
September 12, 2007
A New Years Gift - FMC slides.
A little experimentation. If you join me on this pulvermedia community website, you can view all the slides from the FMC event.
The slides are at the bottom of the page of the discussions that equal the session titles from FMC and that the discussions are in the FMC Group?
Aidan Dillon of Accuris Networks
Akshay Sharma of Gartner on VoWifi
Akshay Sharma of Gartner on FMC Video
Barlow Keener of Keener Law Groupl
Dororthy Stanley of Aruba Networks
Fanny Mlinarsky of Octoscope on Mesh Networks
Fanny Mlinarsky of Octoscope 802 Tutorial
Geri Mitchell-Brown of Polycom
Graham Celine of Azimuth Systems
Martin Levetin of Strix Systems
Stephen Horvath of Teleplus Consulting
Tony Hylton CIO of Cook County
Posted by carl at 09:58 AM | Comments (0)
September 03, 2007
Before the unconference we were there
- Thought Leading Innovators Track
Sometimes we are not very good at tooting our own horn at pulver. Well at least I am not. One of the problems we have had is that Jeff’s concept of purple minutes was stated long before Web 2.0 and Telco 2.0 came into vogue and we have not been good at embracing those terms. Additionally they belong to other people’s efforts and we don’t want to steal their IPR. But the world has adopted those terms and they are being used more generically and few people remember the purple minutes statement.
Additionally the concept of an unconference has come into vogue. Jeff and I have run our Executive Summits like the basic format of an unconference in the fact the goal was a dialogue between speaker and audience. We even seeded the audience with “discussants” to make sure no slide deck was safe.
As for an open format where people inserted themselves in, Marni reminded me of the SIP summit we were running when 9/11 occurred. With half the speakers stuck between countries or grounded at home and another group rushing home to love ones, the rest of us built a conference on a whiteboard. It was a good event and certain members of the community I have a special place in my heart for because of their participation.
So those Executive Summit alumni and those were either at the SIP summit or on their way when 9/11 occurred are invited to be discussants at our first Innovators Track.
The Innovators track is for the community that is working on the new and innovative strategies that progresses because its part of the bigger trend. We know that computing will integrate all communication and that Internet is the ultimate network. This track follows these trends. Here are the sessions which are available to VON Delegates only
Posted by carl at 02:10 AM | Comments (0)
August 16, 2007
You Really need to explore the Site to know what is happening
Hey Team,
I am not sure you are aware, but EVERYONE who has attended VON has an invitation privileges to join me on this online community. You can use this handy dandy button below.
VON this year is going to be very different, but I am hoping that those of us who are long term members of the community will find value in being there. So for this reason I have some interesting changes to mention.
1) Some of the VON Theatre stuff should be a lot of fun for regular members. Timothy and Brough in particular are in a session called trend spotting.
2) I have already discussed the Innovators track. Which will run against the normal VON programming.
3) I am hoping that the local crowd will guide us to the fun stuff in Boston on Halloween.
( Note: I tried to organize a Salem trip, but was told that a bus would not make it back in time given how crazy Salem gets on Halloween.)
My hope is that we all stay together for the entire show, but I realize that some of us have children that are into Halloween.
I look forward to seeing you there.
Posted by carl at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)
August 09, 2007
The Innovators Track Revealed
Below are the guidelines I propose for the 5th Track (also known as the Innovators Track, unconference, etc.)
I would like to have most of the agenda set before the event. I have divided the agenda into a set of time blocks that match roughly to the VON conference and indeed I have some sessions mixed into the track.
I have schedule with 8 open sections called time blocks for the participants to speak.. These time blocks break into fifteen minute increments.
The selection of speakers for these time blocks is aimed at providing a loose format of topic sets. The topic sets represent broad categories for the speakers to self identify their interest and participation. A total of 5 discussants will be selected as leaders for their discussion. As leaders list themselves in their topic sets other individuals may identify their desire to contribute. The slots can be shared and bonded but each is subject to the tight time restraints. As topic sets are filled up they get placed in time blocks.
I have Tom Howe doing an Introduction and giving the discussants a chance to engage in a little agenda bashing.
I have identified six topic sets. They appear in no particular order (honest)
Rapid Apps on Rails:
A discussion about the impact of Ruby on Rails, Ajax and other tools that aid the developer in building new services rapidly and how combined with Amazon and Level services represent a new era in service deployments.
Enterprise 2.X
This is a discussion that looks at how the Enterprises are finally gaining the ability to provide services across a network and how it changes service models.
Social Networking
According to Cisco its working. Social networks are eating up the bandwidth and the Internet is again growing. What makes these services compelling and who is going to gain from these changes.
The New Age of Communication
We have talked about the concept of these new services now let’s look at some of them and let’s talk about why this is the perfect time to offer services in the marketplace. Is the price of rollout so low that adoption can be small and niche, or do we all need massive viral adoption?
New Services with old lines
Single Number is thing of the past, now we have disposable numbers and with the ILECs having to watch the Cable companies expand into their space the time may be ripe for these kinds of services. Best of all by extracting the person from the number the service is much more intriguing.
The Pulver Challenge
What companies stood up and said they were ready to accept Jeff’s challenge and show real innovation. Did they make the grade of bringing something new to IP communication or are we still at a point where we are replicating what we have seen before. Warning a wiseman said that there is nothing new under the sun, but we expect great things from this panel.
Obviously things can be added where time permits. We should allow people to add topics.
The time blocks are broken down as follows.
Schedule
Tuesday
9:00 AM - 10 AM Welcome to the Discussants
10 AM - 10 45 AM Agenda Bash
11 15 AM to 12 30 PM Time Block 1
12:30 PM to 1:30 PM Lunch
1:30 PM to 2:45 PM Voice over 3G
3:15 PM to 4:30 PM New Age Service Creation
4:45 PM to 6 PM Time Block 2
Wednesday
9 AM to 10:15 AM Time Block 3
11:15 AM to 12:30 PM Going mobile with Skype
12:30 PM to 1:30 PM Lunch
1:30 PM to 2:45 PM Time Block 4
3:15 PM to 4:30 PM Time Block 5
4:45 PM to 6:00 PM Time Block 6
Thursday
9:00 AM to 10:15 Time Block 7
10:30 AM to 11:45 Time Block 8
11:45 AM to 12:45 PM Lunch
12:45 PM to 2: 00 PM BOF Plus Minus Delta of this Format
2:15 PM to 3:30 PM The Secret Life of HD VoIP
3:45 PM to 5:00 PM The Wrap Up
So this is the plan, but I am looking for your feedback.
Let me know what you think.
Posted by carl at 02:02 PM | Comments (0)
August 04, 2007
Join Me
Posted by carl at 03:15 PM | Comments (0)
July 31, 2007
Vo3G Discussion at Fall VON
Recently our pals at Truphone had a triumph in the UK with forcing their app on a carriers network. At Fall VON in Boston on Tuesday, October 30, 2007 from 1:30pm - 2:45pm,
Dean Bubley, Founder, Disruptive Analysis
Dean Bubley, will lead the discussion on the fact that wireless broadcast is great for voice.
The session, entitled VoIP over 3G includes a great combination of enablers and providers. On the enablement side is FirstHand and Qualcomm. And for providers we have Fring and Truphone. This should be a fun session including a discussion about the issues with the wireless service providers particularly those offering EV-DO Revision A solutions.
Here are the speakers.
David Hattey, President & CEO, FirstHand Technologies
Boaz Zilberman, Founder and Chief Architect, fring
John Hannan, Director, Business Development, QUALCOMM
James Tagg, CEO, Truphone
Posted by carl at 12:22 PM | Comments (1)
July 26, 2007
How to Serve Media in the Future?
Storage is always an interesting topic to think about as the world gets ready for the new home network storage devices, I am looking forward to our discussion of Host Media Processing vs. Digital Signal Processing. At Fall VON on October 31 at 11:15.
Mike Marshyll of Mercator Capital is the moderator and he is going to have a great session. Traditionally, this has been a hardware -based solution that Texas Instruments has dominated. But MIPS are cheap these days and host media processing allows a lot of development to stay behind the scenes. Which was a recent Radisys webinar topic.
The discussion will gain from the insight of
Herman Abel, Product Manager, Aculab;
Michael Coffee, President & Chief Executive Officer, Commetrex;
Grant Henderson, Vice President, Product Marketing, RadiSys
John Smrstik, Worldwide Business Manager, High Density & Core Infrastructure DSP Products, Texas Instruments
I am curious if anyone has other resources we should explore.
Posted by carl at 02:24 PM | Comments (0)
July 18, 2007
Fall VON Content is King!
I want Fall VON to rock your world.
I dont want you thinking that VON is VON anymore.
I am looking to have the show mean business to you.
The show has a predominance of wireless in it this year as well as the IPTV types.
But the show is more than any one topic.
Look at the conference below, I cant believe the topics wont interest you.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
-------------------------
8:30am - 9:00am Industry Perspective
Jeff Pulver, Founder and Chairman, pulvermedia
9:00am - 9:30am Industry Perspective
Daniel Hesse, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Embarq Corporation
9:30am - 10:00am Industry Perspective
Jeff Weber, Vice President, Product & Strategy, AT&T Operations
10:00am - 10:45am Morning Break
10:45am - 11:15am Industry Perspective
11:15am - 11:45am Industry Perspective
Paul Mankiewich, Chief Technical Officer & Chief Architect, Alcatel-Lucent
11:45am - 12:15 Industry Perspective
Christopher Fine, Vice President, Global Technology Division, Goldman, Sachs & Company
Breakout Sessions
1:30pm - 2:45pm Triple Play: What makes the Bundle Viral?
Track: Track 1: Video and IP
(M) Rory Altman, Director, Co-Founder, Altman Vilandrie & Company
Mark Kaish, VP, Voice Strategy and Development, Cox Communications
Sanjay Macwan, Executive Director, AT&T Chief Security Office, AT&T
1:30pm - 2:45pm VoIP over 3G
Track: Track 2: Wireless Mobility
Dean Bubley, Founder, Disruptive Analysis
David Hattey, President & CEO, FirstHand Technologies
John Hannan, Director, Business Development, QUALCOMM
James Tagg, CEO, Truphone
Boaz Zilberman, Founder and Chief Architect, fring
1:30pm - 2:45pm Is the Network Ready for Real-Time?
Track: Track 3: Voice Communication
Ann Marie Vega, Managing Principal, Global Network Services, Alcatel-Lucent
1:30pm - 2:45pm Driving Revenue and Margin Through Service Creation
Track: Track 4: Presence and Positioning
Eric Burger, Deputy Chief Technical Officer, BEA
David Jodoin, CEO, Iperia
1:30pm - 2:45pm Unconference
Track: Track 5: Unconference
2:45pm - 3:00pm Afternoon Break
Breakout Sessions
3:00pm - 4:15pm Three Screen Service Delivery
Track: Track 1: Video and IP
3:00pm - 4:15pm WiMAX, Alternative Access in a Number of Ways
Track: Track 2: Wireless Mobility
(M) Ed Vildandrie, Director, Co-Founder, Altman Vilandrie & Company
Vijay Venkateswaran, Vice President, Services Development, Mobile Satellite Ventures
3:00pm - 4:15pm The Presence Difference
Track: Track 3: Voice Communication
David Boyer, Chief Architect - Unified Communication Clients, Avaya
Joe Hildebrand, Chief Technology Officer, Jabber
3:00pm - 4:15pm Voice over Wi-Fi: Putting the Puzzle Together
Track: Track 2: Wireless Mobility
Joe Epstein, Chief Architect, Meru Networks
Robert Franzo, Director, VoIP Marketing, Broadcom
Geri Mitchell- Brown, Wi-Fi Strategist and Director of Technical Business Development, SpectraLink
Judy Racino-Farrer, Sr. Manager of Marketing and Membership, Wi-Fi Alliance
Sherman Scholten, Director of Voice Product Marketing, Cisco - Linksys
3:00pm - 4:15pm VoIP and Virtualization The new age of Service Creation
Track: Track 5: Unconference
(M) Thomas Howe, CEO, Thomas Howe Company
David Jodoin, CEO, Iperia
4:30pm - 6:00pm General Session: Wireless Mobility - What Makes Convergence Real In This Space?
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
---------------------------
9:00am - 9:30am Industry Perspective
Tero Ojanperä, Chief Technical Officer and Executive Vice President, Nokia
9:30am - 10:00am Industry Perspective
Ali Tabassi, Vice President, Technology Development, Sprint Nextel
10:00am - 10:30am Industry Perspective
Mark Spencer, CTO, Digium and Danny Windham, CEO, Digium
10:30am - 11:15am Morning Break
Breakout Sessions
11:15am - 12:30 Telco 1-2-3
Track: Track 2: Wireless Mobility
(M) Ron Gruia, Principal Analyst for Emerging Telecom, Frost & Sullivan
Martine Lapierre, Carriers Group / Executive Management Team & VP Competitive Transformation, Chief Marketing Office, Alcatel-Lucent
Michael O'Hara, General Manager, Marketing and Industry Management Communicatiosn Sector, Microsoft
11:15am - 12:30 Hosted Media Processing (HMP) vs. Digital Signal Processing (DSP) in Media Servers
Track: Track 3: Voice Communication
Herman Abel, Product Manager, Aculab
Michael Coffee, President & Chief Executive Officer, Commetrex
Grant Henderson, Vice President, Product Marketing, RadiSys
(M) Mike Myshrall, Managing Director, Mercator Capital
John Smrstik, Worldwide Business Manager, High Density & Core Infrastructure DSP Products, Texas Instruments
11:15am - 12:30 The Challenges of Putting IMS to Work
Track: Track 3: Voice Communication
(M) Tom Valovic, Program Director, VoIP Infrastructure, IDC
11:15am - 12:30 Positioning for Public New Enhancements for 911 and Other Government Services
Track: Track 4: Presence and Positioning
(M) Stefan Bewley, Senior Consultant, Altman Vilandrie & Company
Jeff Smith, Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer, EdgeWater Development Group
Joe Walsh, Chief Operating Officer, Square Loop
Bob White, E9-1-1 Spatial Data Manager | GIS Instructor, State of Maine, Office of Information Technology | NENA
11:15am - 12:30 Goin' Mobile With Skype - Beep Beep
Track: Track 4: Presence and Positioning
(M) Jon Arnold, Principal, J Arnold & Associates
Stephane Marceau, CEO, MOBIVOX
Bill Tam, CEO, EQO Communications
2:00pm - 2:30pm Industry Perspective
Amol Sarva, Former CEO of Virgin Mobile and represenatitive fopr
WIRELESS FOUNDERS COALITION FOR INNOVATION
2:30pm - 3:00pm Industry Perspective
Nick Jensen, President and Chief Executive Officer, Dialogic
3:00pm - 3:30pm Industry Perspective
Darrell Jordan-Smith, Vice President, Global Communication Industry, Sun Microsystems
3:30pm - 4:00pm Afternoon Break
4:00pm - 4:30pm Industry Perspective
4:30pm - 5:00pm Industry Perspective
Dr. Hamid Ahmadi, Corporate Vice President, Senior Fellow And Chief Architect, Motorola
5:00pm - 5:30pm Industry Perspective
Niels Anderskouv, Vice President, Digital Signal Processing Systems Business, Texas Instruments
Thursday, November 1, 2007
--------------------------
Breakout Sessions
9:00am - 10:15am Online Video Business Models
Track: Track 1: Video and IP
(M) Rod Randall, Senior Managing Director, Vesbridge Partners
9:00am - 10:15am Putting IMS Interoperabilty to the Test
Track: Track 2: Wireless Mobility
Andy Huckridge, Director, IMS Solutions Marketing, Spirent Communications
Duane Sword, Vice President, Product Management, Empirix-Hammer
9:00am - 10:15am The Impact of Voice Codec Proliferation
Track: Track 3: Voice Communication
9:00am - 10:15am The Growing Importance of Voice in the New World
Track: Track 4: Presence and Positioning
Danny Klein, Associate, Vesbridge Partners
9:00am - 10:15am Unconference
Track: Track 5: Unconference
10:15am - 10:30am Morning Break
Breakout Sessions
10:30am - 11:45am Digital Rights Management
Track: Track 1: Video and IP
10:30am - 11:45am Will there be such a thing as a Hardphone?
Track: Track 3: Voice Communication
Nick Delany, President, VTech Communications
Danielle Deibler, Engineering Manager, Adobe Systems
Arjun Roychowdhury, Director, IMS and Broadband Apps, Hughes Systique
10:30am - 11:45am Peer to Peer will do to VoIP, What VoIP did to the PSTN
Track: Track 3: Voice Communication
David Bryan, CEO, Sipeerior Technologies
(M) Henry Sinnreich, Architecture, Internet Communications, Adobe Systems
10:30am - 11:45am Identity Management Role in Communication Services
Track: Track 4: Presence and Positioning
Jon Peterson, Sr. Technical Industry Liaison, NeuStar
Georges Smine, Sr. Director, Product Marketing, Nominum
10:30am - 11:45am Unconference
Track: Track 5: Unconference
Breakout Sessions
1:15pm - 2:30pm FMC in the Enterprise
Track: Track 2: Wireless Mobility
1:15pm - 2:30pm Video on Demand: Will the model be more IP or TV?
Track: Track 1: Video and IP
(M) Michael Kende, Principal Consultant, Analysys Consulting
1:15pm - 2:30pm Quality of Service Strategies
Track: Track 3: Voice Communication
Alan Clark, CEO, Telchemy
Steve Des Rochers, Vice President, Solutions, Brix Networks
Loki Jorgenson, Chief Scientist, Apparent Networks
1:15pm - 2:30pm Why We Peer?
Track: Track 3: Voice Communication
Steve Heap, Chief Technical Officer, Arbinet
Eli Katz, Founder & CEO, XConnect Global Networks
Cyril Matthews, Director of Registry and Network Services, VoEX
Shrihari Pandit, President and Chief Executive Officer, Stealth Communication
Rodrigue Ullens, co-Founder & CEO, Voxbone
1:15pm - 2:30pm Unconference
Track: Track 5: Unconference
If you got this far, send me a note.
Posted by carl at 06:40 PM | Comments (0)
July 06, 2007
The Second half of the year Master List
Fixed Mobile Convergence
VON Europe Autumn
Video on the Net Europe
VON Israel
Fall VON
Video on the Net Fall
Mobile Security
Unified Communications
Digium Asterisk World
Fall VonDex
New Market Peering
VON Japan
Posted by carl at 10:41 AM | Comments (0)
July 05, 2007
Can VoIP Be Sexy
I’ve asked Jay Batson to be part of the unconference 5th track discussion at Fall VON. As always Jay has insight that brings some interesting points to light. Here was the start of the thread.
So here's the thing: VoIP pioneers built a lot of cool stuff. But we had all these visions about new stuff users could do. And, IMHO, most of those haven't appeared yet. What went wrong?One could make the case that:
- VoIP got co-opted by traditional and new communications service providers, who have mostly given us POTS over a new medium with a few new features, all at a new price;
- SIP suffered from this co-opting, and grew and grew and grew as it tried to replicate all the old world for the providers who were writing big checks;
- Skype showed us that making something "just work" and provide a good UI, and _give it away_ can build the biggest businesses fast;
- Open source shows us -- in _other_ domains - that it can change markets. But VoIP open source has some problems.--- Asterisk is fine, but as far as end users are concerned, it is a thing whose operation is controlled by an IT guy; it's not end-user software.
--- Microsoft hasn't really innovated in a dramatic way.
--- There is some good infrastructure open source code for SIP, but much less on the client side
--- There _is_ some good client and server code for XMPP/Jabber/Jingle.I've tried to add VoIP to my product (http://www.plumcanary.com), and even though I'm a SIP guy, it's just too hard. I've seriously considered XMPP/Jingle....
So, what happened? Did VoIP get co-opted by big-check-writing service providers, who distracted the industry away from new innovation by paying for us to re-implement the old world over IP? And if so, should we care? Should we do anything about it? If so, who will pay for doing it?
Is this a topic that is even worth talking about?
My reply....
Lets start at a basic question.Is it possible to make voip sexy, or is transport just a function in a world of communication that can't be spiced up.
An analogy would be Cars and Road. You made in the past Jay the Maserti of SIP phones. But making the call is a road. Roads are not terribly sexy. Sometimes you can admire the engineering, but rarely do you say this road is cool. Its just the pavement.
Look at this iPhone nonsense. All this noise about what you can do with it, but they never make a call in the commercial which is probably good since recent studies indicate they can't make it in real life either.
Even Skype not that the bloom is off the rose, looks like transport with a nicer interface and good engineered (transport/road). The skype devices are iPhone equivalents.
So with all that said, should we really be surprised that Telco 2.0 is not as inspiring as Web 2.0?
Any more thoughts?
Jay’s Reply
You're thinking in terms of handsets, Carl.I think what is sad to me is that VoIP hasn't simply become widely integrated into desktop computer applications.
You know how in various applications (e.g. web browsers, MS Word, etc.) URL's automatically get highlighted, and are clickable? Well, I'd like everybody's email address to be _not_ just clickable to trigger an email being sent; I'd like the click to raise a context
menu that says "Send email" or "Voice chat". In tons of applications.For this to happen:
- There needs to be code available either in open source, or built into the OS, for developers to use;
- Developers shouldn't have to build server infrastructure to supply this feature - it should just work;
- It must work through NATs without user intervention;
- It should be free for everybody to use, the way Skype is "free" (free for on-net calls, costs money for PSTN gatewayed calls);But on every point above, we (the industry) failed.
We have nothing "interesting" in VoIP because it's not accessible to the people who write software that normal people use. Why aren't 95% of people in SecondLife using VoIP to talk instead of typing? Why doesn't Basecamp have voice chat in it's collaboration portal?
Where's the ad-hoc voice chat rooms? And I keep speaking of voice - but I _should_ be saying video for all of the above.
So, I don't want voice Sexy - I just want it pervasive. And it isn't because this new idea got co-opted by the old guard. We (myself included) chased revenue from traditional telecom sources because we needed to. This meant we got co-opted, and left us in the non-VoIP-enabled software world we now live in.
Posted by carl at 12:34 PM | Comments (1)
What is Google doing at FMC?
Do you know this man ?
Google has been running Municipal WiFi networks for 2 years and with Chris Sacca, the man called the most influential businessman by the WSJ, joining the discussion we are going to the benefit of their lessons learned. Can Muni-WiFi be free by having the advertising model drive pay for the access? With GoogleMaps and Dodgeball leading the way can the model expand and make local connectivity a nationwide network.
But don’t assume, this a plav for control. Google left the access open to allow all sorts of devices to connect to the network. As for the core of the network, Google has bought an incredible amount of dark fiber and the anticipation a nationwide “GoogleNet”.
If a muni networks are going to be free are we at point where local access can be assumed for enterprises to support remote usage. Will the YouTube generation of applicaitons add to much cost to MuniWiFi’s free service.
These are only some of the answers being explored at pulvermedia’s first Fixed Mobile Convergence event September 5th - 7th in Chicago Illinois.
Posted by carl at 03:12 AM | Comments (1)
March 18, 2007
Looking over the delegates
When people ask me about the community I would say that we have
Developers, Network Operators, Marketing / Business Development, Telecom Managers. Analysts / VCs, and Press.
In general the categories have a cross section regarding Consumer Services and Products, Enterprise Products, Service Providers and Technology to support the infrastructure.
Last but not least i can segment us by topics.
Network Management / QoS
Regulatory Policy
New Service Development / Delivery
Consumer / Edge Devices
Service Provider Devices
FMC
IMS
SIP and Standards
IPTV
TV/IP
Voice Quality / Transcoding
Any thing Else?
Posted by carl at 08:43 AM | Comments (0)
August 30, 2006
The most ASTERISK activities at Fall VON ever
This VON is going to show the direct impact of Asterisk in the market. Besides the sessions and activities below we have many companies and groups who are using Asterisk to develop new services. With all these activities we have decided one more part of the program should be highlighted.
We have set up a special user group meeting on Wednesday night for all members of the VON Community in room 211 at 6PM. Anyone who is attending VON in any capacity is welcome to participate. If you want to show what your doing with Asterisk send an email to carl.ford@pulvermedia.com. It is our belief that this will be the richest participation of the Asterisk community ever, so it is my strong suggestion that you identify your desire to participate now. And come early so you can put in for the Digium / Asterisk raffle.
To Register for free access to the Exhibit Floor including the Digium pavilion and to attend the Asterisk User Group meeting use the priority code ASTERVON, or follow this link to register https://secure.pulver.com/von/register.html
But wait there is more.
On Wednesday at 8:30 until 10:00 in the morning Olle E. Johansson CEO of Edvina will be providing a tutorial called Meet Asterisk - The Open Source IPBX. And on Thursday morning Olle will provide a tutorial on the latest release of Asterisk (v1.4).
To view more details click here http://www.pulver.com/asterisk/ . You can use the ASTERVON priority code which will save $100 on the individual sessions and more than that for the combined sessions. To register go here https://secure.pulver.com/asterisk/register.html
Below are all the activities associated with Asterisk.
Monday, September 11, 2006
Monday pre conference - the SIP Tutorial now includes hands -on SIP Asterisk implementation training.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Tuesday VON Theater (near the Digium / Asterisk Pavilion)
Joshua Colp speaking and Schuyler Deerman moderating a panel called Next Generation Networking - Literally. This panel of under 20 types are shaping our future with the development and efforts. Asterisk, SIP Foundry and Skype will be part of the discussion.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Wednesday Asterisk at VON training
8:30 A.M. until 10:00 A.M. Olle E. Johansson CEO of Edvina
Tutorial Meet Asterisk - The Open Source IPBX.
VON Conference 4:45 P.M. - 5:15 P.M. Mark Spencer the President of Digium will give an Industry Perspective called “An Open Source Carol; The Ghost of Open Source; Past, Present and Future.” Note you must be a conference attendee to attend.
Asterisk User Group Meeting
After the exhibit hall closes at 6:00 P.M. an Asterisk User Group meeting will be held in room 211. This will be unstructured and will be a chance for peers to hear each other out.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Thursday Asterisk at VON training
8:30 A.M. until 10:00 A.M. Olle E. Johansson CEO of Edvina
Tutorial an in depth look at the latest release of Asterisk (v1.4)
Posted by carl at 04:36 PM | Comments (0)
April 22, 2005
Should I take a B for Voice on the Net Canada
I'll take the B for me and the Voice on the Net Canada show. I will not take it for our guests. Carl Condon, Tom Evslin and Maddog were stellar speakers. (The fact that their presentations weren't mentioned is upsetting to me.)
So, Mark, thanks for the grade, but you can't convince me that I was trying too hard. We put alot of effort into Voice on the Net Canada - and it showed.
Some people are never satisfied. I am for VoIP freeing the world of telephone monopolies, and the marconi dream of everyone being a broadcaster.... But I am concerned that youth is being wasted on the young.
VON Canada was a great show, to me. I have some issues with Canadian content that does not grasp the pulver event view of presentations. And I, as some one who glimpses behind the scenes, "knows how the sausage was made," know that we have room for improvement.
I'll take the B for me and the Voice on the Net Canada show. I will not take it for our guests. Carl Condon, Tom Evslin and Maddog were stellar speakers. (The fact that their presentations weren't mentioned is upsetting to me.)
Larry Shaw and Lawson Hunter did a good job of talking the regulatory issues that Canada is facing.
The show had Buzz. For next year I would like to add an Enterprise track going and I would like to have the show grow past the 1,000 people we had at the event. Yes, we had a thousand people including and active Exhibits Only crowd.
So, Mark, thanks for the grade, but you can't convince me that I was trying too hard. We put alot of effort into Voice on the Net Canada - and it showed.
Posted by carl at 07:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 02, 2005
Carl You Out-of-date thinker
I just had a conversation with my friends at Excel Switching. It seems that when they left Lucent they left behind the call control part of their brain and focused in on the media and application servers.
My bad. I need to relearn.
Posted by carl at 04:26 PM | Comments (0)
February 22, 2005
Spring VON is heating up
Spring VON is generating a buzz already as I get calls offering last minute speakers, speaker disputes, moderators, and of course favors.
I am also again getting asked about the speaking proposals that were not accepted.
For the team we are not focused this week on the near term.
We are currently finishing the final touches of VON Europe and the Wireless Internet event at CTIA. And starting the invites for the SIP Summit @ Supercomm and VON Australia.
Posted by carl at 08:23 AM | Comments (0)
January 25, 2005
Its the Dialogue not the schedule
We are at the Exec Summit and I have again blown the schedule up. I think the goal is to have the dialogue alive and well and not to keep to the schedule.
I do have a hard stop that i have to live up to because of a speakers schedule.
I will keep the discussion moving for the rest of the day.
Posted by carl at 05:09 AM | Comments (0)
January 24, 2005
Eureka - Now I have 2!
When I develop the conferences, I am constantly aware that I have some companies that are standalone in my mind. Until today I thought Voxpath was the only company supporting MGCP iPBX hosting, but Centile is out there too.
Now that I have heard Bertrand's presentation I can have them in a session together or add Shoretel as the MGCP advocates.
Posted by carl at 11:52 AM | Comments (0)
January 20, 2005
Hole - Session Descriptions
Spring VON is now pretty stable and I am working on Europe. Things have a tendency to slip my mind and the session descriptions for Europe are long overdue.
Many companies these days want to see the Session Descriptions which is a shame. Jeff used to just give titles and let the speakers explore the possibilities in the name. It was a good freeing experience in the wild wild west days of VoIP.
Now, if I write and the spin doesn't match. Rather than critique they withdraw. Often its the speakers I had in mind that reject my prose.
I will work the VON Europe descriptions today and tomorrow.
Posted by carl at 09:05 AM | Comments (0)
January 19, 2005
Adult Supervision - The Role of a Moderator
The SIP Summit was a 2 break out conference and we got out of sync between the 2 conference rooms. I made the mistake of thinking that some of the speakers would "self-moderate".
At summits I feel that as a group we go on the journey so if the time gets delayed.... We as a group have made the choice by asking questions.
With breakouts that changes, because the groups need to stay in sync.
Moderators need to do the following
Make sure all the speakers present.
Make sure they all share the time with the audience
Keep the audience engaged
Allow the next session to start on time
Report on the audience and speakers caliber to us.
Posted by carl at 08:22 AM | Comments (0)
January 18, 2005
More on Ingate
Steve Johnson and I talked about the problem of providing a session that makes sense for them at the conferences. In my head, Ingate gets lumped with all the session controllers, plus they have a sister company called Intertex which does similar things but in different markets.
Some of the neat aspects of their product is the support for IPv6 and the SIP proxy that inside that can be used to support multiple end points behind it. It also acts a firewall so they could be
We talked about getting a session in the shows which is either about security or the future of the Internet.
Posted by carl at 08:20 PM | Comments (0)
SIP and Billing - The Last Session of the Day
Camilla Dahlen of High Deal and Tim Hoolihan of Primal Solutions gave great talks on Billing to a small audience.
Both of the companies have made markets for themselves in particular segments of the industry; 3G for High Deal and Cable for Primal.
The most interesting thing said to me was that RADIUS (the protocol I am use to using for billing information transfer) was considered too much overhead cost in the cable space and event records were being streamed using alternative methods.
My notes are included below. for your review.
Download file
Posted by carl at 06:50 PM | Comments (0)
January 17, 2005
The Great Session Controller Wars
Here at the SIP summit the Birds of a Feather session was well attended by the IETF participants, and unfortunately did not catch the eye of our Session Controller Friends.
The nite before all the IETFers and myself went to a party sponsored by Nextone, which is a session controller.
Maybe for that reason that the speaker deck was staffed with only IETFers our session controller friends were mostly absent, except for Ingate (which is more of a edge solution).
It was a good session, but I should have specifically invited the Session Controllers to participate. A lesson learned for next time.
Posted by carl at 07:51 PM | Comments (0)
January 16, 2005
The SIP Tutorial
Henry Sinnreich and Alan Johnston are going to be presenting today as precon to the SIP Summit. The quality of their class is amazing. While both work for MCI, Henry brings an ability to express all of the latest information associated with IETF standards work while Alan teaches at George Washington University as an adjunct professor.
If you are an engineer or someone who closely with works with this class is wonderful.
Posted by carl at 11:05 AM | Comments (0)
January 14, 2005
The Tutorial for the PTC
Getting Ready for the PTC conference, I have made the following slides.
I am thinking the one thing I am missing is a picture of all sorts of events. Let me know what you think.
Posted by carl at 12:18 AM | Comments (0)
January 13, 2005
The Titles of the Proposals
I have a complaint about the proposals I see. Some companies think that the way to submit proposals is to give the same proposals multiple times with different speakers.
Titles are an issue (Sales and Marketing are normally not allowed), but the goal should be a breadth of topics and concepts.
Giving three different employees in the same title reduces the value, because if the topic is not chosen, all three people are rejected.
If the people are pitched in a variety of themes, it gives an opportunity to match to the people to sessions.
Take it for what its worth.
Posted by carl at 12:19 AM | Comments (0)
January 12, 2005
Getting Back on Schedule
The Speaking Team has finally been together the last two days. Catching up on E-mails from the beginning of the year and providing me the hole reports.
I strongly recommend paying attention to websites with the understanding that they are always out of sync with the pending emails.
Our status is as follows.
Spring VON is the largest and the one that is craziest. Hundreds of speakers on the wish list and some sessions have to be redesigned. The Precons are the least determined.
Voice on the Net Canada has been reconfigured. Looks okay but IPs have to be completed. Most invitations are accepted.
VON Europe is suffering from some neglect only because of Spring VON. Keynotes and Industry Perspectives are complete but some sessions need real work.
VON Australian and the SIP Summit @ Supercomm are next on our agenda.
Posted by carl at 12:47 AM | Comments (0)