With a lot of Humility and some general fun, I want to compliment TMC and Digium on Astricon.
The event was very nicely attended and represented a growing trend in their market.
The overall trend I saw was the number of distributors that were in the booths. They represented a rich eco system of products available that matched nicely to the marketplace’s diversity.
The second trend I want to point out is the diversity in applications. Digium made a big announcement about their developing an application environment, but lots of friends were telling me about specific markets they were now serving with dedicated applications in healthcare and energy.
Other interesting observations,
- no one started a conversation with me “In this economy”.
- National Harbor is a pleasure to get to in comparison to other venues around Washington, DC
-Communities that are cohesive are the best.
Tag Archives: Astricon
Thank You Digium
I want to thank my hosts at Digium, for allowing me to support their efforts at Astricon.
I enjoyed the event, and was impressed with the level of care given to running the event as smoothly as possible. While it was a team effort, one person who deserves special notice is Lisa King. She does not make a big deal of getting the work done, but she and her team did it quietly and efficiently.
Digium, is working to bring the Red Hat experience to the telecommunications world. And their community is looking to change the way we all communicate. The Digium Asterisk community is rich with diversity. From ISPs to PBX partners from developers to business users the group was rich with opportunity.
It was a pleasure to watch and I hope I continue to contribute to the progress.
Skasterisks Me!
Yesterday, the VoIP industry had a victory. As Mark and Stefan were on the stage of Astricon, they did a demo of their beta allowing Skype to be an in and out experience directly to Asterisk. They are heading to beta and it is going to be a while before it reachs us. So What?
So enabling free calls between end users and asterisk pbxs has a lot of implications let me give just a few.
Skasterisk In: The ability to build a directory of skype names to extensions can enable better work at home and better productivity solutions.
Skasterisk Out: The ability to use Skype out as a trunk has just made international calling alot easier for the marketplace that did not have enough volume to connect to the clearinghouses.
Skasterisk Me: All those call centers have a nice easy way to connect with portals and social networks etc all with the Skypme connected to Asterisk.
Skasterisk Trunk: Several friends said the implication for SIP Trunking was enormous. SIP trunking that can also support Skype in (yes, you can just enable it in one direction) means that add value has just occured for free.
Skasterisk US: And if we connect DUNDI / ENUM to the mix federation opportunities become interesting again. I would tell you more, but I have a company working on this already.
Skasterisk Que: This one is hard to explain, but queing and transferring are not Skypes strong suit. So Asterisk as a gateway in the cloud just became a valuable addition to the supernode world of Skype.
Skasterisk Clue: From a Regulatory perspective its a great example of the Internet providing a service independent of the existing frameworks and beyond any boundaries. This is important for the regulators to understand the commercial opportunities and the public good that this ability will create.
I am looking forward to this.
The Business Track at Astricon
I am gearing up for Astricon and moderating the sessions in the business track.
Digium’s ecosystem is an vibrant part of community. I have been talking to a few friends about the nature of open source.
The conference has three tracks, the track for people offering enterprise services, the track for carrier services and the track for people looking at the business side.
While I am moderating the business side, I intend to have my ears to the interesting topics around me.
Unified Communications is the theme for many people and since I am still hearing the word messaging when people say Communication, I need to see some examples on the exhibit floor.
Things I am looking for include, good channel partners, SIP Trunking, new services and ways to manage applications better.
September is the Month for Conference
Here are the conferences I am either going to or sending friends to .
September 10 -12
San Fransisco
CTIA – Wireless IT & Entertainment
September 16th
New York
ETechnology
September 16-18
Los Angeles,
Internet Telephony Expo West
September 18th
San Fransisco
Mobilize
September 23-25
Glendale, AZ
Astricon
September 30th – October 2nd
Chicago
WiMAX World