Steve’s Tech Journal

another great von, one in which there was too much to do, too many people to see, too many cool ideas to grok, too many annoucements to take in and consider but still i wouldnt have missed it and you absorb what you can and let go of the rest … to give you the flavor i am writing this stream of conciousness and am not going to edit it making it a challenge to see if you can read the whole thing. as usual I was burned out two days into it but hey that’s what VON is for … to charge you up with insights and ideas until well until the next VON. what can i say about this VON. on the down side, didn’t get to hang with jeff much, but will see him at his next boston real time social networking thing. missed several of the key sessions i wanted to see. didn’t get trained on openser configuration, didn’t hear what the dialogic guy was going to say about why he’s still selling quad cards in 2007 at a voip conference. but i did have great fun monday night joining the VON advisory board (you didn’t know i was one of the industry’s best and brightest’s did you), and participating in a great cross functional dialog about the future of communications. asterisk world was well attended, i counted well over 100 at the kickoff keynote, maybe like 150. our talk on using asterisk for sophisticated services (slides here) was well attended, and i enjoyed getting to know the moderator Bryan who runs a cool asterisk implementation company in Atlanta. speaking of which, voiceglue got some good attention and is starting to get some traction … lots of people are interested in free vxml integrated with free telephony layers, will be interesting to see where this experiment in open source winds up. on another note got to hang with andy a fair bit this von and joined him at one of his cool wine dinners tuesday night where i stayed way too late at and was consequently wiped out on wed (i brought some 85 lynch bages to the dinner to generally good review but andy thought one bottle was suspect and i bow to his wisdom since i was getting over a cold). andy can put together quite an excellent group of people and i got to sit with alec saunders and tom howe … we got along famously and talked about web / voice telephony mashups and at some point in the evening i recall rambling about how we ought to get voice right (i.e. wideband) before we move on too far. some people were talking about live video, and i interjected some experience from lavalife about how the social pressure of a live conversation is not always what users want. speaking of wine todd and i had a great lunch in the north end to kick the whole show off, lots of good stuff cooking at vail but as always its under the radar. i did have the pleasure of hearing brough and ofer on a panel, and learned a bit more about all the cool mobile stuff that broughs been doing. i also caught up with all my level3 pals, and we plotted new business plans to disrupt well just about everything using the power of the dumb network (once they get their provisioning situation straigtened out that is). they told me about community voice mail, and i am exploring if they might do some cooperative work with with my own philantropic focus crittenton women’s union .. perfect fit i think … and a great free service for the homeless and people in transition, give em voice mail so that they have a phone number to use for job interviews, federal and state programs, etc.. that plus gmail, blogger, and facebook and you have a voice in the world even if you don’t have a home. speaking of facebook this was the von of facebook and jeff featured it highly in his keynote (watch the directors cut version) … i had great fun friending all presenters that i knew, during the course of their presentation … a f2f event link this is a good way to remind yourself of who you know and to get connected via social networks … about half the people i friended also then linked me in (maybe that’s why fb is succeeding over li, you can make it into a verb more easily)… not as much video at this von than the last two, i heard that there were two other west coast video shows at the same time . first von i’ve been to in awhile without pal jonathan, and the policy crowd was light. i did talk with jim kohlenberger from the von colation who told me they potentially were creating a von international brand and he wondered if we might roll in the global ip alliance … i’ll have to bring this topic up with other board members … i liked that there was higher attendance in the voice tracks compared to last year … all in all it certainly feels like an industry in transition, as voip becomes a mature technology, but i did hear a stat that voip penetration was plateuing in the enterprise but i find that hard to believe given all the people that are hiring excellent technology consultants ampersand (gratiutous self link love) to help them plan and cutover … for me von remains and always has been *the* conference about the future of communciations, and that’s why i will continue to go, to participate, and to learn

ok and now this post, like von, is over in a blur, and if you read this far you can now relax and when we next return it will be your regular (hopefully) clear and coherent blogger

Technorati Tags: von blur, Fall2007Von, von, jeff pulver, voiceglue, andy abrahmson, asterisk, community voice mail, crittenton womens union, digium asterisk world, facebook, level3