Thomas Howe

With the recent demise of O’Reilly’s Emerging Telephony Web Site and Conference, it seems like the Pulver organization is now truly THE place for next generation communications. I’ve been asked by the Pulver organization to lead the innovator’s track at this year’s Fall VON, and I’m honored to give back to the organization that has personally given my customers and me such opportunities over the years.

So, what’s cool in the track this year? Lots of stuff:

1) First, the track itself is an innovation. The track has two aspects : a traditional, VON style executive summit full of really innovative companies that challenge the status quo and a complete un-conference. If you are un-familiar with an un-conference, the concept is very simple. The un-conference is run with an agenda that is set the day of the meeting, and not before. At the beginning of the un-conference, we ask the participants what they want to talk about, and they self organize into groups and sessions lead by people who volunteer. Sound disorganized? Amazingly, the un-conferences I’ve been involved with are productive, exciting and unfiltered. An un-conference is exactly what you get when you trust the audience. There’s obviously a place for the sponsors of a trade show to give speeches to the audience, but this isn’t it. At the un-conference, speak your mind - leave the hidden agenda at the door - wear it on your sleeve. I’ve got some ideas about two sessions I want to see at the un-conference…

2) The first session I want to have is a group voice mashup. I’m realizing that lots of people have never seen a voice mashup, never mind seen one written in real time. I’m inviting Jay Phillips, and maybe another geek, to sit down with me for an hour so we can write a mashup in real time in front of the audience, so they can see how we do it - and they can truly understand the power of this new approach to voice enabled applications. What are we writing? Gotta thank THC COO Pat Murphy for this little stroke of genius.

Shareideas.org is a charity funded by Vodafone and Nokia dedicated to combating social issues in the developing world using communications. We’ve asked them if they had a voice problem that they needed a solution to, and they’ve delivered for us. I won’t spill the beans on it yet, but it’s going to be very exciting to contribute to thousands of people in need, while helping our friends learn more about the technology we love. A real win-win.

3) The second session I want to have is an open debate about the future of voice services. Blogger pal, and fellow Red Sox Nation citizen Jon Arnold, has extended an invitation out to Andrew Frame, CEO of Ooma, to sit down with me and debate the future of voice innovation. As I’ve said before, I believe that Ooma is the poster child for the dead-end direction of telephony; Andrew obviously has a different opinion. I don’t mind people squirming in the seats, because it means that they are thinking - and thinking is good. Anyone want to watch?

4) Interested to see how telephony is growing and changing? You need to meet the leaders of the next wave of companies. Erik Lagerway is coming by to tell us all about the API enabled conferencing service from Lypp. Shirish from Sylantro will tell us how carriers can actually expose their services to developers in a Web services environment. I can write a voice mashup pretty fast, but I’m nowhere near as fast as Jay Phillips and his adhearsion library. And that’s just a start. I guarantee that you’ll see something you’ve never seen, and that you’ll meet somebody who knows something you need to learn at this year’s VON innovator’s track. You think IMS is the foundation for service innovation? Come meet some people who can’t even spell IMS, but still manage to deploy innovative services without million dollar price tags. If you’ll be at VON, you can find me there.

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