Paprika

Recently, the man in the Purple Shirt challenged the community to finally come up with compelling real time communication services. I suppose it was spoken during a moment of frustration for Jeff, as this industry has spent a lot of time and energy making these wonderful IP based technologies, but we are still doing pretty much the same old things with them. For those that do make something that turns him on, he might provide some early-early seed capital, and more importantly, he would provide some visibility and friendship. I applaud Jeff's continuous efforts to move voice technology forward, and as I've said before, I'm here to add my efforts to his. To help developers, Aswath pitched in by providing some pointers to how he'd do it. Well, here's what I have to add to the discussion, and it's a single word.

Paprika

To use voice in a compelling way, recognize that voice is a spice, not a main ingredient. Voice and other real time communications brings out the flavor in some other application, but it isn't the star. A compelling application starts with solving a real customer problem, and unless your customer happens to be a telco, carrying voice probably isn't the issue. The issue is something else. Take any vertical and check to see if I'm right. Here's a classic example: entertainment. American Idol had an innovative idea, which was to make a TV show where the people emotionally enroll in the outcome. If you think about it, it's just like sports: people watch because they care about their team. But how did they deeply involve the audience? They made them vote. How did they make it compelling and unique? They made them vote using text messages, which made the process unique and pandered to their core, young audience in one fell swoop. Brilliant. Compelling.

Why do we have such a voice services focus? My bet is that telephony has been so hard, for so long, that the people involved only know the telecom industry. We don't know the problems faced in other verticals because we've been so focused on the problems in ours. I bet you that if you spent just the smallest amount of time looking at transportation, or financial services or education, you'd find all sorts of places you could sprinkle basic communications into the mix to make it more delicious. Because we haven't done that, Jeff's food is bland and boring. He deserves better, you deserve better, and most importantly, customers deserve better.

Hello to the VON Show?

I think I should make an honest apology for underestimating Jeff Pulver and his organization. I was wrong.

As you might recall, I did not attend last Spring's VON show that grew from a conviction that the venerable conference's best days were now behind it, and for content, it had gone off the tracks.  I surely missed seeing all of my friends, and was quite sad about it all. I believed then, as I believe now, that the future of innovation is far from telephony carriers, and far from technologies such as IMS.   So, in a fit of whatever, I boycotted the conference.

To his everlasting credit,  Carl Ford rang me up and challenged me to help him understand where I thought the market was going, and if I would, help the community learn about the new opportunities provided by Web services architectures and mashups.  I committed to him then, as I now share with you, that I would do my best to help bridge the worlds between my 20 year old, Ruby hacking, Adhearsion writing, mashed-out friends and those 50 year old, SS7 and CALEA scarred grey beards. (I'm growing one myself!)  You see, my young friends really don't know how to make money with telephones... and my older friends really don't know the tremendous productivity and functionality gains now available because of Web 2.0 architectures, development approach and tools.  Thus, I am taking an active part in next Fall's VON.  I hope you do, too.

I'm moderating a panel on next-generation mashup applications, and we are running a fifth-track at the show to be run as an un-conference.  Carl has assembled an excellent group to help him with this, and I'm so happy to have a chance to work with them.  Our goal is to try to make the conference more than a business development show, where partnerships are made.  If we do this right, we'll show you how important and revolutionary this new light-weight architecture model is for your career and your business.  And maybe you'll say "Damn", just like we used to back in 2000. 

It has to start with your participation, though.  Call or write to me to tell me what you want to learn about - what you want to see.  I have an idea for myself, and I'll share it here.  I'm thinking that I am going to assemble two or three other hacks, and we'll make a date to go into a conference room for a few hours to put together an application using only open source or openly available tools that you simply couldn't do a just few years ago with a month and a hundred thousand dollars.  You can see it when we're done, (what the hell, you can visit us as we write it, just bring wine, beer or pizza) and we'll show you how we did it.  And then, with your imagination, you can go off and do the same.  I want to show those unfamiliar that it's real, not just hype, and what better way than to just do it.

And to Jeff, Carl, and all those in his organization : I wish I was the one who picked up the phone and said "I would love to help you out here." Instead, they were the better men, and I'm glad of it.

Goodbye to Von : Part 2

I realized I only told half of the story during part one, but before I get to that, a little bird told me that my last post about VON might upset Jeff Pulver. Let's hit that one right away.

If your name ISN'T Jeff, then let me be absolutely clear that Jeff is in every way a decent and talented man, in my own personal pantheon of gods, a visionary, brilliant and worthy of every respect he's given and worthy of every dollar he makes. I have the deepest respect for Jeff, and don't challenge me on that one. I'm a wimpy geek by day, but I'm a Tang Soo Do Cho Dan by night.

If your name IS Jeff, and my post upset you, then I have wronged you in the most egregious way, and please accept my deepest apologies. I draw a clear line between you and the show, and even though the show isn't where I'm at, it is clearly where a lot of people are productive, happy and fulfilled. You are the reason the show exists, and in large measure, why our industry exists. My family, and the families of thousands of others, have, in part, you to to thank for the jobs we have due to your vision, hard work and good character. Truth be told, I am growing more upset by the day that I am not out there in California, as I miss seeing all of you. Andy is quite right - VON is still where business is done. But there are dark clouds on the horizon, and I don't think I'll hang around for the rain to come.

The second half of the story is filled with negative emotions. Scared... upset... blind-sided. I feel as though I've woken from a fog. There's a market force that's growing outside of our VoIP world that will wash away those that aren't looking for it, and will challenge those that do. Since the mashup camp this January, it's come into clear focus in my vision, and I'm afraid for my career, and those of my comrades. It's time to move, and move right now. My honest, strong and deep feelings are that the majority of players in our market are really missing what's happening in communications today. From my view of the speaking topics and theme of this VON show, I can only assume that this problem extends to the show itself. I understand why the show has taken the direction it has, especially into Video, and far be it from me to criticize that. There's a lot of money to be made in them hills... I wish all of those involved good luck. My blog, and my day to day work, are to educate those around me about the future of communications. It's what I do.

For me, from the very first day of my career, and I hope every day since, I have constantly sought out ground zero of communications technology. In my opinion, I am sad that it's no longer at the VON show, but I'm speaking more about my needs and opinions than my estimation of others. The VON show, Jeff Pulver, and all of my friends have their own agendas, needs and wants. God bless them.

End of an era... Goodbye to VON

It's the end of an era for me.... for the first time in a decade, I am not going to the VON show. For the first time since my nine year old daughter was born, I am not attending. And that's not just the US shows, throw a couple of VON Canada's and Europe's in there, too. It's a bit sad, but we all have to move on sometime, and my time has arrived. Although it's partially because I'm doing a lot of traveling lately, and some is because I'm swamped with work, it's mostly because VON has failed to rise above the noise in my technical life. As a (hopefully) cutting edge technologist, the VON show is simply not where it's at, especially with regards to communications. Today's VON show is ruled by business development arms of increasingly larger companies, not by thought leaders driving real communication innovation. I'll miss all my friends, heck... I'll even miss Jeff Pulver's stupid purple shirts. I probably won't miss the Herding Cats. (Are they playing again?) I'll miss Carl Ford's witty banter and I'll miss giving Diana my presentation about five minutes before I give it to the audience. But more than that, I miss the feeling of walking around technologists that are doing things that blow my mind, which is why I'm hanging around the O'Reilly show these days.

And there were some pretty good times :

• I remember the first time I was a speaker in 1998, where I was director of engineering for NetPhone, and gave the talk for the CEO about RTP header compression in H.323. (Boy, was I wrong. For a goof, I gave the same talk in 2005. That was a hoot.)
• I remember in Fall 1999, where my teams were doing the user interface work for PingTel, and the H.323 stack for e-tel, the two leading IP phones at the time. Talk about Chinese walls. Ralph Hayon from Congruency would come by the booth for a one-stop-shop for competitive information, which we never ever gave him, but he would try.
• I remember in the Fall of 2000, when we were working full scale on commercializing the SIP code from Columbia, and I had those horrible talks with a senior manager about why trying to patent SIP was a bad idea.
• I remember the fall of 2001, where flying to the VON show was the first flight I took after 9/11. You know, that's how important VON was back then.
• I remember the lean times, where our industry was devastated, but VON was a place to go to commiserate.
  
• I remember seeing the market come back in 2005, and seeing the show floor fill back up, and talking about "remember when"
• I remember last spring looking at the Acme Packet booth, and seeing something like 19 of the top 20 carriers had purchased their equipment, and how good I felt for Andy and Pat, two of the best guys in this market.

I'll see all of you on the other side. Maybe I'm too old of a PictureTel veteran to really get excited about video now, or maybe it's just that I'm more about creating a new world than milking the old one, but either way - I will miss the people.