Disruptive Telephony

Two weeks from today I'll be in Orlando giving the opening keynote address at AstriCon 2015. The abstract of the session is:

Open Source And The Global Disruption Of Telecom - What Choices Will We Make?

Wednesday, October 14th, 2015 - 9:00 am to 9:45 am - Pacifica Ballroom 7

There is a battle raging for the global future of telecommunications and the Internet. Taking place in networks, board rooms and legislatures, the battle will determine how we all communicate and what opportunities will exist. Will telecom support innovation? Will it be accessible to all? Will it give us the level of security and privacy we need to have the open, trusted Internet? Or will it be restricted and limited by corporate or government gatekeepers?

The rise of voice-over-IP has fundamentally disrupted the massive global telecommunications industry, infrastructure and policies. Open source software such as Asterisk has been a huge driver of that disruption and innovation.. but now what? What role do platforms such as Asterisk play in this space? And what can be their role in a telecom infrastructure that is now mobile, increasingly embedded (Internet of Things) and more and more using proprietary walled gardens of communication?

Join the Internet Society's Dan York in an exploration of what the future holds for telecom infrastructure and policy - and how the choices we make will determine that future.

Sounds great, eh?

Now I just have to deliver on that lofty rhetoric! :-)

Seriously, though, I'm very much looking forward to giving this presentation and I'm delighted that the folks at Digium asked me to speak. We're at a critical time in the evolution of our global communications infrastructure... with everything moving to IP and also moving to mobile, there are incredibly important choices we have to make for our future.

In the talk, I'll be speaking about the scenarios we have for what our future Internet could look like. I'll be talking about the role of open source. I'll be challenging the audience with some questions to ponder. I'll touch on some of the incredibly important - yet hard to understand - global policy issues such as the upcoming WSIS+10 Review in December - and why an open source developer should even remotely care! I'll of course hit on security issues and the rise of mobile... and more...

I'm excited!

I'm also excited to finally attend an AstriCon event. I used to write about Asterisk a good bit and for a while was running my own server in my home office for VoIP... but in all that time I never was able to work in attending an AstriCon!

If you are going to be there in Orlando, please do say hello! (There's still time to register!)

P.S. And yes, Olle Johansson, I'll be sure to work in at least one reference to IPv6! And TLS, too! Don't worry! :-)

Back in June, I published a post titled "Will iOS 9 Make My iPad2 Usable Again?" that seemed to strike a nerve with the legions of iPad2 owners out there wondering about the future of their device. There have been a good number of comments on the original post - and I've received a fair number of private email messages asking how my upgrade went. The question now being asked is:

Does iOS 9 make your iPad 2 run BETTER?

Sadly, the best answer seems to be...

maybe.

Reports have been decidedly mixed, both in the media as well as in the comments to that June blog post here. Some people reported improvements while others said it was the same (or worse).

A couple of people (one example) have reported that after upgrading to iOS 9 and then doing a factory reset the performance dramatically improved. The issue there, though, as I understand it, is that you lose all your apps, settings, etc. and would basically need to completely rebuild how you have the iPad 2 set up. However, if the alternative is not using it, I guess that's an option to consider.

ArsTechnica published an article on September 16 with the conclusion "Not worse than iOS 8, but missing many features" that noted that many of the new features in iOS 9 simply don't work on the iPad 2. They noted that the speed improvements are not significant. There's a lengthy comment thread there, too.

In my own case, I haven't really seen any dramatic benefits after the upgrade. Quite honestly I've been too insanely busy with work activities that I haven't really had the chance to give it much of a test. I do like the new keyboard layout. Some of the cosmetic changes are nice.

It's still sllllooowww to launch applications and to switch between them.

Maybe I'll try the factory reset route and rebuild the device... or just accept the slowness of it.

Given that I keep getting messages asking me my opinion, I'll summarize my view at this moment:

• If your iPad 2 already runs iOS 8, UPGRADE! Performance can't really get any worse than iOS 8, and might just get better.
• If your iPad 2 is still on iOS 7... well... think about it.

On this last point...there's a challenge here - if all you want to do is browse the web and send/receive email, you may be okay keeping your iPad running quickly on iOS 7.

BUT...

... you are increasingly going to find that apps aren't available for iOS 7. As Andrew Cunningham writes in that Ars Technica article:

not because you won't take a small performance hit but because developers will increasingly abandon that older OS version if they haven't already. Apple's iOS updates roll out quickly, but the downside of that is that there's not a ton of incentive for developers to support older releases forever and ever. It's common for developers to support the current release and the immediately previous release, but starting today that doesn't cover iOS 7 anymore.

So the choice may be between a snappy web browser tablet or a slow tablet with newer apps. Or... time to upgrade. :-)

If I get a chance to really use the iPad 2 and write more of a response, I will do so, but meanwhile I thought I'd share these initial thoughts and links.

Your comments are welcome about your own experience...

Photo credit: an image of a massive glacier by David Stanley on Flickr

If I go back and read my long post here about joining ISOC in September 2011, my passion and motivation continues to be the same - if anything, that passion has only gotten stronger!

As I wrote about last year in my three-year post, the "Internet of opportunity" that we all value is under severe threat.

The big change for me this past year, was, of course, the big change of joining the Internet Society Strategic Communications team in March 2015 (you can also listen to an audio recording).

That's been a wonderful yet crazy change!

If you go back and look at what I wrote last year - or two years ago - it's all about the technology behind the Internet and how we need to improve the infrastructure to make the Internet work better, be faster and be more secure.

The change this year is that now I'm more involved in other areas of Internet Society work, particularly in the public policy space. You can see that in some of the posts I've been writing for the main ISOC blog (scroll down my bio page to see the list). I've been very involved in adding content to the public policy and Internet governance sections of the website - and I've been working on our overall content strategy for a range of different websites (whereas in the past I mostly just focused on the Deploy360 site).

I've also found myself involved in projects such as standing up a web site for our Call For an Open WSIS+10 Preparatory Process... which it was only after getting it all set up that I really sat back and realized we were coordinating a coalition of organizations that was calling on action from the President of the United Nations General Assembly! Quite a different level of advocacy than I've been involved with in the past! (And still open to sigantories, by the way...)

My new role this year has given me an amazing view about all the work the Internet Society is doing around the world... it's truly inspiring to see it all.

Perhaps most inspiring is to see that the work is ultimately about helping people have better lives. Yes, technology is definitely a large part... but the work we do is about how technology enables better communication, connection, collaboration, creativity and commerce... it's the effect on people that matters most.

The new role is crazy busy... I'm definitely NOT sitting around playing Solitaire or Tetris! :-)

But we have a great team... and we as an overall organization are working on getting more focused on what activities we can do to have the biggest impact on ensuring the "Internet of opportunity" is available for all.

I'm VERY much looking forward to what the fifth year brings!

P.S. Recently Russ White published a very nice overview of the Internet Society on the PacketPushers site - and if you're interested, becoming a member of the Internet Society is free and can connect you to others around the world who want to see an open Internet available to all!

An audio commentary is also available: