Disruptive Telephony

Travelling in the US at this time of year is always a gamble.  This is the time of large storms with snow, ice, sleet and all sorts of things that don't particularly work well with large metal tubes flinging themselves through the air.  The trip out would have been a complete mess had I flown 24 hours earlier... and now the trip back is looking like it has the potential to be... um... "interesting".  I'm leaving very early tomorrow morning flying United... and frequent travellers will immediately realize that flying United pretty much guarantees I'm flipping through Chicago. 

Students of North American geography will take one look at the CNN weather forecast map to the right (click for a larger version) and realize the impending problem.  For those not familar with the layout of our fair land, well... you see where that "L" is?  Designating the center of the storm?  Chicago is just a tiny bit to the right of that... pretty much where the cloud and other symbol is - meaning that it probably won't be a terribly good travel day today in Chicago.  United has already announced "severe weather problems" affecting Minnesota, which is just a bit northwest from the "L", i.e. that's where the storm was yesterday and into today.

We'll see... perhaps it won't be that bad or perhaps they'll work the system issues out by the time I am to arrive there tomorrow....  good news is that I've plenty of work and other things to do to keep my busy while sitting in airports...

Too many conversations... that's the struggle here.   Just really great folks.  Very much enjoying the sessions so far.   Currently listening to the 5-minute lightening talks... tonight there is a "VoIP Blogger Dinner" organized by Andy Abramson... somehow I don't think I'll really be blogging about much of this until the plane trip home.  (I am finding that I am doing some "micro-blogging" about web sites over on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/danyork/ )

Conference has been well organized.  Only issue I've really had is that the WiFi network has been of varying quality.  Sometimes it is working fantastically... sometimes it works for 20 minutes and then it dies... sometimes I just can't connect, even though I'm sitting in the exact same spot I was an hour earlier.  I realize it's really tough to do WiFi for a conference... the demands on the network are a bit unnatural... especially with a heavily laptop-enabled crowd like this one. 

Today starts the first day of ETel, a.k.a. O'Reilly's Emerging Telephony conference. ETel is not one of the giant conferences... unlike one of the VONs, Internet Telephony or VoiceCon there will probably only be 500-1000 people here.  But that is part of the charm, really (and this is only the second year)... it's a place for the VoIP alpha-geeks to network, promote their visions, combine their visions, socialize and otherwise just learn a heck of a lot from each other.   The schedule is packed with great info... the speaker roster is a veritable "Who's Who" of people playing in the "Voice 2.0" or "Telephony 2.0" (or <pick your cliche term>) space.  All in all, it's one conference I've been very much looking forward to.  Just in town last night, I've already run into Alec Saunders, Brad Templeton, Bruce Stewart, Surj Patel... had dinner with Blue Box podcast co-host Jonathan Zar and security researcher Shawn Merdinger...   I know Ken Camp is around, Andy Abramson, Om Malik and so many others... it should be a great and fun conference.

For my part, I am doing two sessions.  First, today at 1:30pm Pacific, Jonathan, Shawn and I will be doing a 90-minute workshop on VoIP security, primarily from an industry-wide VOIPSA point-of-view.  We'll go over the main issues around VoIPsecurity, talk about the threats, tools, best practices and more.  We're hoping to do it more as a fun conversation rather than a dry panel... you'll hopefully get to hear the results later yourself as I'll be recording the session for distribution as a Blue Box podcast.  O'Reilly has graciously given that permission again which is wonderful. (And I, of course, brought all my field recording gear.)

One of the things the three of us will also be doing is talking about a list of VoIP security tools that VOIPSA has been developing... stay tuned for more on that.

Then on Thursday I have my "general session"... my "15 minutes of fame" (or infamy) from 11-11:15am in front of the entired assembled crowd... where I will attempt to digest into that brief time the salient points about VoIP security.

I am actually VERY much looking forward to this session because I've done my presentation in a completely different style from any other presentation that I've given publicly.  I'm going to tell a story... and do so in a way that should be both fun and entertaining... and will also get the points across.    I'll say little else... except perhaps to dangle the tease that it comes in at over 200 slides yet clocks in at only about 11 minutes right now. (have to leave time for questions, eh?)    Like I said, completely different style from other presos I've given... but I'm very much looking forward to it.

Will I succeed?  Or will I fall flat on my face before several hundred of my peers?  Stay tuned...  ;-)

Have you ever created a "mashup" of telephony applications? Per Surj Patel writing on the O'Reilly Radar weblog, we're going to see some "telephony mashups" out at ETel in just a couple of weeks.  As Surj says:

The competition website is here and we encourage you to enter no matter how silly or brilliant the idea may be. The idea is to spread the word outside of the phone hackers community as to how easy and fun it is to build these hacks. Everything you need to get started you can get from the website. Your phone account (VXML) is free and you have free API's and Toolkits from the sponsors.

If you can write a CGI script then you can hack a commercial style service together in a few hours. Go take a look and investigate. Step outside your daily zone. Let your imagination run riot. Have some fun.

Per the ETel Mashup Contest website, the top 3 mashups will be presented out at ETel.  As the page says:

A telephony mashup is a voice, Web or mobile application (PBX, IVR, VOIP, SMS, Text Messaging, etc.) that combines content from more than one source to create a new user experience. Qualifying entries must demonstrate how an application can use one or more sources of content in an inventive way to benefit users. Any tool or platform that involves content (see StrikeIron or ProgrammableWeb) telephony (ex: VOIP, SMS, Text Messaging, PBX, IVR) can be used to create a mashup. This is uncharted territory, so there is plenty of room to use your imagination!!

The deadline is February 20th... so you still have time!  It will no doubt be both interesting and fun to see what people come up with...

(Originally posted to http://dyork.livejournal.com/254735.html)

Just confirmed late last week that I'll definitely be speaking at O'Reilly's Emerging Telephony Conference (aka "ETel") this coming February 27 - March 1, 2007 in San Francisco. The topic I will be speaking on will, of course, be VoIP security. Two sessions, actually... one a 15-minute plenary session providing an overall view of VoIP security and then the second a 90-minute workshop going into much more detail, providing info about security tools, best practices and much more. Both, of course, will be later put out as part of Blue Box. Should be a lot of fun, and given that it's in the SF area, I'll probably be able to pull Jonathan Zar in as well, which would be cool. Now I just need to put up a picture, bio and session abstracts...

As I've said to a number of folks, ETel 2006 was one of the very best out of all the conferences that I attended all year. No real trade show... just conference sessions full of the "alpha geeks" that O'Reilly conferences tend to attract. People really on the bleeding edge of trying out new and different things with telephony. They had a "fair" at one point that showcased startups that were doing really wacky things... it was all great stuff. Definitely a place to meet the people pushing the true leading edge of IP telephony. Here's a brief part of the promotional material:

ETel captures and telegraphs the excitement around ahead-of-the-curve telephony technologies, bringing together all layers of the telephony community to compare and contrast web telephony technology, business, and culture in a collaborative, spirited environment. ETel highlights the people, projects, and activities pushing the boundaries of what's possible with IP telephony. ETel provides a map of the evolving telephony horizon and gives you the charts you need to navigate the new communication opportunities ahead.

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