Disruptive Telephony

I'm in Boston this week at Fall VON. I'll be speaking on Thursday at 12:45 on (predictably) " Strategies for Solving Security". If any readers are at VON, feel free to drop a note. I'm always interested in connecting with readers.

Technorati Tags: conferences, fallvon, voip security, voipsa, von

In a few hours I'll be boarding a plane back to New York where I'll be attending Interop New York this afternoon and tomorrow. If any of you reading this will be there, please do drop an email. Tomorrow, I'll be on a panel at 2:45pm with Jonathan Rosenberg about "Voice-oriented Attacks". (Side note to Interop: Please make it so that we can link to individual sessions instead of having to link to the entire list of "security"-related sessions!) If you aren't aware of who Jonathan Rosenberg is, he works for Cisco and is a huge contributor to IETF efforts related to SIP and in fact was one of the co-authors of RFC 3261 which is the primary RFC defining SIP. He's also the author of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to SIP" which aims to help guide people through the maze of the many, many documents that now are part of "SIP". More relevant to tomorrow's session, he's also the author of a series of NAT traversal protocols for SIP, namely STUN, TURN and now ICE. Eric Krapf, the moderator of the session, is aiming to make it a more interactive and discussion-focused session (i.e. no slideware-to-death)... we'll see if we can make it fun as well. I've also asked Interop for permission to record it and run it as a Blue Box podcast - we'll see if they give me permission.

Note that if you are a CISSP, the ISC2 is holding a member reception today (Wednesday October 24, 2007) starting at 5:30 PM in Jacob Javits Center Room 1EO2 - LEVEL 1. Assuming that everything works with my flights today, I'll be there.

I'll even have some new business cards to give out... ;-)

Technorati Tags: cisco, conferences, danyork, interop, jonathanrosenberg, voip, voip security, voipsa, voxeo

O'Reilly just cancelled ETel for 2008. Yes, indeed, it's sadly true as shown here:

Due to changed circumstances since ETel 2008 was announced, we have decided not to move forward with the conference this year.

It is somewhat ironic that part of the ETel 2008 graphic was this:

Obviously O'Reilly did.

Those of us on the ETel Program Committee were just informed of the decision yesterday. We are admittedly still in a bit of shock. This year's program had over 100 submissions and we were very much looking forward to what was shaping up to be an excellent conference this year. Great mixture of technical sessions, thought-provoking sessions and so much more.

We are not privy as to exactly why O'Reilly made the decision and on many levels it doesn't really matter. As far as O'Reilly is concerned, ETel is now dead for 2008.

Personally, I think it is a loss to our industry. I think it is also, frankly, a loss to O'Reilly. But I'll get into that perhaps in another post next week.

Right now, we on the ETel Program Committee are starting to look at what's next. I think for many of us ETel served a purpose in helping connect people who were looking at the bleeding edge of communication that just can't be found at any of the other shows. There are a lot of folks passionate about ETel... and quite a community has grown up around it. Many folks told me it was THE show they liked to attend most.

We've got a number of ideas about how to replace ETel... and we'll definitely be looking for feedback after we have a chance over the next week or so to put together a couple of proposals for folks to kick around.

For those of you who are passionate about ETel and what it came to mean, stay tuned.... (we'll need you soon!)

Technorati Tags: conferences, etel, oreilly

Great sessions out here at AstriCon... way too much to write about - my head is exploding a good bit! It's been a bit frustrating to try to blog from the conference rooms, though. The hotel WiFi is struggling a good bit under the strain of all the people here with laptops.

Technorati Tags: asterisk, astricon

Here in Phoenix, Arizona, AstriCon has kicked off with two pre-conference sessions that run all day. "Asterisk 101" is running next door and providing a basic introduction to Asterisk. I'm sitting in the "Developer 101" session (pictured) where there are about 100 people gathered in the room. It turns out that this is about developing with the Asterisk code base, i.e. "how to become an Asterisk developer" versus what I was personally thinking it was, which was "how to develop apps that work with Asterisk"... although that is really just an extension of the first. So far, an hour into the session, lead developer Kevin Fleming has been discussing the various tools you need to use in order to work with the Asterisk code base (ex. subversion, makefiles, etc.). Right now he's been dealing with the fun subject of licensing code, the GPL, and the requirement of developers to sign a disclaimer over to Digium that: a) asserts that the developer can contribute the code (i.e. it is original), that it is not patent-encumbered, etc. and b) gives Digium the right to redistribute the developer's code under a different license.

One interesting note - Kevin stated very definitively that Digium has NO plans to move GPLv3. They are quite happy with GPLv2 and see no reason yet to move.

The afternoon session sounds interesting as they will be getting into the overall Asterisk architecture, diving into the code, talking about APIs and debugging. Certainly a day to feed my inner developer...

Technorati Tags: asterisk, astricon, conferences, opensource, voip

For those of you using Facebook, we have created a Facebook group for O'Reilly's Emerging Telephony Conference (ETel) coming up in March 2008. Please feel free to join the group if you are planning to go to ETel - or at least thinking about it. We're hoping to use it to connect people to each other in advance of ETel. We're not entirely sure exactly how we'll use it... it's all part of the grand experiment in social networking. Please join us in that experiment!

Technorati Tags: etel, facebook, conferences

Well, I just confirmed my travel schedule - I'm going to go have a bit of fun out at AstriCon 2007. AstriCon, for those who aren't aware, is pretty much the premiere event for Asterisk developers. I'm scheduled to speak on Thursday about (surprise!) VoIP security. My talk is an "industry perspective" in my capacity as a board member of the VOIP Security Alliance and won't be specifically Asterisk-focused, although I will include a few pieces about what you need to think about with Asterisk and the holes that Asterisk still needs to fill (like, oh, SRTP, which I know is coming). I know Mark Spencer and a good bit of the Digium crowd, so it will be fun to hang out with them (especially given my new independent status).

If any of you reading will be out there, please do feel free to drop me a line so that we can connect.

P.S. After AstriCon, I'll be heading over to the Podcast and New Media Expo in Ontario, CA. If any of you will be there, please do drop a note as well.

Technorati Tags: asterisk, astricon, voip

Prior to getting distracted last week by employment issues I was intending to post here about the upcoming ETel 2008 conference on March 3-4, 2008, down in San Diego, CA.  For two years in a row, ETel has been my favorite conference to attend, primarily because it's all about the wacky stuff people are doing on the edge of telephony.  Unlike VoiceCon, VON and ITEXPO, it's not a trade show.  There's no real exhibit hall (or hasn't been)... it's all about the content.  And there have been been some great sessions showcasing projects and products people are doing that really push the edge of what we are calling "telephony" today.

Two reasons to post about it.  First, I'm on the ETel 2008 Program Committee along with a number of others who may be familiar to people in this space. (Note to self: I'll need to update that bio in two weeks.)

Second, and the main reason I wanted to post - the ETel 2008 Call for Participation is open and we're looking for submissions!

PROPOSALS ARE DUE SEPTEMBER 17th

As the page says... are you a:

• Technologist, strategist, CTO, CIO changing the world with your ideas?
• Technology evangelist, scout, entrepreneur looking to reach similar minds?
• Researcher, academic, programmer with new findings from research?
• Artists, hacker, modder, phreaker, activist with something cool?
• Someone with something intriguing to share about telephony?
• VC's with killer new startups?
• Companies involved in this industry who "think different?"

If so, we'd like to hear from you and have you potentially share your idea at ETel 2008.  More information about the type of talks we're looking for can be found as you scroll down the Call for Participation page.  If you're reading this blog, you probably have some ideas we'd love to hear!

FYI, for those of you attending the Internet Telephony Conference & Expo in Los Angeles on September 10-12, I'll be participating in a panel session that is part of Ingate's SIP Trunking Seminar Series.  I expect it will surprise no one to learn that I'll be on the panel about "Enterprise Security and VoIP" wearing my VOIP Security Alliance hat.  My particular session is Tuesday, September 11, 2007, from 9:30-11:00 am.  (And yes, I guess it is appropriate in a way to be talking about security on 9/11!)   More details and the schedule are available online.

The sessions are free and open to anyone to attend.  Simply fill out the pre-registration form.

If any of you reading this will be attending VoiceCon out in San Francisco, August 20-23, please do drop me a note. I'll be there from August 20-22 and am looking forward to connecting with a range of people from around the industry.

FYI, if you are a Facebook user and are attending, there is a Facebook event for VoiceCon to which you can add yourself to facilitate networking with other FB users at the show.