Disruptive Telephony

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...  ;-)