Voxeo Talks

Over the next couple of months you’ll get a chance to hear from us and meet us at a couple of upcoming conferences.

First, from July 21-25 I’ll be up in Portland, Oregon, at O’Reilly’s OSCON 2008 giving a talk on “Mashing up Voice and the Web through Open Source and XML“. As the intro says:

With over 4.5 billion mobile and fixed phones out there as of November 2007, the phone represents the most ubiquitous user interface out there. As “mashups” on the web let us quickly and easily access information from multiple data sources, how do we extend those mashups to the world of the phone? How do we bring the old world of voice and telephony into the new world of the web, social networks and social media? And how do we do that using open source tools and open standards?

The session description gets into a bit more about specifically what I’ll be addressing. It should be a good time! As you can see from the schedule, OSCON is a strongly developer-focused show and so it should be a great time connecting with developers out there and talking about our platform. Speaking at this show is a bit of neat experience for me personally, too, as I spoke at one of the first OSCON’s back in 2000 when it was still called the “Open Source Conference” and was held in Monterey, CA. I know a good number of folks in the O’Reilly orbit so I’m looking forward to connecting with lots of people out there.

Next up, both RJ and I will be speaking at SpeechTEK, August 18-20 in New York City. In fact, we’ll have a team of Voxeons there as we’ll have an exhibit booth and all sorts of things going on at the show. (More on that in later posts.)

RJ will be speaking first on Monday, August 18th, along with VoiceXML Forum founder Ken Rehor on the subject of “The Impact of W3C standard languages“:

The publication of W3C standard languages, such as VoiceXML and CCXML, has dramatically changed the speech application design process. This session discusses some of the efforts to extend and validate the use of standard languages. Learn how the call control language can work with SIP and VoIP to implement an extensible SIP softswitch. Discover how the VoiceXML Forum’s certification program has impacted the cross-vendor interoperability of VoiceXML by VoiceXML platform vendors.

Given our huge focus on open standards and RJ’s direct involvement as chair of the W3C’s CCXML Working Group, you can expect this session to deliver a wealth of information! (Hmmm… how high can I set the expectation bar for RJ? Hmmm… “he’s going to show how open standards solve world hunger!”… no, that’s a bit too high! RJ is, though, an excellent presenter as you may get a glimpse of from his past slide decks.)

I’ll follow with a session on Tuesday, August 19th, called “Securing CCXML and VoiceXML Applications“:

How secure are your speech applications? As the usage of both VoiceXML and CCXML continues to explode, and VoIP usage continues to grow dramatically, especially within enterprise environments, it is increasingly important that you ensure that applications and services are not open to attack. Learn about the potential vulnerabilities in a system using VoiceXML or CCXML, what you can do to secure these systems, and how you can develop a strong architecture.

Given my VoIP security background, it’s somewhat predictable that I’d be talking on this subject, eh? Seriously, though, it’s an area that doesn’t seem to be getting a whole lot of thought and so I’ll be taking a look at what the real risks are and how you can look at addressing them.

If you are going to either OSCON or SpeechTEK, please do leave a comment here or drop us an email and let us know. We love to meet face-to-face with blog readers and/or customers/developers. As much as we are able to do so (not sure yet), we’ll make the presentations available through this site. Stay tuned for more info - and we look forward to potentially seeing some of you in either Portland or New York!

Technorati Tags:
voxeo, conferences, rj auburn, dan york, oscon, oreilly, oscon2008, speechtek, speechtek2008, voicexml, security, voip security, ccxml, mashups, xml

Would you like to learn what’s involved with “creating Communication 2.0 applications?” Now courtesy of the great folks at IT Conversations you can listen to Voxeo CTO RJ Auburn give his eComm 2008 presentation on just this topic. Over in our Voxeo Developers Corner blog, we previously linked to RJ’s slide set and provided the source code for his CCXML -> Twitter example, but now you can listen to the talk as well. Here’s the description of his talk, which runs about 15 minutes:

Developing applications for telephony and communication is very difficult. There are old, proprietary systems to integrate with, standards are rare, and when there are standards, they are implemented differently and can’t be integrated out of the box. Telephone networks are also closed and restricted by NDAs. Compared to web development, telephony development is a hassle.

RJ Auburn of Voxeo describes how his company’s telephony development stack is the infrastructure that will unlock the creativity of application developers. Using voice XML and CC-XML, developers can interact with telephone services similar to using a web service. This spares them from having to know the gory details of the telephone network. He compares it to the difference between writing standard web pages and having to write an Apache plug-in for each site.

He concludes by showing a sample application that will make a phone call each time a tweet is received from Twitter. This only takes a couple minutes when using the developer tools from Voxeo.

We hope you enjoy RJ’s presentation and if you want to try your hand at creating “Communications 2.0 Applications”, be sure to check out either our free hosted platform or on-premise platform - both available at www.voxeo.com/free We look forward to seeing what great applications you create!

Technorati Tags:
applications, voxeo, rjauburn, ecomm, ecomm2008, conferences, presentations, ccxml, twitter, mashups, voice, telephony

Did you miss out on attending eComm 2008 last month? Well now you can at least view the presentations. Shortly after I wrote about our own use of SlideShare I was pleased to get a note from eComm organizer Lee Dryburgh indicating that almost all of the eComm 2008 presentations are now available (also on SlideShare). You can view all the different presentations and download them as well.

Lee also said that he’s working on getting the audio recordings of the presentations up online as podcasts, too, which is good because the audio is really required to understand many of the slide decks.

On that note, as a frequent presenter, I am delighted to see that so many of these eComm 2008 presentations (including RJ’s that I posted earlier) have done away with mindless bullet points and dense slides of text and instead used the slides as a way of complementing the spoken presentation (rather than replacing the spoken presentation as people read the slides). It looks like there were some great presentations there.

While this presentation approach is great in my opinion for attendees, the challenge with this approach is that without the audio the slides don’t mean as much. For instance, here’s this deck which looks quite interesting:

| View | Upload your own

That’s one I’ll probably go get the audio for once Lee gets it up online. This one from longtime VoIP blogger Martin Geddes (also here) also looks quite intriguing:

| View | Upload your own

Many more presentations (58 currently) await your browsing in the eComm 2008 presentation area - which one is your favorite?

Technorati Tags:
eComm, eComm2008, presentations, slideshare, voip, telephony, telecommunications, communication

We’re very pleased to note that we’ve signed on as a sponsor of BarCampOrlando coming up on April 5th and 6th, 2008. In keeping with the BarCamp spirit, this event is one in which people are strongly encouraged to participate with some kind of brief presentation about a topic that interest them. This is the second BarCampOrlando, though, and it’s grown to encompass two days!

• Dev Day, Saturday, April 5th - Programming, Java, .NET, Ruby, PHP, robots and other technologies
• Media Day, Sunday, April 6th - Social media, video, music, photography, graphic design, blogging, podcasting, and other new media

Being huge supporters of the Orlando, Florida, area, we’re delighted to help promote activities like this that help connect people working with technology in our area. We hope that many of you reading this will come check out the event if you are in the Orlando area on April 5th and 6th.

For more information about what BarCampOrlando is all about, there is a video available from the organizers along with a
less serious video on the same subject.

Registration is now open so please do sign up and come on by! (The event is free to attend, but registration is required to ensure there are enough seats.)

Technorati Tags:
barcamp, barcamporlando, voxeo

I’m down in Orlando this week for VoiceCon Orlando and will be part of three sessions. Tomorrow, I’m moderating a panel at 8am on VoIP security and on Thursday I’m moderating a panel on open source telephony. On Wednesday, I’ll be part of a keynote panel with Irwin Lazar on “Social networking and enterprise communication”, which should be quite fun. I’ll include below the full descriptions of the various sessions. If you are attending VoiceCon and want to connect, please do contact me.

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Session Title: Top VOIP Security Threats
Date: 3/18/2008
Time: 8:00 AM
Room: Osceola B
Session Description:
There’s been a lot of concern about voice over IP security, but have there been many actual exploits? This session will inform you about the state of VOIP security. You’ll learn about generalized IP attacks that have affected IP telephony systems deployed on IP networks, and you’ll also find out what VOIP-specific attacks have actually been observed “in the wild”–and what to expect in the future.
KEY QUESTIONS: * What are the most serious voice-oriented attacks that are actually being carried out? What potential attacks haven’t occurred yet but probably will before long? * How do you protect your VOIP systems against these attacks? * What types of equipment and technologies must you implement to stop voice-oriented attacks? * What specific kinds of damage can these attacks cause?
Moderator(s):
Dan York - Dir of Emerging Comm Tech - Voxeo
Panelist(s):
Sachin Joglekar - Vulnerability Research Lead - Sipera Systems
David Endler - Director of Security Research - TippingPoint
Mark Collier - CTO - SecureLogix

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Session Title: Open Source for Enterprise Voice: How Much, How Soon?
Date: 3/20/2008
Time: 11:45 AM
Room: Sun C
Session Description:
Open source PBXs are gaining a higher profile: Asterisk and other open-source PBX software packages continue to gain acceptance, and some traditional PBX vendors have implemented open source code for their products. But these efforts still aim mainly at smaller implementations. In this session, you’ll learn why open source PBX software has growing appeal, and whether it will appeal to larger customers as the market progresses.
KEY QUESTIONS: * What level of market share and acceptance has open source PBX software attained? What is expected? * Which products use open source PBX software? * What are the most compelling reasons for choosing open source PBX software? What are the greatest areas of concern in making this choice? * What are the technical challenges of an open-source PBX deployment, and how are these overcome? * What are some real-world customer experiences with open source PBX software?
Moderator(s):
Dan York - Dir of Emerging Comm Tech - Voxeo
Speaker(s):
M Raza - Product Management - 3Com
Bill Miller - VP, Prod Mgt & Mktg - Digium
Tony Pereira - Business Leader Business Communications - Nortel

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Session Title: Social Networking Meets Enterprise Communications
Date: 3/19/2008
Time: 10:30 AM
Room: Osceola C
Session Description:
It?s no secret that world of enterprise communications is undergoing a transformation; IP Telephony and Unified Communications are changing the nature of the game. Now new forms of interaction, which began in the consumer/personal communications market — blogs, wikis and online services like Facebook ? are migrating into the enterprise. Where do these social networking systems ? and mindset ? fit into the enterprise communications landscape? Join us for a discussion about what?s real today and what?s likely to happen in the future.
Panelist(s):
Dan York - Dir of Emerging Comm Tech - Voxeo
Irwin Lazar - Principal Analyst & Program Director, Collaboration & Convergence - Nemertes Research

Technorati Tags:
voicecon, voiceconorlando, asterisk, opensource, socialnetworking, communications, danyork, irwinlazar

Today I will be flying to sunny San Diego for the Voice Search conference to speak on the advantages/disadvantages of using hosted IVR systems. As one of the few vendors on the market that offer both a hosted platform and a premise solution I hopefully will be able to speak on the advantages of each without the normal conflict of interest that most Venders have

After a few days in SoCal I will then head up to the SF Bay Area for an exciting week and a half where I will be speaking at eComm and VON.  Anyway the flight is now boarding so I had better get moving. More blogging later!

FYI, I will be down at VoiceCon Orlando on March 17-20, 2008. I’m moderating two panel sessions (see the schedule). First, up, bright and early at 8am on Tuesday, March 18th, I’ll be moderating a panel on “Top VoIP Security Threats“. This should be a fun one as it has VOIPSA Chair Dave Endler, Mark Collier of SecureLogix and Sachin Joglekar of Sipera Systems. I know all three of the guys, particularly Dave and Mark who have both worked on VOIPSA matters, and this session should be a good bit of fun. I’m planning on making it a rather interactive session.

At the other end of the show, on Thursday, March 20th, at 11:45am, I’ll be moderating a panel “Open Source for Enterprise Voice: How Much, How Soon?“. This would should be interesting because it has Bill Miller from Digium (makers of Asterisk), who I know well, and M Raza from 3Com… and then Tony Pereira from Nortel! 3Com’s presence on the panel isn’t particularly surprising given their relationship with Digium, but it will be interesting to see Nortel’s view on the matter.

All in all it should be quite an interesting show. Lots of good sessions and, I’m sure, interesting people to meet. If you’re going to be down there, please do drop an email as I’m always interesting in meeting readers of the blog.

Technorati Tags:
voicecon, voxeo, voipsa, securelogix, sipera, 3com, digium, asterisk, voip security, open source

If any of you will be in Miami next week for Internet Telephony Expo, I will be speaking at Ingate’s SIP Trunking Seminar Series held in conjunction with IT Expo. It probably comes as no surprise, if you know my background, that I’ll be speaking in the session from 8:30-9:45am on Thursday, January 24th, titled “Seminar/myth 1: VoIP is not secure“.

These SIP Trunking Seminars have always been very well attended and have had a great amount of information included. They are free, but if you’d like to be sure to have a spot you can pre-register.

If any of you are attending either IT Expo or the SIP Trunking Seminar Series, please do drop a note as I’m always interested in meeting readers.

Technorati Tags:
sip, sip trunking, ingate, itexpo, conferences