I attended the Internet Telephony Expo last week in Los Angeles. It was a terrific show as usual: I got to speak on a few panels, met some great people and got up to speed on industry trends.
Operators and Developers
I participated in a panel called "The Ecosystem of Application Developers". Alan Quayle moderated and he opened with a question that sparked some excellent discussion:
If you could have one wish to make working with a operator easier, what would that wish be?
My answer was: "Nothing." After the chuckles subsided, I explained that when it comes to the interface between mobile users and developers, the operators have been replaced by the device makers. I’m talking about Apple’s AppStore, of course, followed very distantly by Android’s and RIM’s offerings. Also on the panel was Francisco Kattan, Sr. Director Developer Ecosystem at Alcatel-Lucent. He has a similar take and describes this as a "developer exodus away from operator communities to the handset and OS communities"(more here). Alan’s summary is here.
Mobile development
I also participated in a panel called "Creating Mobile Voice & Video Applications". The moderator was Doug Green, publisher of Telecom Reseller. We had a lively debate on the two alternate approaches that have emerged for building mobile apps: Using the mobile browser and "wraping" it up like and app, vs. building a proper native app. I was very bullish on the former. Arjun Roychowdhury, from Hughes Systique (which is a 3rd party mobile app developer) was less enthusiastic. This is a topic I’ve been immersed in for last few months because of our work on Fonolo’s new iPhone app. (coming soon).
Where is Voice 2.0?
Finally, I was on a panel called “When Voice Meets Web 2.0”, moderated by industry analyst Jon Arnold. This was more of a general discussion of what’s happening in this space, from both an enterprise and consumer perspective. By the way, Jon was just quoted in Maclean’s talking about Google Voice.
Props
Thanks to Rich Tehrani for organizing an excellent event. And special thanks to Andy Abramson for hosting a terrific wine dinner. Andy has an audio recap of the conference posted here.
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