The hits don’t stop coming here at KazooCon 2015, and they saved the big guns for last. Okay, full disclosure, obviously I’m a bit biased, but from where I was sitting it was pretty clear who it was that everybody came to see, cough cough, Lon Baker, ahem, cough, cough. There were some other folks, too.
Keeping It Real
Staying true to the theme set forth by 2600Hz COO, Patrick Sullivan on the opening day of the KazooCon, each of the day’s presentations were connected by the common thread of 2600Hz’s focus on Enabling, Educating, and Empowering their customers. With double the content and a lot of it awfully technical in nature, that thread covered some serious ground today. Lets take a look at what all went down.
- Darren Schreiber, 2600Hz CEO and Co-Founder set the stage for the day with exciting news about the growth that they’re currently experiencing along with introductions of new and updated products and services. In the mass of news, the one word you need to know is mobile. Previewing the 2600Hz Mobile Design Manager was stunning.
- Lon Baker was delayed in making his way to the stage because we had to have security make a pathway through the throngs of people who showed-up to hear him speak. Once the dust cleared, though, the show went off without a hitch. All kidding aside, the room was abuzz during and following Lon’s guidance on applying brass-tacks business acumen to cloud-based telecom products and how to wire the two factors together. Keep an eye out for his presentation slides, which will be made public in the near future.
- David Messenger is the founder of Mast Mobile and is a veteran in the game of delivering mobile service to millions across Europe. Messenger’s team has a lot of things working but the crown jewel in the Mast line-up is their business messaging platform. Also underscoring one of the big themes of the conference, this was all built around the mobile-first approach.
- Telnexus’ Vernon Keenan nailed the clever phrase of the day when he outlined the Telnexus billing and invoicing platform architecture and how it helps accelerate payment to and from VoIP resellers. “Quote to Cash,” is helping Telnexus keep stoking their business’ furnace.
- Mikhail Rodionov is, in a word, captivating. The SIPLABS CEO and undisputed reining champion of work project naming conventions was on hand to talk about deep mobile integration and all the intense development they have to do to ship product. Also, he took home the prize for the most prolific contributions to the 2600Hz community this year!
- Karl Anderson is 2600Hz’s CTO and he kicked-off a series of 2600Hz product discussions and reveals, beginning with Kazoo 4.0. While the total spectrum of what this product offers is broad, one key feature that had been clamored for was the now-included historical transactions.
- Next up was James Aimonetti who presented in great detail the intricacies of Rating, Routing, and Service from the perspectives of both the engineer who interacts with them, and the 2600Hz developer who manages the process.
- Phone Phreaking is more than just an awesome phrase that only the folks in telecom are likely to use (score one for us!), it’s also an enormous problem. You can expect to see us include mention of this in a future security blog, but just know that in 2013 there was $46 billion in phone fraud, a vast majority of which was committed against small and medium sized businesses that can’t afford enterprise-grade security features. Until now. Stay tuned for more on this very important topic.
- Aaron Gunn was the closer and, having a background in sales and operations, this is a familiar place for him, too. Wrapping up the conference by following the dollars was appropriate because, as he pointed out in the description of their streamlined and secure billing platform, the sooner providers can bill their customers, the sooner everyone can get paid. Seemed to make sense to me.
There were also plenty of contacts made, networks grown, and even a few knock-knock jokes ruined by yours truly, too many to recount, in fact. The lasting impressions that KazooCon 2015 left on those in attendance should be those of community, service, and constantly pushing the bar higher and higher. It’s because of this that we’re proud to have been the Platinum Sponsor of KazooCon and look forward to growing our relationship with both 2600Hz, and all of the great telecom leaders we met this week.
What’s that? You’re still curious about what shenanigans ensued during the much-hyped KazooCon15 After Party? I guess to clear that up I can only suggest that you not miss it next year to find out for yourself because, as you guessed- what happens at KazooCon, stays at KazooCon. You had to have seen that one coming. See you all at KazooCon again next year!
