SIMCON3

I was fortunate to be invited to present at SIMCON3, 5-6 March in Bristol at Simwood’s HQ. Its Simwood‘s annual gathering across its rapidly expanding ecosystem. Bringing together a quality cast of people from around the world, including Simwood’s customers and partners.

For me, the most value I gained from the event were the many conversations with Simwood’s customers. Understanding the evolution of their businesses, how they view the enterprise communications market and its trajectory, the operational problems they face, and why they’re working with Simwood.

Clearly there’s a lot of love in the room for Simwood 😉 Also the learning I gain at customer events goes far beyond what I gain at the big ‘destination’ industry events which are packed with marketing-speak. I was the only person to use the term ‘digital transformation’ through the 2 days, and I did preface that the term was utter bollocks.

The event kicked off with a welcome from Jocko Willink, the author of Extreme Ownership. Most small business owners live extreme ownership everyday, as the team grows the importance of extreme ownership and decentralized command equally grow. It was a great way to kick off SIMCON3. You can see the rest of the SIMCON3 agenda here. I’m currently updating with links to the videos.

Simon’s introduction (link is to the video) provided an excellent and exciting review of the emerging Simwood story. Covering its acquisitions in 2019, impressive product launches, a rapidly growing ecosystem, and much more. We’re witnessing the emergence of how Simwood will become a heavy-weight global player in programmable communications.

I gave a presentation on “Are We there Yet?” reviewing the progress of VoIP; the misinformation that exists in the enterprise communications market; and provided quantification of, and recommendation on, the opportunities for everyone at SIMCON3.

There’s a great mix of presentations at SIMCON3,

  • Tom Hadden sharing the complexity of the US market and how Simwood are building out their US business;
  • Jared Smith on using PJSIP with Simwood;
  • Charles Chance sharing Simwood’s hosted VoIP offer and roadmap;
  • Bruce Clark of Simwood sharing many porting (horror) stories and advice. The UK seems far behind the US on porting, I’m surprised OFCOM has not worked on closing the gap;
  • And many many excellent and fun presentations from Dan Jenkins, Fred Posner, Dave Horton, Daniel-Constantin Mierla, Grahame Davies, David Duffett, and Neil Brown. You can see the SIMCON3 agenda here.

Before the awards we had a session from Brad Burton. He’s was good, most motivational speakers leave me neither motivated nor entertained. Brad achieved both, with an inspiring and honest life story.

The SIMCON awards (link to the video) are unique in the industry, it’s not pay to play like most industry awards. Its recognition of people who are making a significant difference in the programmable communications / CXTech business. The winners are:

  • Leading by Example: Elisja Van Niekerk, founder of Coding Mamas, and founder of TADHack Johannesburg (the largest TADHack location).
  • The Voice of the Uprising: Allison Smith, yes the voice of your IVR.
  • Ahead of their Time: Telavox.
  • Pre-posthumous Legend: Olle Johansson.
  • The Nicest Guy in VoIP, Ever: Matthew Fredrickson.
  • The Geek Inspirer: Tim Panton.
  • Empowering The Next Generation: Me for TADHack. TADHack is only possible thanks to the help of over one hundred people around the world, including Elisja 🙂