The purpose of this CXTech Week 36 2023 newsletter is to highlight, with commentary, some of the news stories in CXTech this week. What is CXTech?  The C stands for Connectivity, Communications, Collaboration, Conversation, Customer; X for Experience because that’s what matters; and Tech because the focus is enablers.

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Covered this week:

• TADSummit Podcast Episode 2
• Another Nail in the Coffin of Truth_in_Telecoms, The end of Disruptive.Asia
• Building Meta’s Threads App
• People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

TADSummit Podcast Episode 2

This second podcast is divided into 2 sections. It captures what TADS is about since the beginning in 2013, working with innovators and no BS. What’s the purpose of BS in the industry? To maintain incumbency and stifle innovation by distracting from the core issues.

At the MEF Fraud Prevention event this week I saw netnumber and Aegis Mobile talking about the success of TCR. It is definitely generating significant revenue for both of them, so I understand their perspective. However, for American consumers and for innovation with small companies, TCR does nothing to protect consumers and has introduced costs, processes, and uncertainties that punish small innovative companies.

TADSummit’s no BS policy would have enforced balance in pointing out the TCR has no numbers, how can it possibly be considered a success? Without frank open discussions the telecoms industry will remain trolls sat on monopolies wondering why customers have abandoned the PSTN for IP. We need to hold the industry to a higher standard, customers are not being protected, and innovation is being stifled.

But back to innovators who are making a difference.

TADSummit Innovators where we focus on Voxist and their CEO Karel Bourgois.

Truth_In_Telecoms with Johnny Tarone

We kick off with some background on TCRA (TCR Acquisition) and their kerfuffle with Kaleyra. We do ramble off a little in the last 5-10 minutes, but it does set up what’s coming up on the podcast. We’ll get the podcasts tighter in the future.

Here is Karel all the way back in 2014 at TADSummit Istanbul.

Another Nail in the Coffin of Truth_in_Telecoms, The end of Disruptive.Asia

Disruptive.Asia were one of the few publications left that did real reporting. Below are a couple of samples. We’re down to a few individuals that attempt to counter the wholesale indoctrination of the industry. Those few voices left performing real reporting need your support.

• https://disruptive.asia/mwc-2023-new-normal-old-normal/ & 
• https://disruptive.asia/gsma-universal-open-apis/

TADSummit will continue Disruptive.Asia’s legacy, TADSummit Podcast Episode 2 came out today, see above. The industry’s playing field has never been more lopsided. Innovation is being stifled at the table of fairshare and ‘old-boy network’ telecom trolls.

Check out the TCR Trilogy:
https://lnkd.in/gMg_KUth
https://lnkd.in/ghxQK8rQ
https://lnkd.in/d66EprZi

Building Meta’s Threads App

An interesting review of how Meta built the Thread’s app, from The Pragmatic Engineer.

The post covers:

• Building Threads
• Technology choices and engineering approaches
• Planning for the launch
• The launch
• Learnings and next steps

The peak staffing on the team was a week before launch. At this time the team consisted of:

• 3 product managers
• 3 designers
• About 60 engineers

Dogfooding

The app was in constant dogfooding from the start, but they intentionally kept the feedback group small. Their goal was to get high signal feedback without overwhelming the team with bug reports.

They slowly expanded dogfooding from the core team, to all of Instagram. With the smaller dogfooding population, engineers engaged directly and debugged with coworkers, resulting in a really tight feedback loop.

And let’s not forget their take-up curve!

People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

Andres Canabarro Sica is now in a Contractor position in Memorable. He’s a TADHack Uruguay winner!

Caller ID Reputation Welcomes Gerry Christensen as Head of Partnerships and Regulatory Compliance.

Joe Burton has left Telesign, and Christophe Van de Weyer Joins Telesign as New CEO. I think the main take from this is the planned IPO is likely much further in the future.

Torrey Searle is now Voice Network Architect at Wavecrest. At TADHack-mini London 2016 Torrey demonstrated the Integration of Midori into a Cisco Spark room with many impressive capabilities and won the Cisco prize. Here’s the link to his remote submission, parental discretion advised.

Dannel Shanker is now Senior Sales Engineer at Intercom. I’ve known Dannel almost a decade, since his time at PubNub.

Marfani Hasan is now Vice President Integrated Infrastructure Program and Budget Management at Telkom Indonesia. I’ve known Marfani for most of his career at Telkomsel.

Matt Loreille is now Chief Marketing Officer at Gentrack Ltd (Global). I’ve known Matt for almost 2 decades, since his time at jNetx.

Lance Berks is now Senior Vice President at Amelia, we’ve known each other for well over a decade.

Andrew Collinson has left STL and is now MD & Founder at Connective Insight.

AMIT BHOSALE is now Senior Network Engineer at Tech Mahindra

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