TADSummit Wrap-up

tadsummitTADSummit was held from 12-13th November at in Istanbul, Turkey. Attendance exceeded our estimates, with close to 200 innovators coming together over the two days focused on building the Telecom Application Development Ecosystem from the grass roots.

Compared to the first TADSummit in 2013, we doubled the attendance; and implemented the feedback provided with a down-town location, a single plenary session run over the 2 days, with breakouts for deep dive discussions to address critical challenges facing the industry.  Plus kept the big networking breakfasts! We took TADSummit back to what Summits were originally about: bringing the brightest minds together to solve industry problems, and share ideas and insights, rather than listen to marketing clap-trap.  There’s more on the TADS vision in this weblog.

TADSummit is not possible without the support of its sponsors: Apex Communications, Apidaze, Comverse, Ericsson, hSenid Mobile, Huawei, Nexmo, OpenCloud, Oracle, Shango, Telestax, Tropo, Ubuntu / Canonical, and Voxbone. And its partners: Aculab, Dialogic, Matrix.org, Metaswitch, Truphone, Tyntec, and many more helping get the word out on what we’re trying to build.

Some of the highlights from the event:

  • Axiata open sourcing MIFE (Mobile Internet Fulfillment Exchange) – this will disrupt the industry and you heard it at TADSummit first;
  • Dialog Axiata’s incredible success with IdeaMart with revenues dominating their VAS (Value Added Services);
  • World-first TADSummit Demo from Truphone, Canonical, Metaswitch and Telestax showing how the core of a telco network can be provisioned in minutes with open source telecom software designed for the cloud with live services running over it.  You do not need to waste time on expensive proprietary software adapted to the cloud with overly complex standard NFV orchestration – use what’s off-the-shelf;
  • hSenid Mobile WebRTC templates so telcos can make money with WebRTC with simple self-service templates for services like click-to-call;
  • Telestax / Dialogic / NTT announcement on WebRTC;
  • Back-to-back deployment case studies from all the sponsors and their customers;
  • Unique networking and collaboration opportunities with innovators from around the world;
  • Part of the industry ‘gets-it’ in how to innovate and is now focused on execution; and
  • Unique event with incredible ideas being exchanged that left everyone buzzing with excitement.

All the content from the presentations, work stream summaries, and panels are available online:

We make all the content freely available online so even if you did not make it to TADSummit you can still experience the whole event from the comfort of your home or office.  The effort in bringing 200 people together in one location from all around the world, and the quality of the ideas and insights shared, mandates we make the content freely available for everyone to see and learn. Some of the content has been viewed over 500 times since the event a couple of weeks ago – so we’ve tripled the ‘attendance’ already.

Looking to future, TADSummit 2015 will be a hybrid in-person / online event.  Many people wanted to attend and especially take part in the networking, but they simply could not get travel approval.  With an event in Europe we could have online speed networking in the morning with Asia, middle of the day with Europe, Middle East and Africa; and Americas in the afternoon/evening.  And broadcast the event live globally with global live Q&A like we did for TADHack. The tentative location and dates are: Lisbon, 17/18th November 2015 (final date to be confirmed.)

TADHack (Global) on the 13th and 14th of June, with a number of centers around the world. The current list of centers includes Madrid, Toronto, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Philippines, Mexico, Chicago, Bay Area, Tel Aviv, Australia, London, Paris, Amsterdam, South Africa, and of course remote entry. TADHack keynotes will be distributed across these centers. One of the keynotes already signed up will be Henning Schulzrinne of the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), Colombia University, and renowned RTC (Real Time Communications) expert.

We’re planning a couple of mini TADHack events:

  • Mini-TADHack in London on the 11th and 12th of April focused on WebRTC and other topics to be determined just before the WebRTC Global Summit in April; and
  • Mini-TADHack IIT RTC on the 3-4 October, which runs just before the IIT RTC Conference in October with a focus on IoT (Internet of Things) and other topics to be determined.

TADSummit, TADHack and TADMeetups have much to do in 2015.  Our objective remains building an essential yet missing component of the Telecom Industry, the telecom application developer ecosystem that creates new services and customer value.  Come join a community of practitioners focus on building by subscribing to email updates and getting involved in TADSummit, TADHack, TADMeetups, mini-TADHacks, or contributing to the TADSummit weblog or TADHack weblog.