An interview between Suzanne Bowen, VP of DIDX and Techistan with Anthony Minessale II, lead developer and creator of freeSWITCH, an open source soft-switch and application media server!

Results?  A history of Cluecon, past, present and future. Readers can make plans to participate in Cluecon Aug. 3-5, 2010 at the Trump Hotel, Chicago, Illinois.

Suzanne Bowen: Remember our last talks were at Cluecon 2009 and then the DIDX podcast interview. So, would you compare the first Cluecon with the one scheduled for 2010 this year?

Anthony Minessale II: There is a drastic difference between the first ClueCon and ClueCon MMX (2010). The first ClueCon was in an obscure hotel near one of the airports very far from downtown. There were several people in attendance who were intrigued by the idea of an open source developers’ conference. There was no FreeSWITCH at that time. It was only an idea brewing in my head. One major difference is that it’s the only time Mark Spencer attended, giving a presentation on Asterisk. Today, after 5 years of ClueCon, we are in downtown Chicago (have been since 2006) and this year we are at the luxurious Trump Hotel and we expect the biggest and best ClueCon ever!

Suzanne Bowen: John Todd of Digium gave an interesting presentation about the job outlook for open source developers. I liked how he used Craigslist to hire graphics artists for his PPT. I attended the 2007 and 2009 Cluecon conferences and have some great memories like West in pajamas and his big, friendly smile and leadership, the announcement of Barracuda Networks investment, the hot but friendly debates in Q&A sessions that I have recorded on Youtube, playing basketball with everyone, meeting a BBC correspondent, learning from Kamailio, openSIPs, freeSWITCH, Opal, Asterisk and other open source developers and entrepreneurs. Would you share a hilarious story about a past Cluecon, Anthony?

Anthony Minessale II: In 2008, we had a night where after the presentation we had beer and pizza in the conference hall. At 8pm they told us we had to clear the room for the night and we were stuck with 2 half-barrels on a luggage cart. With nowhere else to turn, we went to someone’s room where we hung out and played some instruments. The next day we realized it was on Youtube.

We still carry the tradition to this day to bring instruments to the conference for the night time.

Suzanne Bowen: I play the piano, Anthony. Can I bring it this year? I remember you guys taking us in 2007 to the DIDX-sponsored Cluecon party in a limousine, about 20 of us. The parties are just as creative and memorable as the conference itself. So, share a story about one of the best business developments from a Cluecon conference.

Anthony Minessale II: The number one best business development we have ever had from ClueCon is our relationship with Sangoma Technologies. They have been a proud sponsor of the conference every single year since the first. This year they will be announcing their commitment to the FreeSWITCH project by adopting the maintenance of our TDM abstraction layer FreeTDM (formerly OpenZAP) We are happy to have them in attendance and we can’t wait to see our friends!

Suzanne Bowen: Sangoma is wonderful. I met their CEO David Mandelstam last year at CommunicAsia. We spent a lot of time brainstorming business development ideas and ways to better enable more of the IP communications industry to Sangoma, DIDX and open source telephony applications like freeSWITCH. Give us a tiny blurb, plug-in about voip phone numbers and how DIDX just might happen to be a good service to jumpstart and grow one’s freeSWITCH or other open source telephony application and IP communications consulting and business. What do you think? I don’t mind some suggestions and critique, too.

Anthony Minessale II: FreeSWITCH lends itself well to services like DIDX. With a simple configuration tweak, calls can be routed in and out of FreeSWITCH instances all over the world allowing anyone to gateway the PSTN into VoIP space and to many FreeSWITCH services like conferencing , voicemail etc.

Suzanne Bowen: Let me tell you. Many DIDXchange members, readers of our media channels like the TMCnet DID/DDI channel, our blogs, and our new online magazine Techistan can’t wait to get together with you guys. Tell the venue, date, place, and how to sign up to sponsor, present, and participate in any way again please.

Anthony Minessale II: ClueCon will be held at the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago, IL +1 (312) 588-8000. The Trump is located at 401 N. Wabash Avenue Chicago, IL 60611. When contacting the hotel to book rooms, please call +1 877-45-TRUMP (87867) and refer to booking number 4347 (FreeSWITCH Solutions or ClueCon).

We are giving away some great prizes including 2 Ipads and a MacBook PRO engraved with the attached image.

Sponsors and anyone interested in attending can contact us at 1.877.742.CLUE (+18777423583) or on the web at http://www.cluecon.com/ or http://www.cluecon.com/sponsor.

Be among the movers and shakers in open source telephony as Cluecon sponsors and partners:

Sponsors – FreeSWITCH Solutions, Sangoma, CudaTel, bandwidth.com, iCall, broadvox, tropo, *#StarPound, Illinois Institute of Technology VoIP Conference & Expo, Voip88, Voip Providers List, TMCNet, VoipSupply, meraki, Voip-info.org, polycom, Modern Tailor, BayScribe, Dialogic, Paetec, NACT, VoipX, WCGS, DIDXchange, and Voice Networking.

Hey FreeSWITCHer,

At some point you participated in a survey on FreeSWITCH Training. I’m writing to see if you might be interested in attending our first training in San Francisco, CA on June 28th – 30th, 2010.

Please let us know if this is something you would entertain now or in the future.
Thank You,
Stephen Lum
Training Organizer

Listen to a podcast interview between Techistan editor Suzanne Bowen and freeSWITCH inventor Anthony Minessale.

The FreeSWITCH Training Bootcamp  is a full 3-day intensive training bootcamp providing in-depth coverage of FreeSWITCH installation, configuration, maintenance and programming. You will learn, step by step, how to configure, manage and program the FreeSWITCH telephony soft switch in great detail. Tips and tricks in debugging and optimizing FreeSWITCH are also taught.
NEXT TRAINING:
June 28th – 30th, 2010
San Francisco, CA

These courses are official FreeSWITCH training courses. This course will be taught by Darren Schreiber, one of the co-authors of the upcoming FreeSWITCH book.
Link to the FreeSWITCH Training Registration page.

Topics that will be covered in this course:
Install FreeSWITCH on a Linux Machine
Understanding configuration files and the default configuration
Call authentication and routing basics
Integration modules
Understanding presence
Load balancing and high availability
FreeSWITCH Internals
How to debug and troubleshoot FreeSWITCH
Building Custom C Modules
Advanced Modules

I asked Brian and Anthony who is the CEO and they said, “It’s not like that.” FreeSWITCH™ emphasis is on quality, honesty, communication consolidation, and collaboration even among formerly-perceived competitors. The door is open.

They think about outside the technical arena such as in the recognition that everyone has a unique learning style. An important goal of FreeSWITCH™ is to make their documentation easier to understand, keeping in mind these different learning styles.

Anthony shares talk about the new interop completions, wideband high definition conferencing, a couple ways to connect with Skype, the new SIP peering, OSTAG™ and goals of FreeSWITCH™ such as their nonprofit efforts.

Visit www.freeswitch.org, www.cluecon.com, and http://wiki.freeswitch.org/wiki/Main_Page. Look for more indepth information about FreeSWITCH™ and Cluecon in future podcast interviews.