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September 11, 2007

Digium's Mark Spencer on Growing Up

By Greg Galitzine, Group Editorial Director

Originally published on Greg Galitzine’s VoIP Authority blog.



 
Mark Spencer is founder of Digium (News - Alert) and creator of Asterisk. He delivered a speech at ITEXPO on Sept. 10 titled “Mysterious Keynote.” In the keynote, Spencer spoke recent changes at Digium and how the company is “growing up.”
 
Among those major changes are a new management team, a new facility, and a new focus on broader customers and increasing the channel.
 
Of course, Spencer being Spencer, he quickly dismissed Digium’s transition to “adulthood” with an “Okay. But not completely.”
 
Truth be told, Spencer did come across as a more serious, more mature business leader than the quirky offbeat open source evangelist that he’s better known as.
 
He also spoke about Unified Communications as a hot trend.
 
“Amazingly,” Spencer said, “it seems that people think it’s all new, but as most people understand it, UC has been around for a long time.”
 
Spencer believes UC encompasses how one could use communication to change people’s business process.
 
To illustrate, Spencer cited the example of an outfit called Botanicalls. This New York University project devised a system in which your houseplants call you when they need water or if they’ve been over-watered. Another example is QueueGames, a trivia game callers can play while on hold.
 
With both these examples, Spencer drove home the point that even silly concepts get people thinking about the possibilities of communications. Initiatives such as this serve to expand the definition of UC.
 
He mentioned the evolution in the open source world, where things have gone from a simple “good versus evil” debate (open source vs. proprietary) to a complicated new world where we find open source (good) fake open source (bad) proprietary open source (evil), and even proprietary hybrid hosted (really evil).
 
Among the new challenges Spencer says Digium faces are the need to bring Asterisk to new markets, and the entry of new “scary” players like Microsoft (News - Alert) into the telecom world.
 
The response to these new challenges he told the crowd is to write more code, package Asterisk (News - Alert) better, educate resellers and users on the different products available in the marketplace, and most importantly to be educated by users and resellers on what their needs and desires may be.
As Mark Spencer told the audience, “I’m here at ITEXPO (News - Alert) looking to understand what I can do better to help you use Asterisk to win more business.”
 

What’s the best resource to learn about latest trends in the IP communications industry? Why, INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO, of course. ITEXPO West 2007 is just around the corner—this year it’s being held at the Los Angeles Convention Center in California, Sept. 10-12. Preview sessions, speakers and exhibitors—then register to attend.

 
 Greg Galitzine is editorial director for TMC’s (News - Alert) IP Communications suite of products, including TMCnet.com. To see more of his articles, please visit Greg Galitzine’s columnist page.

(source: http://opensourcepbx.tmcnet.com/topics/open-source/articles/10593-digiums-mark-spencer-growing-up.htm)




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