In this series of weblogs, A Slice of TADSummit, we review some of the important themes from TADSummit EMEA Americas 2020. This slice focuses on Developers.

Thank you to all the presenters and our sponsors: Automat Berlin, GoContact, Radisys, and Sangoma for making TADSummit possible.

Invited Keynote: Engaging Developers. Steven Goodwin, Award-winning CTO, author, keynote speaker, and developer

I’m pleased to welcome Steven as an invited keynote. I can not recommend more highly spending the time to listen to Steven’s presentation. I run TADHack, I help a diversity of businesses engage with many different types of developers around the world. The core issues are well-addressed in Steven’s presentation, it’s a masterclass.

The only thing I’d add to Steven’s presentation is “be human, not corporate.” Developer relations is about helping people, not brand positioning and corporate messaging. Too many corporations have their corporate marketing group manage developer relations, and it shows because its corporate not human.

CPaaS is dead, Long live CPaaS. Filipe Leitão, EMEA Solutions Engineer, 8X8

This is an excellent review of why it’s not about simply copying Twilio. As you move into mid-market and SMB, the decisions are less influenced by developers. Rather technology channel becomes more important, that is VARs, SIs, MSPs, local technology providers.

The last take away in Filipe’s presentation is the most important in ‘be where your customers are.’  It’s about solving business problems for enterprises using programmable communications. An automated reminder alert from a school to parents in the morning to complete the COVID-19 health check before they head out to school . A video collab service between a field worker and technical support to work out why the recommended fix isn’t working to avoid a repeat visit. It’s so much more than an API.

TADHack Global 2020 Winners, sponsored by Simwood, Avaya, Sangoma, Intelepeer, Symbl.ai, hub raum, MTN, and many more.

Here is a global practical demonstration of the power in engaging a broad range of developers around the world. In the weblog you can see the winners from TADHack Global 2020, and below is a video reviewing 7 years of TADHack. We also had 2 TADHack-minis through 2020 in February (Phoenix) with Avaya ENGAGE and March (Orlando / Online) as the lockdowns came in.

Building the SureVoIP app. Gavin Henry, SureVoIP, Trusted UK VoIP service provider. Founder and MD

Gavin runs through the SureVoIP app, which includes communication services: video, voice and messaging. It’s a great recipe and experience share in building and owning your communications client, rather than rebranding someone else.

In the tech stack Gavin described, Flutter and Firebase are popular choices at TADHack. The client wake-up issues are a significant headache, and it’s great to learn how Gavin has solved them. Please get involved in Dart SIP, you heard it first at TADSummit EMEA 2019.

The challenges of creating a multi sided marketplace platform for telecom enabled products. Marius Waldum, Head of Product at Working Group Two

It’s still early days with WG2’s ecosystem. IdeaMart in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh show such ecosystems do work, and make money for developers. We’ve reviewed their success at TADSummit over the years, including TADSummit Asia in 2019 and 2020.

Voicebox was submitted as a showcase for TADHack Global 2020, and in the Norway/Sweden playlist you can also see another showcase from Vimla!

I think the timing of WG2 is interesting. Most of the traditional telco vendors have walked away from service innovation. Its simplified core is a no-brainer for most MVNOs, private network integrators, and IoT service providers. And as an adjunct core to larger telcos who want to iterate faster and at much lower cost.