Here are the TADSummit and TADHack 2025 plans, so you know the big picture.

This post lists the agenda, and links to recorded sessions

Links to Recorded Sessions

Google rejects SMS OTP for QR Codes? I understand the SMS bit, but QR codes?

Kevin Graham, Bohdan Hopanchuck, Noah Rafalko, Johnny, Dennis Kersten (audience), Ahmed Serag (audience). 

From the Trenches, RCS / RBM (RCS Business Messaging)

The presenter is Michael Lamb, President / Co-founder of nativeMsg. Audience includes: Paul Sweeney (potential nativeMSG customer), Mark Hay,  Noah Rafalko, and Johnny Tarone.

Augnet is ALIVE!

Daniel Gill, is now SVP Corporate Strategy at AOT – All in one Telecom! Joined by Kevin Graham, Cavero Quantum, and Johnny.

Simwood’s Potato

Simon Woodhead, Founder and Group CEO Simwood

Voice AI status update

Lyle Pratt, Vida.io Founder & CEO

Rob Pickering, Internet and Real Time Communication Software Expert, Innovator, Advisor, Investor.

Threat Models and Counter Intelligence

Bohdan Hopanchuk, a TADSummit regular, and Jack Sessions, a Security Researcher (Mobile).

Visor.ai, AI partner for contact centers

Gonçalo Consiglieri, Co-founder and CEO, Visor

The Geeky Side of vCon

Dan Petrie, CEO, President of SIPez

The Australian Election. Which messaging technology won? MMS, SMS or RCS?

John Stuckey, Managing Director, MobileDigital

Clerk Chat Part 2, The RCS Demos

Igor Boshoer, Co-founder and CTO, Clerk Chat

ICA, Intelligent Communications Assistant, Introduction

Michael Gough and Robert Winder

RCS Security

Bohdan Hopanchuk, a TADSummit regular

Telecoms Cybersecurity

Dmitry Kurbatov, SecurityGen CTO,, along with Bohdan Hopanchuk, and Aaron Birnbaum (TRaViS) both TADSummit regulars.

Truth in Identity Verification

Stefan Kostic, CEO IPification

vCon TADHack, meet the developers

Thomas Howe, CTO Strolid, The vCon father, + available vCon hackers.

Cavero Quantum Update

Kevin Graham, Growth Strategy Advisor, Cavero Quantum

Meet the Developers of Telnyx TADHack

Michael Bratschi, Telnyx Marketing Lead, AI

James Whedbee, VP Engineering, Telnyx

SKT Hack Debrief

Aaron Birnbaum, vCISO | TRaViS ASM Founder | Cybersecurity Whisperer | CISSP

Bohdan Hopanchuk, Director of Global Partnerships and Procurement at Mobeep

Dmitry Kurbatov, 5G & LTE Cyber-Security | SecurityGen CTO

Jack Sessions. Security Researcher (Mobile) | Speaker | Software Engineer

Cybersecurity Training in the Age of Voice AI

Enrico Faccioli, CEO & Co-founder at vishr.ai // seedata.io

Voice AI Space is born

Thibault [T-Bot] Mardinli, Mapping the Voice AI Space 🖤 3xfailer

Social Engineering

Enrico Faccioli, CEO & Co-founder at vishr.ai // seedata.io

Matt Holland, CTO / CISO & Co-founder vishr.ai // seedata.io

AI in the Middle East

Karim Zaki, CPO \ CTO at Unifonic Inc

Why Erlang Matters More Than Ever in 2025

Viacheslav Katsuba, CEO & Founder at Scaliicon.

vCon Progress Report

Thomas McCarthy-Howe, CTO STROLID, Co-author, vCon (Virtualized Conversations) Working Group, IETF.

Michael Donovan, VP Marketing, Strolid.

Claude Hayn, Founder MindMaking, vCon Store

Audrey Hayn, Product Manager, MindMaking, vCon Store

Interview with Freakyclown (Ethical Hacker). How I Rob Banks: And Other Such Places.

Freakyclown (Ethical Hacker), Best-selling Author, Speaker, CISO, Ethical Hacker, Co-Founder at Cygenta

Vance Shipley Interview and Erlang in Telecom Use Cases

Vance Shipley, CEO & Founder SigScale Global. Developing open source software solutions for CSPs.

Viacheslav Katsuba, CEO & Founder at Scalicon,

Erlang-RED

Gerrit Riessen, Experimentalist FlowHub

Sam Machin, Jambonz, TADHack winner, Node RED geek

Viacheslav Katsuba, CEO & Founder at Scalicon.

Why has the US PSTN pollution remained so bad?

Alex Quilici, CEO YouMail

Alan Quayle, Founder TADSummit and TADHack, independent consultant for 22 years.

Chat with Chris Allen CEO Red5

Chris Allen CEO Red5

Erlang RED Walkthrough

Gerrit Riessen, Experimentalist FlowHub

Sam Machin, Jambonz, TADHack winner, Node RED geek

Viacheslav Katsuba, CEO & Founder at Scalicon.

Vance Shipley, CEO & Founder SigScale Global. Developing open source software solutions for CSPs.

Real World AI-enhanced coding and product development

Thomas McCarthy-Howe, CTO Strolid, vCon Father

Rob Pickering, Internet and Real Time Communication Software Expert,

RJ Burnham, Founder and CEO Consig AI

João Camarate, Entrepreneur, Investor, Startup Nerd, Advisor to Broadvoice

Lyle Pratt, Founder CEO Vida Voice

An introductory dive into Telecoms for software developers

Vance Shipley, CEO & Founder SigScale Global. Developing open source software solutions for CSPs.

Consig Update

RJ Burnham, CEO and co-founder, Consig

Wadaro, update on how in-SIM software is revolutionizing telecoms.

Robert Wakeling, Founder & CEO Wadaro

Spec-Driven Development with Jason Goecke

Jason Goecke, Managing Partner, Cultiv8 Ventures LLC

Alerts Bar with Dima Ashkinazi, Mike Khytko, and Aidan Raney

Deep darknet monitoring for infostealers know your compromised devices and credentials of your employees and customers

Voice AI Agents with Andriy Zhylenko, CEO PortaOne

Andriy is back to share WebTrit’s and PortaOne‘s work on Voice AI agents, and discuss its relevance for telcos, also known as CSPs (Communication Service Providers).

Original Gangster in Voice AI, Karel Bourgois, since 2009

Karel Bourgois, Founder CEO Voxist

Upcoming Sessions

RCS has launched, it’s time to fully bake the RCS for Business recipe!

Wednesday 10th of December, 10AM ET.

Michael Lamb, President / Co-founder of nativeMsg.

Michael is back to show us how nativeMsg are moving the market from experimentation towards wholesale deployment.

I know, this is a repeating theme in the RCS story, there’s always something, queue Dean Bubley sniggering in the corner mumbling zombie. Google did a big RCS for Business marketing campaign to the industry, with some big name brands. It reminded me of the work Apifonica did one decade ago with Fan Engagement solutions using SMS / voice for European football clubs.

Brands remain frustrated by the lack of integrated experiences with RCS for Business like they experience with WhatsApp / TikTok (across community, advertising, store, and bots). Meta has limited bots on WhatsApp to only Meta AI, their customers’ data will remain their data, though brands can share in the insights. That’s been the case with Facebook, and brands accept that.

The RCS barriers are coming down. However, the RCS ecosystem is complex; TikTok and WhatsApp are ‘simple’ by comparison. The RCS for Business recipe is not fully baked; to claim there are no growing pains is false. The unique differences between Apple and Android only surface when testing to fully understand how each will deliver the RCS for Business Experience, OS version numbers matter. It’s still a bit runny in the middle. A partner who understands and has experience sending RCS is critical to crafting experiences that deliver results across the different platforms. Success now hinges on the details.

nativeMsg is focused on helping brands understand what’s happening, how to ensure RCS works for their campaigns. And let’s not forget that good old SMS experience works, even though it may be delivered over the RCS channel. Take Branded Calling, so much effort on vetting, permissions, graphics, etc, when an SMS just works, “Your order is ready for pick-up”.

And to every carrier vested in RCS, start using it with your customers!

End of Year Special with Matthew Smith, vCon + UNS for manufacturing / process industries

Matthew Smith, CEO Fieldcloud

Thomas McCarthy-Howe, CTO Vconic

Karel Borgois, CEO Voxist

vCon + UNS for manufacturing / process industries

Last year Matthew gave a fun and insightful presentation on “Slash the Industry 4 0 Gordian Knot – Simplify Digital Transformation with Programmable Communication.” https://blog.tadsummit.com/2024/11/14/matthew-smith-2/

Matthew showed how Unified Name Space, MQTT, vCon, are critical components of modern manufacturing and process industry operations.

vCon made the list as on the factory floor or in the field there are many conversations, and those conversations are lost. vCon enables the conversations to be remembered, and the chain of conversations that led to a decision on the production line is now transparent. Human to human interaction is part of the OT (Operations Technology) loop but until now has been handled separately from the supervisory and process control data stream.

Matthew shared a vision on how Telecoms, Operations Technology, and Information Technology can work together thanks to IETF standards like vCon and SCITT. This panel discussion will add flesh on the bones of the ideas shared last year and look at the future of OT & IT convergence and divergence with telecommunications firmly in the middle as the guarantor of connectivity and security.

The Eclipse Sparkplug Working Group through 2025 has made possible an open and interoperable Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). The time is now right to bring vCon into the vision as part of modern industrial automation practices.

Industrial organizations excel at capturing machine data – telemetry streams, logs, alarms, batch data, process histories – but they fail to capture the human context that lives in:

• Teams/Zoom calls
• Radio conversations
• WhatsApp groups
• Shift handovers
• Vendor troubleshooting calls
• Commissioning meetings
• Email threads
• Informal desk conversations

This old proverb remains true today, “spoken words fly away, written words remain.”

The lack of spoken word capture means organizations lose:

• Troubleshooting expertise
• Decision rationale
• Safety insights
• Engineering trade-offs
• Tribal knowledge
• Historical knowledge
• The understanding of HOW decisions are made.

This results in:

• Systems are maintained but not understood.
• Processes are followed but not internally reasoned.
• Cybersecurity audits fail due to missing evidence of how decisions were made.
• Digital transformation initiatives stall.

Why the timing is now right for VCON:

• Retiring experts → loss of tacit knowledge. We’ve entered a critical time to gather tactic knowledge and question experts to gather as complete as possible knowledge map.
• Explosion of fragmented collaboration channels, conversations happen, decisions made, but context is lost as the conversation is not captured.
• AI systems require trustworthy context.

UNS (using MQTT SparkplugB) structures industrial information into a unified, contextual backbone. Until now, UNS has focused exclusively on machine events. vCons introduce human events.

Industrial organizations cannot protect or modernize systems they cannot fully understand.
Machine data alone is insufficient.
Cybersecurity without context is blind.
Modernization without memory collapses.

vCons complete the architecture by adding the missing human layer – governed, contextualized, secured, and unified within the UNS.

Modernize the way humans think, talk, and collaborate – not just the machines they maintain.

Mation (https://mation.work): process automation. AI-native, legally compliant, and cost-effective. 

Wednesday 14th Jan, 10AM ET / 4PM CET. 

Marten Schoenherr, CEO Automat Berlin/AWA Network/Founding Partner at TheWorkinGroup/Mation.work

Sebastian Schumann, programmable communications for Deutsche Telekom

“Mation helps us to quickly and legally implement GDPR-compliant products on our own infrastructure.”
Sebastian, Senior Architect, Deutsche Telekom

* AI Native. Use any self-hosted (e.g., Ollama) or commercial (e.g., Vertex AI or OpenRouter) LLM. Works directly with all major AI providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, or Microsoft Azure). Integrate any Mation-supported app in your favorite LLM via our MCP server.

* Legally Compliant. DSGVO/GDPR compliant (General Data Protection Regulation). Dedicated server in a German data center for each customer. Option to operate on customer’s own hardware. Even the Mation team does not have access to customer data.

* Cost Effective. Transparent pricing model without hidden fees. Package prices including all services and functions. Unlimited users, integrations, flows, and executions across all pricing tiers. Flexible upgrading and downgrading options.

Chat about the Current State and Future Outlook of B2C Contact over Voice and Nonvoice Channels with Gerry and Alan

Gerry Christensen, Director of Product Management at 46 Labs

Alan Quayle, Founder TADSummit and TADHack, independent consultant for 22 years.

TBD

What is the RCS Business Messaging (RBM) opportunity? Is it tainted by the ongoing 10DLC issues? How does this impact branded calling?

The PSTN messaging industry sees solid growth in something they call OTT (Over The Top) messaging. Which means all the messaging platforms brands use over the internet, note, mobile phones are on the internet all the time.

Not just WhatsApp, and WeChat, but also Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat. 10DLC in the US, coupled with the silly exuberance on RBM from some aggregators, means brands are cautious. Also the economy is tough.

Is RCS tainted, yes. Is this permanent, no. But the momentum is with OTT. Latest SMS aggregator numbers show the momentum is with OTT. For kids, the ratio of snapchat to SMS/RCS is >1000:1.

I referred to Labubu dolls in the Unifonic post on TADSummit online Conference, https://blog.tadsummit.com/2025/08/06/ai-in-the-middle-east/. The Unifonic post highlighted for me the emerging importance of messaging platforms like Tiktok, Instagram, and Snapchat.

This will be a North American focused discussion, bringing in the learnings from Unifonic and exploring the relevance of branded calling.