Organizational Stuff

What TADSummit is about: Honesty and Integrity

TADSummit is the thought leadership event in programmable communications / telecoms for 12 years (founded 2013). Our 2025 trends identified honesty and integrity as critically important for customers, https://blog.tadsummit.com/2025/01/17/10-global-predictions-for-2025/. 

There’s no hype, just innovators and experts sharing insights that respect you, your business, and your customers. Yes, we will say things almost every other event in the industry does not say or wants you to know. Truths are rarely comfortable, but they set you free!

Online TADSummit, once a week, with a live audience

The online event will run throughout the year, kicking off in March 12th 10AM ET, where 2 cyber security experts discuss Google’s recently announced move away from SMS OTP to QR codes for authentication.  See this Linkedin post for the discussion stimulated over 24 hours with >9k impressions.

After that session, on 19th March we’ll have one on RCS / RBM (Rich Business Messaging) from the Trenches. I’ll have the TADSummit Agenda live tomorrow.

The industry leading TADSummit podcast, at 500k views, has added a ‘TADSummit 2025’ playlist. We plan on a live audience for each session, in addition to the usual 2-3k views in the weeks after release.

In-Person TADSummit is in the early planning stage

We’re in the process of planning a 2 day in-person TADSummit, more details coming soon.

TADHack (since 2014) the largest and longest running telecom hackathon

TADHack will be part of the TADSummit sessions, one week the resources are shared, then over 3 weeks the hackers can share their plans, initial pitches, ask advice, demos, with the final pitches at the end of the 3 weeks. It’s a great way to win internships and jobs through showcasing your talent; learn about the latest technologies; and showcase you platform to receive detailed developer feedback.

Format of online sessions

Traditional conference presentations with Q&A from a live audience, and content available for later viewing.

Group sessions with an audience (live audience of both business and technology people) and offline viewership between 1-3k viewers.

Ecosystem sessions so you and your partners can showcase products, case studies, demos, deployments, and latest news. 

Panel sessions bringing the most honest discussions in the industry.

Training session for your platform, with customers / partners / channels for an active / engaged audience.

Thought leadership sessions (webinars), with like-minded people to break through the nonsense that keeps limiting our industry. Our high engagement is because the facts exposed help businesses succeed.

Check out https://www.youtube.com/@TADSummit/videos to see engagement TADSummit achieves.

We hope the TADSummit Conference becomes your weekly dose of BS-free insight in programmable telecoms / communications.

Some of the Topics we’ll Cover

1. AI and SaaS
   a) Autonomous Enterprise.
   b) Autonomous Finance.
   c) Autonomous Communications Services.
   d) Autonomous Wholesale Telecoms.
2. The Rise of Voice AI
   • Lots of deployments, platform updates, and disruptive developments.
3. AI Agents and Developers
   • SWAIG (Signal Wire AI Gateway) versus VAPI versus …
4. The future of CPaaS
   • This is an unsolved challenge, where next beyond the channel? SMS is in decline because of inaction on AIT.
   • RBM is just another channel along with SMS, MMS, WhatsApp, Viber, Webchat, in-app, email, etc.
   • Meaningful CX needs designers, human factors, psychologists, etc. So even through CX is used in lots of marketing, honestly CPaaS remains channel focused.
   • CDP (Customer Data Platform) has not yet delivered. Channel only sees a segment of customer data. However, CRM sees much more.
   • Moving into UCaaS, CCaaS is occupied territory, suppliers with 20-30 years history and extensive go to market support.
   • Network APIs and NaaS, are similarly occupied, have a developer gap, and like RCS companies holding out their bowls for a share.
   • So what is the future of CPaaS? Keep defrauding customers?
   • This is the tough panel discussion the industry needs to hear, that you’ll not hear anywhere else.
5. Security and CyberSecurity
   • We’ll kick off with a session on Google’s move away from SMS OTP to QR codes of all things. Lots more planned in the pipeline.
6. Honesty and Integrity
   • Large IT brands find losses from AIT not worth the effort of fixing. If they can not protect themselves, how can they protect their customers?
   • Augnet is now in a PE group focused on anti-fraud, other industries have acted and succeeded against fraud, e.g. gaming, which has implemented its version of Augnet. Review other successes, and how that learning can be applied to messaging.
   • Can we find a sweet stop where size of loss is enough to motivate action and willingness to expose theft publicly? To enable broader industry-wide action.
   • TCPA, robocalling, messaging SPAM, latest numbers, latest scams, new channels (QR phishing), etc.
7. Industry 4.0
   • Last year we explained the role of programmable communications in Industry 4.0. This year we’ll show demonstrations, mashing up technologies.
8. OpenSource
   • This IEEE article prompted me, https://spectrum.ieee.org/open-source-crisis. the industry is in crisis. Across FreeSWITCH, Jambonz, OpenSIPS, Kamailio, SentryPeer, SIPVicious, APIBan, etc. we have the brain trust to identify things to avoid and guidelines for success. Open Source is critical, but monetization is equally critical.
9. vCon / SCITT ecosystem!
   • 2024 was the year developers ‘got’ vCon with amazing hacks
   • Deployments have started.
   • 2025 will explore use cases, understand problems being solved, and their business cases.
10. Complex Conversations
    • SMS, WhatsApp, Viber, Webchat, email, voice, RCS, RBM (conversations and app), along with many national champions and specialized IP messaging services. Is it becoming too complex?
      • Mark Hay will be launching RichChat to help enterprises given the inability of Google to onboard service providers to RCS.
11. TADHack Sessions
    • The TAHack resources are shared, then over 3 weeks hackers can share their plans, initial pitches and demos, ask advice, with the final pitches given at the end of the 3 weeks. It’s a great way to win internships and jobs through showcasing your talent; learn about the latest technologies; and test out your platforms.
12. Wadaro, The rise of in-SIM applications and deployments
13. ICA (Intelligent Communications Assistant)
    • Next generation analytics engines
14. Identity Futures
    • The technology underlying the future of communications.
15. We’ve got lots more to share over the year. Honesty and Integrity is critical to CPaaS survival.