With a nice mix of the former Sokol & Associates team of Lisa and Steve plus others, along with the new Digium team of Julie and John, we are getting very close to publishing the conference tracks at Astricon (www.astricon.net). We have added two excellent moderators, solid sponsors and many more are interested in signing on, and we have added a new first-time Astricon keynoter from Google (watch the web site soon for posting)and we are working on another new keynoter.
Our team is electronically charged up for the best ever Astricon, to be held in Glendale, AZ in September. See you there! Check out the site!
Friday, May 30, 2008
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Office and Parking Lot Filling Up
Well, it's been a while since my last post. Will try and do better. Our building is fast filling up. Good offices are getting scarce and we are having large orientations weekly. It is quite fun. Now the parking lot is another story. People park all over so no one bangs their doors. A 1985 Toyota sits in the back of our lot trying to avoid anyone. I figured its so he won't hit anyone else. What frightens me, is I park a ways away as well so no one hopefully parks next to me. When I saw the Toyota and an older beat up van almost next to me, I cringed. I might have to park even further away.
Seriously, it's great we are growing. We have added some pretty strong community, customer quality, sales folks, software developers, and marketing folks and expect to be busy this coming summer. We are planning Astricon (www.astricon.net).
What is also fun to follow is Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Does anyone think this is an interesting story to follow? Who gets the handicap? Who gets the prize? Do they go it alone? I love the scenarios in front of us. Makes for something to watch besides a few twitter posts!
Seriously, it's great we are growing. We have added some pretty strong community, customer quality, sales folks, software developers, and marketing folks and expect to be busy this coming summer. We are planning Astricon (www.astricon.net).
What is also fun to follow is Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Does anyone think this is an interesting story to follow? Who gets the handicap? Who gets the prize? Do they go it alone? I love the scenarios in front of us. Makes for something to watch besides a few twitter posts!
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Digium Culture
She made my day today. A fairly new Digium employee told me one thing that sold her on working at Digium was this blog. Thank you.......
The Digium culture is unlike any other. People work hard, play hard, party hard, and are always looking at enhancing the working environment at Digium. We have a new newsletter, we have a new employee-driven unique cultural team, we have an awards recognition program, and we have an active group of softball and volleyball players. We have passion for Asterisk, the Asterisk Community and a passion for Digium.
We have make-a-wish foundation volunteer where the other day we honored the young man who benefited from our "Kiss-a-Pig" contest and year-end contest among employee teams. Where else can you get all this and work for the coolest company!?!?!?!?!
Check us out at www.digium.com. You'll also find a flickr link there.
Very nice feedback today to learn this blog helped convince someone to work at Digium. Tomorrow is our casual day. Last time Mark Spencer sent out the one line email we had folks in very creative dress. Pictures were on both this blog and Digium's. Check us out in the next week or so, we will have some new pictures!
The Digium culture is unlike any other. People work hard, play hard, party hard, and are always looking at enhancing the working environment at Digium. We have a new newsletter, we have a new employee-driven unique cultural team, we have an awards recognition program, and we have an active group of softball and volleyball players. We have passion for Asterisk, the Asterisk Community and a passion for Digium.
We have make-a-wish foundation volunteer where the other day we honored the young man who benefited from our "Kiss-a-Pig" contest and year-end contest among employee teams. Where else can you get all this and work for the coolest company!?!?!?!?!
Check us out at www.digium.com. You'll also find a flickr link there.
Very nice feedback today to learn this blog helped convince someone to work at Digium. Tomorrow is our casual day. Last time Mark Spencer sent out the one line email we had folks in very creative dress. Pictures were on both this blog and Digium's. Check us out in the next week or so, we will have some new pictures!
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Open Source Download - Buy or Not?
----------------------------------
We like the folks who do (buy something)
We like the folks who don't (buy anything)
We like the folks who say they will and then decide they won't
But the folks we like the most, and we know you'll think we're right, are the folks who say they usually don't, but today they think they might!
- - - -
What would the downloader possibly buy today?
1. TDM gateway boards
2. G.729 Licenses
3. Voice Prompts
4. Speech to text channels
5. Text to speech channels
6. Support
7. Pre-loaded software on a hardware appliance platform
8. Training and certification
9. Commercial software license
10. Consulting
So, happy downloading:
Free Source Code - www.asterisk.org
Free Distribution - www.asterisknow.org
Free IP PBX, not open - www.switchvox.com/sv?page=free_edition_faq
= = = = = = = =
Stop by and learn more about us at www.digium.com
----------------------------------
We like the folks who do (buy something)
We like the folks who don't (buy anything)
We like the folks who say they will and then decide they won't
But the folks we like the most, and we know you'll think we're right, are the folks who say they usually don't, but today they think they might!
- - - -
What would the downloader possibly buy today?
1. TDM gateway boards
2. G.729 Licenses
3. Voice Prompts
4. Speech to text channels
5. Text to speech channels
6. Support
7. Pre-loaded software on a hardware appliance platform
8. Training and certification
9. Commercial software license
10. Consulting
So, happy downloading:
Free Source Code - www.asterisk.org
Free Distribution - www.asterisknow.org
Free IP PBX, not open - www.switchvox.com/sv?page=free_edition_faq
= = = = = = = =
Stop by and learn more about us at www.digium.com
Friday, April 18, 2008
The Math of Open Source
A few engineers were joking around today having some tongue in cheek fun talking about personalities of open source code "downloaders" of almost any open source project. Here are some fun comments. Note some are telephony related.
- - - - -
When Open Source is Free and you insist keeping it that way:
- You support yourself and ask the community for help which sometimes might work
- You have technical expertise with Linux and tools which makes you tick
- You tinker and it takes a long time typically because you need to know how it works
- You prefer command line or free GUIs, which may at times work just fine and dandy
- You refuse to pay for training because you have no life
- You won't pay for echo cancellation thus voice quality likely suffers or you are pure IP and have FIOS or high bandwidth solution; so lucky you with your SIP trunking provider who will probably change a SIP Invite message or something else tomorrow and your line won't work anymore! Tehe...have fun!
- You won't pay for any voice quality so the customer is unhappy - shame on you!
- You don't care about your customers, and if it costs 'anything' you refuse.....
- You are going broke as no customers return
- You buy cheap PSTN clone cards because you don't care to support the project who created the software you use for free
In Summary, you spend all your time on forums of the open source software projects you use. You pay for nothing. You want to make money but refuse to pay for anything or support your favorite project, and your customers are not coming back. Get real. It's just business!
- - - - -
When Open Source is Free and you insist keeping it that way:
- You support yourself and ask the community for help which sometimes might work
- You have technical expertise with Linux and tools which makes you tick
- You tinker and it takes a long time typically because you need to know how it works
- You prefer command line or free GUIs, which may at times work just fine and dandy
- You refuse to pay for training because you have no life
- You won't pay for echo cancellation thus voice quality likely suffers or you are pure IP and have FIOS or high bandwidth solution; so lucky you with your SIP trunking provider who will probably change a SIP Invite message or something else tomorrow and your line won't work anymore! Tehe...have fun!
- You won't pay for any voice quality so the customer is unhappy - shame on you!
- You don't care about your customers, and if it costs 'anything' you refuse.....
- You are going broke as no customers return
- You buy cheap PSTN clone cards because you don't care to support the project who created the software you use for free
In Summary, you spend all your time on forums of the open source software projects you use. You pay for nothing. You want to make money but refuse to pay for anything or support your favorite project, and your customers are not coming back. Get real. It's just business!
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Resellers A-plenty
Last year at this time we were just defining the authorized reseller program. We were gearing up for a whole new world coming from pure open source software with some commercial business to today where we have much more open source Asterisk and exponentially more commercial Asterisk business. This is all good as Digium continues to invest in open source and commercial development.
Well, this year we have implemented what we believe to be a pretty substantial program with solid benefits to the resellers and the best open source telephony products out there.
So being attacked by competition is the sincerest form of flattery - being called out by a competitor on a press release gives us free press. Marketing 101: get your facts straight. Marketing 102: Don't call out your competitors. Especially when the story is not really 100% accurate, at least by company records. Good thing we don't list all the resellers that have signed up with us who currently are selling and phasing out other telephony systems today - from open source competitors to tier one IP Telephony leaders. Good for us. In the past 3 months, we have signed up and qualified over 250 data and voice resellers and continue to work closely with our new distributors to recruit resellers. Revenues reflect the success.
Our goal is to be the most channel friendly company in our segment. Offering best margins, great support, and best-in-class products to enable successful growth.
We love the channel, we love our strategy and we are making huge inroads while we continue to set sales and growth records.
Check us out: www.digium.com
Well, this year we have implemented what we believe to be a pretty substantial program with solid benefits to the resellers and the best open source telephony products out there.
So being attacked by competition is the sincerest form of flattery - being called out by a competitor on a press release gives us free press. Marketing 101: get your facts straight. Marketing 102: Don't call out your competitors. Especially when the story is not really 100% accurate, at least by company records. Good thing we don't list all the resellers that have signed up with us who currently are selling and phasing out other telephony systems today - from open source competitors to tier one IP Telephony leaders. Good for us. In the past 3 months, we have signed up and qualified over 250 data and voice resellers and continue to work closely with our new distributors to recruit resellers. Revenues reflect the success.
Our goal is to be the most channel friendly company in our segment. Offering best margins, great support, and best-in-class products to enable successful growth.
We love the channel, we love our strategy and we are making huge inroads while we continue to set sales and growth records.
Check us out: www.digium.com
Monday, March 31, 2008
Switchvox SMB 3.5/AA60 Shipped Today
Just another fun day at Digium.
The San Diego team completed the software release and shipped ON TIME and as announced at Digium Asterisk World/VON and VoiceCon two weeks ago. The team really nailed it and busted tail today shipping all they could with pre-installed software, configured systems, and shipped to purchasers.
What is included?
Switchvox SMB 3.5
Switchvox A60 Appliance with Switchvox installed on the appliance (SOHO or SMB 3.5)
Take the worry out of unknown hardware and use the Digium AA60 and AA350 Appliance family for top notch operation and performance!
The web, the collateral, the channel training and slide decks via reseller portal, pricing, performance, you name it and the team finished it and more!
We have gotten far better at announcing and shipping products at Digium.
Check it out at www.digium.com/switchvox.
The San Diego team completed the software release and shipped ON TIME and as announced at Digium Asterisk World/VON and VoiceCon two weeks ago. The team really nailed it and busted tail today shipping all they could with pre-installed software, configured systems, and shipped to purchasers.
What is included?
Switchvox SMB 3.5
Switchvox A60 Appliance with Switchvox installed on the appliance (SOHO or SMB 3.5)
Take the worry out of unknown hardware and use the Digium AA60 and AA350 Appliance family for top notch operation and performance!
The web, the collateral, the channel training and slide decks via reseller portal, pricing, performance, you name it and the team finished it and more!
We have gotten far better at announcing and shipping products at Digium.
Check it out at www.digium.com/switchvox.
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