Growing Up!

We are experiencing growing pains. Offices are filling. people are being promoted inside to new positions supporting "growth from within" plus outside hiring brings in new blood and thinking. You can see them roaming here!
















As we grow, our event grows: Astricon. Weekly calls. Expansion of keynoters outside of Digium folks. Less Digium speakers. Check it out here: www.astricon.net

Meetings. We strive to keep short, focused, and over with.

We strive for rapid decisions....but with all the facts.

Documentation for commercial products!

We hope to see you in Phoenix!

Shorts

This summer, our VPs are wearing shorts to work, including me. It used to be Mark Spencer and just engineers. Now, several executives. Glad to see this "Flip Flop" type culture.

Does anyone think a loose summer dress code increases productivity?

Has anyone done a study?

I'd think this would be a huge plus for most people. Comfort. Relaxing.

What do you think?

iPhone Day at Digium

Friday we had a short staff at the office. A fairly large contingent were in line at both ATT stores and the Apple store in the local new Bridge Street shopping district. The Digium folks started lining up early like 5 AM. By noon the first one showed up at the office, and by 2 PM the rest returned. As far as I know, all employees who waited received them. The Apple store had more of course than ATT did.

All were either waiting for syncing of the new units or it had just been completed so they could now twitter, text, email or surf. I don't have one as my entire family is on Verizon service, but ATT has done a tremendous job locking Apple and iPhone users into their service.

The unit is nice, nearly the exact size and weight of my Moto Q and of course both are color. But they are far from similar. My Q is great for conference calls as it has a terrific speaker phone, I have very nice Internet access, email and I like the size and weight. The iPhone however is beloved by those who buy them. I don't know a Moto Q user who can say that.

Reminds me of Asterisk - it is beloved by passionate Asterisk Community, users and developers. Can't say that about the big boys of IP Telephony!

I read one blog post today already that Asterisk download for the iPhone will be done sometime today. A Day in the life of Digium moves on!

For the Asterisk Community

We have a new initiative that has been under way for a few weeks now. It will appear in more detail soon on both this and the Digium blog. The series of events will be a nice lift for the Asterisk Community. As in any project, we have to weigh priorities as we have so many items on our plates. A Digium day is like no other in my long career. Yes, I make typical decisions for products, features, roadmaps, people, etc. But, having a community that broadens Asterisk's reach - now that is both a challenge and a huge part of Digium heritage and culture.

Stay tuned.

Another from the book, "You can't make this stuff up!"

Russell is co-maintainer of open source Asterisk and he was busy doing something physical today. Although this is a link to Russell's blog, there is no other way to do it justice:


http://www.russellbryant.net/blog/index.php/2008/07/02/this-post-brought-to-you-by-dr-pepper/"

Balancing Act: Open Source Asterisk

Not a day goes by when a choice or discussion occurs that encompasses open source Asterisk vs. proprietary elements of a complete solution. Not all portions of "free and open" source are available in pure open source. Components like codecs (i.e. G.729) may be patent encumbered and we have to learn new ways to effectively provide these to the world at large in the best possible manner.

Mark Spencer's brainchild Asterisk has become a key core element of telephony solutions these days meaning a large number of people and companies have built their immediate future on Asterisk. As Asterisk matures, and attention moves to scalability and reliability, Digium has moved with it and enables others to build valuable solutions and components.

Some folks understand and appreciate the community vs. commercial elements and accept and work with them, others just don't however some certainly like to chastise the balancing act choices we deploy.

Being an executive on this team I get to see and hear about virtually all elements of the positive and negative surrounding our choices. Well, we are in business to grow a business, make money and to support Mark Spencer's vision and philosophy: provide an always open version of Asterisk compliant with GPLv2. We have both commercial and community priorities at play daily for precious resources. Choices abound.

All in all, "Digium Days" are among the most exciting in my 25+ year product management oriented career. The core elements (product strategy planning, market segmentation, roadmaps, product requirements, features, pricing models, packaging, etc) are the same, but the "Digium Difference" and "The Digium Way" are the most fun,interesting, hair raising and exhilarating. After over two years following my 3Com stint, this by far has been most interesting in the current pinnacle of my long career.

I've been thinking of which of those moments to write about in upcoming blogs. For those that think it's always an easy decision you are missing the more interesting part of working with Mark.

See you again soon! Off to the Huntsville Air Show with the Blue Angels!

Heard Around The Office Today

It was a typical day at Digium, so I thought I'd share a few things "I heard" today.

- - - - -

My favorite:

ZAP-Dahdi

- - - - -

Also heard:

"They need to sign the waiver before going up with Mark and Danny"

"Can we really sell that many?"

"The Community wants this!"

"Will he really be the keynoter at Astricon?"