Telepocalypse

Why I am not on Facebook, and never will be

I have been inspired by JP's story to recount my personal experience of privacy invasion by making the mistake of signing up for Facebook.

I opened an account a few years back to get a sense of what the fuss was all about. Since I have a lot of industry contacts, I found it to be an endless stream of tedious invites to approve people I barely knew as 'friends', and with whom I had no intention of sharing the intimate details of my scandalous personal life.

In the meantime, I bought a teeny weeny PC to stick behind the telly and run Skype, so I could talk to my kids and behave in a childlike manner without the limitations of my laptop being on and charged up. This Skype account was not my main one, and had only two buddies: my parents, and the mother of my children. Nobody else.

Which made it a bit of a surprise when an industry colleague popped up one day with a "Hi Martin!" instant message. It took me a bit of detective work to sense what had happened. He has been suggested to contact me via a feature in Facebook that integrated Skype contacts, following a biz dev alliance between the two companies.

The only way of matching identities must have been through the email address or mobile I number I gave Skype when I had signed up. Remember - I had never explicitly shared this Skype ID, or authorised its publication via Facebook.

Having a private Skype account leak data via Facebook told me that this was a totally toxic relationship. Since Skype is not in the business of collecting personal data and monetising it, and Facebook is, I immediately proceeded to shut down and permanently delete my Facebook account.

And that's why I will never, ever give any of my personal data to Facebook again or do business with them.

I feel data raped.

Introduction to Telco-OTT Services

Last week was the inaugural Telco-OTT Services workshop, which I ran together with Dean Bubley.

We have produced a summary deck of the first session of the day, and you can view it here.

Future of Voice seminar at UC Expo

Details here.

Peak Telecoms

The view from the summit is over here.

Premium promotion - @DAPremium

Disruptive Analysis has launched a new premium Tweeting service. It's no secret Dean's insights are both highly-read and highly-regarded. Now his best up-to-the-minute reflections on what's going on in telecoms are behind a paywall. I (and many others I am sure) wish him well in making some lucre from this very interesting business model experiment!

Bleg: Future of Voice in Asia

If anyone knows any good business partners to deliver Future of Voice workshops in Asia, please do get in touch.

The kind of person we're looking for is likely to have a deep industry network with professional services expertise. Someone with consultative selling skills, marketing prowess and technology thought leadership.

We're also looking for sponsors for North American events.

Future of Voice workshop - sold out

Next week's Future of Voice workshop is now sold out. Contact me if you want to join a waiting list - we can upscale the venue if enough additional people are interested and willing to cover the cost.

Blog post on UC over at futureofcomms.com

This blog is suffering from bit-rot, with the hosting service changing versions of Perl and wanting another $240 to host it for a year. So I'm switching over to www.futureofcomms.com for future blog posts until I work out what to do with Telepocalypse.

I've just posted 3 CHALLENGES OF UNIFIED COMMS ON UNIFIED NETWORKS. I hope you enjoy it!

Future of Voice workshop - last few places

If you'd like to come to the Future of Voice workshop next week in central London, get in touch with me at futureofvoice@martingeddes.com for a discount code. More info at www.futureofcomms.com. We've got an interesting group of people coming!

October Future of Comms newsletter is out

If you missed the first Future of Communications newsletter, you can still read it here. If you'd like to avoid missing future newsletters, sign up at www.futureofcomms.com.

There is a 2-for-1 offer in the newsletter for the upcoming Future of Voice workshop in London on 27th October.

Future of Communications newsletter

I've decided to invest the time and energy to share the best ideas and links I find each month, and also to keep people up to date with the cutting-edge subject areas I tend to work on. In return, you have to offer up a little of your attention via your email inbox. (Email - the original and best social medium!)

The newsletter covers some of the topic areas from the Future of Voice workshops I am doing in collaboration with Dean Bubley. For more information on the workshops, go to www.futureofcomms.com.

To subscribe to the newsletter, click here.

I've thought about blogging this stuff, but decided that putting content out there with no reciprocity from the reader (money, attention, data) is a fool's errand.

Announcing 27th October London Future of Voice workshop

Myself and Dean Bubley will be running the next in our successful series of Future of Voice workshops in London on 27th October.

The workshop is an interactive learning and networking event, limited to 20 attendees. This is a particularly exciting time, given the challenge of 'over the top' providers to core telco voice and messaging products, and the response of telcos: RCS as the formal industry standard route, as well as a variety of their own 'over the top' services. Add in shifting business models, delivery technologies and ecosystems and it will be a packed day. If your company or livelihood depends on understanding where voice service is going, and you want to know what you peers are thinking, you should be there.

To learn more about the event and see what people said about previous events in California and London, go to www.futureofcomms.com. The registration link is here.

Truths about telecoms

I recently gave a talk at a private event, and I thought I would re-post some of my speaker notes here. I have edited out some personal stories that I don't want to reproduce here.

There are two parts to this post. Firstly four lessons from life; and then four beliefs I have about the future of the tech and telecoms industry.

The thread that joins these is the difference between truth and belief, and how we use magical thinking as a defence against uncomfortable truths.

(Apologies that comments are broken; my archaic Movable Type installation has gone kaput.)

Future of Voice on TelecomTV

Myself and Dean Bubley went to the TelecomTV studios last month to capture our thoughts and insights having just completed the first two Future of Voice workshops in California and London.

You can review the resulting videos here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

The next event will be in London on 27th October, and we are working towards a late November date for the US East Coast. More information at www.futureofcomms.com.

TelecomTV - Future of Voice

Following our successful California and London Future of Voice workshops, myself and Dean Bubley worked with TelecomTV to make a recording of some of our key insights and lessons.

You can get more information on the TelecomTV website here, and the direct link to the 25 minute video is here.

If you are involved in voice and messaging strategy at an operator or network equipment vendor, you're likely to find watching this video is a very good use of half an hour of your time. If you have any feedback, please do get in touch.

In related news, we are pleased to announce the next London event will be on 27 October. More information at www.futureofcomms.com.