On this week's Canadian IP Thought Leaders podcast, Jon spoke with Kate Morgan. Kate is the President of Podwise Social Media, a Toronto-based firm focused on the business value of new media tools such as podcasting and blogging. Her company is a strong advocate of using these tools to help clients create a more personal touch for their business, especially in professions such as law.

Kate talked about the stong demand she is seeing from businesses who are just discovering social media tools, and want to use them in a beneficial way. Most of these companies are not technically savvy, and need help in creating these tools, as well as the content. Kate commented about the novelty effect of podcasts and blogs, as they are still very new to most businesses.

She emphasized the importance of producing quality content, and gave examples of how a law firm would use podcasts to explain basic legal principles. While one could get the same information in text form off a website, she noted that a podcast provides a more humanized feel, which professions like law don't easily give off. Finally, Kate distinguished between educational content and providing advice - the latter which she would not advocate for her clients to do.

Kate Morgan, President of Podwise Social Media Inc.

Kate Morgan founded Podwise Social Media Inc. in 2006. Podwise is a Toronto based marketing firm which specializes in educating professionals on the power and potential of social media tools to improve communication between the corporate and public spheres. Podwise faciliates the creation, management and integration of engaging blogs and podcasts into more traditional marketing and public relations strategies.

Kate has always been passionate about technology and media, specifically the impact of the Internet on business communication, as more aspects of our personal and professional lives move online. Her previous experience as Marketing Director at Hull & Hull LLP, and her degree in English from Queen’s University, have been essential to her expertise in new media marketing strategies.

Loki Jorgenson, Chief Scientist for Apparent Networks, responds to the opening question: What is Quality of Application? In light of the industry's current emphasis on QoE or Quality of Experience, Loki points out that QoA logically sits between QoS, the network performance, and QoE, the end-user experience. He goes on to relate how the 3 Qs of performance map directly onto the OSI Layer model and then illustrates how VoIP has essentially sidestepped the need to address QoA ... so far.

Loki then goes on to comment on the difference between "functional" and "dysfunctional" models of network performance. He points out that QoS has generally assumed that networks are functional - meaning that they are simply experiencing resource issues (like lack of bandwidth). Then resource management like QoS is a viable solution. The prevalence of degradation sources in most IP networks mean that operators need to think differently to resolve issues with performance - they are not resolved by QoS like in the case of congestion.

The conversation then turns to how the industry will evolve to meet the current challenges and whether a particular solution is likely to win out. Referencing the three layers of Quality again, Loki suggests that each one requires its own attention and thus its own solution. With an emphasis on "coupling" between the layers, it would seem inevitable that technologies and solutions will have to become integrated and flexible. Each customer will have such distinct needs that no one solution or vendor is likely to win through alone. In that vein, the nature of video is presented and how it will continue to raise the bar for the whole market. Voice was a relatively simple application in comparison to video. In fact, it is hard to listen to any two conversations about video on the network and imagine that they are talking about the same technology - is it High-Definition at home? Is it YouTube on the cell phone? Is it a tele-conferencing solution for SMBs?

Loki Jorgenson, Chief Scientist, Apparent Networks

Loki Jorgenson is the Chief Scientist at Apparent Networks and responsible for research, technology futures, intellectual property and overall thought leadership. As a Ph.D. physicist (McGill University) specialized in statistical mechanics and computational physics, Loki has been involved in a diverse range of network-based research since the early 1990s including high performance computing and grid networks, collaborative and distance learning, distributed interactivity, scientific visualization and algorithms development.

Today, Loki is a regular contributor at academic and network industry conferences, often speaking on expert panels and at workshops. As well, his views are regularly published as an industry columnist at searchNetworking and in various magazines. In addition, Loki authors many of the whitepapers offered by Apparent Networks.

Having joined the company in the early stages of its inception, Loki has directed the focus on expert systems, application modeling, network diagnostics, and packet behavioral analysis. The results have informed critical product developments at Apparent Networks in VoIP, video, high performance applications, wireless, automated network management and autognostics.

(To hear other podcasts in Bob Emmerson's Quality Concerns series click here.)

On this week's podcast, Jon's guest was Steve Mast, who is the VP and Managing Director of Toronto-based Delvinia Interactive. Delvinia is a digital marketing agency, and is one of Canada's leading exponents of utilizing new media for their clients. Steve spoke about the various approaches companies are taking in using new media, and how the performance metrics differ from traditional marketing tools.

In particular, the conversation focused on a program Delvinia has just completed for the Royal Bank, which is Canada's largest financial institution. Titled the Next Great Innovator Challenge, the bank wanted a program where they could engage the youth market - primarily college/university students - in a contest to come up with great ideas for how banks can reach today's youth with financial services. The winners were in fact, just announced, and the bank got some terrific results. Much of the program was web-based, including a blog, which served as a valuable reference resource for the contestants.

Steve talked about how these elements worked together, as well as the realities of putting a program like this together for a large bank. For anyone interested in how new media is finding its way into mainstream marketing programs, this podcast is for you.

Steve Mast, Vice President, Managing Director
Delvinia Interactive
Steve's keen eye for creative, strategy and innovative thinking stem from a uniquely diverse background. Steve was educated as an architect and started his career as a Game Producer, developing video games and 3D animation programs. He went on to direct and produce TV spots, music videos, corporate videos and special effects for full length feature films.

Steve joined Delvinia in 2000 to build its Digital Customer Experience and Interactive Marketing practice, and is one of the partners at the agency. Currently he holds the position of Vice President, Managing Director. Steve’s commitment to superior service has been pivotal in creating Delvinia’s list of distinguished clientele, and he continues to be the key contact for our major accounts.

Immediately prior to joining Delvinia, Steve spent 7 years at Microforum Inc. in various roles, including Director of Operations and Production for the Creative Services group. He became a leader in converging technologies, marketing and media as he managed the production and client service groups in Interactive, Broadcast Video, and Print Production.

Steve continues to give back to the digital marketing industry by actively participating on councils and committees, and speaking at various industry events. Currently he is a member of the Association of Internet Marketing and Sales (AIMS), the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada (IAB) and the Canadian Marketing Association (CMA), where he is the vice-chair of the Integrated Marketing and Customer Experience Council. Steve also co-chairs the CMA’s Digital Marketing Conference, and is a judge for the CMA Awards and the Canadian New Media Awards.

Mahadev Kolluru is the Director of Application Engineering and Customer Marketing at VeriSilicon, whose booth was right next to our podcasting booth on the floor at VON, and who were wonderful neighbors. Carl Ford and Mahadev speak in this podcast about VeriSilicon's "ZSP" DSP product line, and about the future of IP from the perspective of a silicon solutions company.

Kevin Nethercott, President and COO of LignUp talks to Carl Ford about CodeLign, LignUp's new developer environment and community using Amazon's EC2 platform. Kevin predicts that in as little as 5-10 minutes, users can be creating applications and terminating phone calls.

What's interesting, according to Kevin, is the coming of age of the Voice Mashup, thanks to the huge number of people that are developing and playing around in this space.

Simon McIver, Director of Marketing Acquisition at Covad and Andy Abramson of the well-read blog VoIP Watch stopped in the podcast booth to talk to Carl Ford about the art of marketing and education in this space, be it for VoIP or for broadband.

Simon also speaks to where Covad is heading in the future, with regard to applications, and Andy touches on the current "wow"s out there.

Another one of the folks we caught up with at VON was Adam P. Stein, VP of Marketing at Mu Security. In this podcast he and Carl Ford talk about Mu Security's solution, which Adam describes as a "hacker in a box."

Mu Security helps Triple-play product developers and their service provider customers measure security, product resiliency or service availability methodically to ensure maximum network uptime. Using the Mu-4000 analyzer proactively increases both the service availability and security quality of any IP-based product.

On this week's podcast, Jon focused on the small business market and the adoption of hosted solutions for IP telephony. Jon's guest was David Cork, the CEO and co-founder of Ottawa-based Natural Convergence.

David's company was one of the first to focus on the small end of the SMB market for IP telephony, especially via a hosted solution. On the podcast, David spoke about the business opportunity, and how this market has been historically underserved. His company in particular has been built around the problems faced by small businesses and he spoke to how a hosted solution could address those needs.

Jon and David also explored the dynamics of this market, with David sharing his insights about why hosted telephony is a good fit for small businesses, or businesses with multiple branch offices that are too small to justify their own premises-based systems. On the domestic front, David discussed their role in the upcoming offering coming from Toronto-based Rogers, marking the first entree from a major MSO into the SMB market.

David Cork, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Natural Convergence
David Cork has over 20 years of experience in the telecommunications industry. Prior to co-founding Natural Convergence, he served in a variety of leadership and executive roles with Bell Northern Research, Mitel Corporation, ObjecTime and Nortel.

David has proven his ability to execute business plans. While with Nortel, he held the position of Chief Operating Officer for eXtremeVoice, Nortel’s national ASP offering in the area of Internet Call Waiting. Previously, he laid the foundation for sales growth at ObjecTime and built Mitel's Computer-Telephony Integration unit into a multi-million dollar business.

This is the second podcast from VON with Bill Miller from Digium. In this part of the interview, Carl and Bill talk about the evolving Asterisk Pavilion at VON and the recently announced Digium/Asterisk World to be colocated with Fall VON 2007. Very exciting things are afoot!

Part 1 of the interview is here.

Digium.com
Askerisk.org
AsteriskNOW.org

Bill Miller, VP of Product Management & Marketing at Digium found a few minutes in his busy show schedule to chat with Carl Ford in the Pulvermedia Podcasting Network booth. In this first of two podcasts, Bill talks about where Digium is heading in light of their recent management changes, and reflects on the growth of Asterisk and the numerous facets of the Digium ecosystem.

Part 2 of the interview is here.

Digium.com
Askerisk.org
AsteriskNOW.org

Christian Testman, COO of Paradial, begins this conversation with Carl Ford by describing the firewall and NAT traversal Paradial provides with a plumbing metaphor, which served pretty well to illustrate the concept, and had the added bonus, if you take the metaphor further, of stressing the importance of such a service. You wouldn't want to live in a house without plumbing.

Visit Paradial at VON in booth #542.

Geoffrey Corfield from Calgary's Calltoolbox Inc. stopped by the podcast booth today to fill us in about the wide swath of VoIP-related solutions they have to offer. From call centers to web provisioning systems, Calltoolbox seems to have something to offer to just about anyone.

You've got one last day to check out Calltoolbox at booth #1649 here at Spring VON 2007 in San Jose!

TechnoCo was founded by pioneers of the voice over Internet (VoIP) industry. Their previous company, Ozemail Interline, was the first in the world to provide Internet telephony (VoIP) to the public on a global basis. In fact, The Honourable Paul Keating (ex Prime Minister of Australia) released the OzEmail Interline VoIP services at a media event in Australia on the 16th January 1997.

Identifying a need and opportunity to empower small and medium developers who require specialised hardware platforms in order to bring their software products to market, Howard and Spielrein created "TechnoCo".

TechnoCo's first product is Vdex, a telephony platform that provides the necessary electronics to run the popular Asterisk PBX open-source software. Vdex is a highly sophisticated, hybrid telephony platform integrating multiple microprocessors and multiple digital signalling processors with numerous industry-standard voice codecs and telephone line interfaces.

Please visit technoCo on the web at technoco.biz, at VON at booth #751.

Check out part 1 and part 2.

Check out part 1 here.