Infiltrating Telecoms using Ruby - Ben Langfeld

ben_langfeld-infiltrating_telecoms_with_ruby/README.md

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+# Infiltrating Telecoms using Ruby
+
+Telecoms suck. They're complex, archaic, opaque and closed. Everything we OSS hackers hate. But what can we do about it? It turns out, quite a lot, and tools like Adhearsion can help.
+
+Many open source hackers see the allure of building applications that integrate with the telephone network. However layers of industry jargon, proprietary technology and arcane knowledge lead many to believe that telephony is "hard". Ruby and Adhearsion will change their minds: combining this modern, powerful and descriptive programming language with development practices not common in the Telecoms world (like TDD, Agile), Adhearsion allows developers to apply tools and skills they already have to this rich domain.
+
+The Adhearsion project is a voice application development framework, the first of its kind in the open source world. Additionally, Adhearsion 2.0 is here; a major evolution of the framework to support multiple VoIP platforms and better application designs.
+
+In this presentation we will build a working voice application and demonstrate how to integrate it with external services. Along the way, we will discuss voice application design and the possibilities when including a voice interface to an application, as well as ways to use modern web technology to shake the sleeping giant that is the telecoms industry with innovative new services.
+
+The demo will cover ways to deploy an app on a pure open-source stack with Asterisk or to the cloud using service providers like Tropo.
+
+## Submission Notes
+
+Telephony is an exciting world, but most people still see it as impossibly complicated. Using Adhearsion and the versatility of Ruby, really powerful open source voice apps are possible, using tools already familiar to open source developers. This is a topic about which I am passionate, and I love to see the surprise and excitement in people's eyes when they realize how COOL it is to make a phone ring from a computer (even if it seems boring and everyday, it really still does make people smile). Adhearsion is a unique project in the open source world in that the telephony industry is still dominated by closed-source vendors and products. Adhearsion aims to change this by making telephony and voice application development accessible to everyone.
+
+NB: Adhearsion 2.0 will be released in late March or early April, easily in time for the conference.
+
+## Ben Langfeld
+
+A recovering Physics graduate, Ben now spends approximately 25 hours per day slinging Ruby and is enjoying it a lot more than quantum field theory. Writing voice applications is a perfect fit for him, not least as a result of his addiction to talking. That this can be directed towards a robot can only make the world a better place. Ben has a passion for integrating multiple technologies and has some interesting examples to share to demonstrate the power of Ruby in the field of communications.
+
+Ben is on the Adhearsion core team and has been leading the development of Adhearsion 2.0, the next major evolution of the framework and in 3PCC in Ruby. Ben works primarily for Mojo Lingo LLC, architecting voice applications and the technology used to build them.
+
+![Profile picture](https://github.com/benlangfeld/call-for-proposals/raw/master/ben_langfeld-infiltrating_telecoms_with_ruby/profile_picture.jpg)
+
+- [My website](http://www.langfeld.me)
+- [My twitter](https://twitter.com/#!/benlangfeld)
+- [Past talk slides](https://github.com/mojolingo/EuRuKo2011)
+- [Past talk video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K851EQjvL1g)