Category: News

#ClueCon2022 was a huge success! We were so glad to be back fully in person this year, and want to thank everyone who made it possible – whether you were an attendee, speaker, sponsor, or you joined our livestreams. Below you’ll find a recap of the week, along with all the info you need for next year!

First and foremost, we kicked the week off with a new FreeSWITCH release! This is a minor release containing important bug fixes and stability improvements. Click here to view the release notes for v1.10.8.

As always, we started off ClueCon with the Coder Games hack-a-thon. This year we challenged attendees in the Maker Challenge to build their own Arduino car and live stream an epic stunt! We used sensors and cameras to live stream what was going on in the race track to a SignalWire Office. For FreeCYCLED hacks, attendees were challenged to build functioning projectiles that tested aim and accuracy by shooting various objects through different sized hoops. There were no rules about how this projectile had to function… all that mattered is how far the projectile could fly while maintaining peak accuracy.

Each year, the awesome presentations are a huge part of what makes ClueCon so memorable. Tuesday morning included our keynote presentation by Anthony Minessale. At lunch, attendees got to choose their workshop: Kamailio and its powerful iterators for management of SIP headers and body, or All Things Campaign Registry, depending on whether they wanted to learn about the recent version of Kamailio’s new tools for configuration files, or the current state of 10DLC messaging (The Campaign Registry) and messaging best practices. An open source roundtable ended the conference day, where we were joined by several open source experts from various projects. We heard about the latest developments, community building, financing projects, and got some questions answered.

Of course, after day two, we celebrated with our annual Gigabit Reception – as a Halloween party! Attendees dressed up in their best costumes for the costume contest, belted out their favorite songs at karaoke, ate pizza and enjoyed some games and networking after a long day of presentations.

Wednesday was another day full of presentations, and over lunch, attendees had the option to get an Introduction to QRYN with Jachen Duschletta! They learned how to set up, integrate and use QRYN – the open-source, high performance and cost-effective platform for logs, metrics and telemetry events designed for the next-generation of Telecoms and RTC Enterprises.

Evan Woolley hosted a panel for attendees to Ask a VC their questions about investing. Our top-notch investors spoke about some of the key things they look for in a growing company, or entrepreneur, before they make a move. We brought back a new annual favorite for that evening  – Poker Night! Attendees competed in a tournament, enjoyed some drinks and snacks, played board games, and won some cool prizes for their efforts.

The presentations for ClueCon 2022 finished on Thursday, with plenty of familiar faces from the world of open source. We even got an update on the newest FreeSWITCH release from Andrey Volk, who called in from across the world to talk about the latest fixes! 

Thursday’s lunch and learn was led by Liviu Chircu of OpenSIPS, where attendees learned about Building STIR/SHAKEN services with OpenSIPS 3.3. The workshop included a live coding session and demo, and attendees brushed up on knowledge of leveraging the “stir_shaken” OpenSIPS module in order to build open-source, production-ready STIR/SHAKEN services.

We wrapped up the conference with Dangerous Demos, hosted by James Body, where we had SO MANY great entries for demos that had to get dangerous in 3 minutes or less. Participants even bribed attendees with Golden Tickets to win votes in their favor, to receive the coveted crystal Dangerous Demos trophies.

The Grand Prize giveaway of the custom-etched MacBook Pro marked the end of the conference! If you want your own, you’ll just have to attend next year…. (save the date for August 14th-17th, 2023!) But there’s good news if this year gave you FOMO… Early Bird tickets are now available! These will be as cheap as ClueCon tickets will possibly get, so take advantage of the sale while you can! Get 2023 ClueCon tickets for just $599.99.

If you just can’t wait for next August, you can find all the presentations, panels, and demos on the FreeSWITCH YouTube channel!

We’ll see you next year!

Do you need to get your name or new idea out there? Have you been searching for the perfect opportunity to get brand recognition from a global audience? Maybe you want to do some networking with brilliant telecom professionals, you want to shape the future of communications technology, or you just want to support the FreeSWITCH project.

If any of these priorities resonate with you, consider sponsoring ClueCon 2022! ClueCon attracts some of the best and brightest innovators in the industry from around the world. Help us make it all happen and your brand will be recognized globally as supporting the future of the industry while you build lasting connections. Not to mention, all levels of sponsorship come with conference passes for your team to join the fun at ClueCon.

ClueCon will be taking place October 17th-21st at the Swissotel Chicago, and the sooner you sign up to sponsor, the more recognition you’ll receive! There are various levels of sponsorship available, so you’ll get the kind of exposure that suits your brand’s needs. Whether you want an exhibit booth to share your ideas, or you just want to see ads with your logo getting out to our broad social media audience, there’s something for everyone.

Thinking big? Opportunities are still available to host a branded evening event! Too big? We’ve got you covered: sponsor the snacks for our hack-a-thon, host a private meeting space, or have us air your company commercial during the conference. Six levels of sponsorship are available at varying prices, from 8bit all the way to 256bit. You can find out more about sponsorship opportunities or meet with us to discuss your ideas by reaching out to info@cluecon.com.

You can see a brief overview of the sponsorship benefits below:

We can’t wait to see you there!

Become a Sponsor!

 

 

Thank you to everyone who attended ClueCon TGI2021, our first hybrid ClueCon! Whether you attended in person or online, we appreciate you joining us for this hybrid event experiment. This new format allowed for those attending online to interact with those in person and vice versa, which was a ClueCon first. If you have any feedback about your experience, you can fill out this quick survey to share it with us so we can make ClueCon even better next year. Though the format was a little different this year, ClueCon followed its traditional lineup of events throughout the week. Monday kicked off with the Coder Games, our annual hack-a-thon that includes several challenges for developers and non-developers alike. Attendees built boats, engineered bridges, and played trivia with virtual attendees to win an exciting array of prizes.

The presentations started on Tuesday after the release of FreeSWITCH v1.10.7! In FreeSWITCH founder Anthony Minessale’s keynote, he addressed how we made the hybrid event happen by using the video technology built over the years on the back of FreeSWITCH, and how we try to make life easier for developers, including the devotion to open source that fuels ClueCon each year. Videos of all the ClueCon presentations and workshops will be available soon – subscribe to the FreeSWITCH YouTube channel so you don’t miss out! The annual Gigabit Reception took place Tuesday evening as well, but this year, with a spooky twist! After a long day of presentations, attendees put on their Halloween costumes, grabbed their favorite drinks, sang karaoke, and played games. Virtual attendees were able to pop in and hang out with us in the lounge too!

Wednesday included more presentations, a Kamailio workshop led by Daniel-Constantin Mierla, some seriously Dangerous Demos, and a FreeSWITCH roundtable until the evening, when attendees participated in a poker tournament thanks to the sponsorship of Phil Gordon and Prompt.io. The week wrapped up on Thursday with a few more presentations, a HOMER workshop led by Lorenzo Mangani, and our Grand Prize giveaway of a custom engraved MacBook Pro.

We want to give a warm thank you to all our sponsors and speakers who made ClueCon possible in what was a difficult and uncertain year. With social distancing measures in place, like our bigger venue with spaced out seating, and the option to attend online, we hoped to keep everyone comfortable and safe as we reconnected with the FreeSWITCH community. Overall, this ClueCon was a successful first hybrid event and we had a ton of fun getting back together in person at last. If you miss ClueCon like we do, or you’re suffering from moderate to severe FOMO, consider joining us October 17th-20th in 2022!

By Sharon White

Sharon White has been the main organizer of ClueCon for many years! This is a little behind the scenes look into ClueCon and all her favorite things about the conference.

I first came to ClueCon years ago to hang out with my best friend for a week. I started helping to clean up the registration desk, then before I knew it I had taken over all of registration, and by the next year I had taken over all of ClueCon. It’s been a crazy ride, so I thought I’d share some of my favorite things that you can look forward to at ClueCon this year!

 

12. The Most Dangerous of Demos

The first time I saw a Dangerous Demo I thought “this is weird, they want to fail?” But as it turns out, that’s what makes it so fun. Dangerous Demos was started 12 years ago by industry veteran James Body for developers to prove their experience and abilities by pushing the envelope of new ideas in a competitive environment. I have seen the craziest demos over the years. One year a cell phone encased in bubble wrap was volleyed all over the giant conference hall and it still worked. Another time, the MC’s hotel room was broken into by the demo contestants who used a raspberry PI to hack into his keycard and project a video of it onto the huge screens for everyone to witness. And my least favorite, a demo where after calling a phone number you must choose a number. Choose the wrong one and it plays the “Baby Shark” song… over and over and over. It’s maddening!

Several awards are given out, including the Crash and Burn prize for the demo that fails the most spectacularly.  But not all the demos fail! Check out this demo from our virtual ClueCon in 2020, one of my favorites, by SignalWire CTO Evan McGee. My face in the video tells you all you need to know.

 

11. Boats and the Night Sky

Some of the greatest moments at ClueCon happen during our all inclusive evening events. One of my favorites is the Sunset Boat Tour we host Thursday night on the last day of the conference after all the great speakers finish presenting for the week. Everyone at the conference walks the two blocks to the pier, often stopping for some ice cream from a street vendor close to the dock, to board the boat and set out onto Lake Michigan to witness the Chicago skyline at sunset.

My first year of the boat tour I was so naive, staying on the top deck of the boat. That was before I realized the lower deck is where the cool kids go. The fully stocked bar (not only alcohol) is the first place you should hit. Then take your drink to the front of the boat to chat with other developers and the ClueCon team. By the time the sun begins to set over Chicago the boat is positioned out on the lake and the view is astounding.

Usually, ClueCon is in August, when the weather is warm and the sun sets quite late in the day. This year it will be in late October, and the Midwestern chill of autumn will start to settle over Chicago. But don’t worry! The boat is heated.

 

10. It’s all fun and games: The Coder Games

ClueCon’s hack-a-thon is a day filled with games and fun for every attendee, whether you like to code your way to the prize or you’re a builder at heart. You can work as a team or go solo as you utilize the provided materials to build your creation and win prizes! The day is planned for months in advance to be fun, challenging for most, and inclusive for all.  We now have 3-4 standard games you can play each year.  The Maker Challenge is meant to test your coding knowledge, while games like the FreeCYCLED Challenge are meant for all ages and all skill levels, where there is a simple goal such as making a ping pong ball travel 2 feet using everyday random items like straws, toilet paper rolls and poster board.

Abbi Minessale, daughter of FreeSWITCH founder Anthony Minessale, is the Coder Games Queen, and has hosted the hack-a-thon for several years. Abbi works for the better part of a year with the help of some developers to come up with the challenges, and she also designs the Coder Games t-shirt and other activities. One of the best is our classic “Cards Against Technology” game that was given to each attendee as a gift at the last in-person ClueCon.

The first time I attended the Coder Games I didn’t have any idea what could actually be made during the games. One of our sponsors brought in a 3D printer that year. During the Maker Challenge, one of the contestants used it to print an old vintage telephone, hooked it up to the internet, and actually made a phone call! It was very impressive. One of my other favorites was the year we had contestants build a little remote controlled car using the Cards Against Technology game as a track for a race at the end of the day. It’s always the most creative day of ClueCon!

 

9. The Softest T-Shirts in the World

This may come as a surprise, but every single person I know, no matter the age, owns a t-shirt.  At conferences they are a staple. If you attend a conference and don’t come out of it with 2+ t-shirts… you chose not to take them. And ClueCon has the BEST t-shirts.

The ClueCon Team takes t-shirts very seriously. The design alone takes months to plan. The shirts are always styled after the conference theme, and that design is followed in the show guide and other printed materials. You also never know what kind of easter eggs you might find in the t-shirt design. One of my favorites was when we had two different designs of the same theme that signified emerging AI technology and the human brain.

At the dawn of the universe, there was nothing, then boom. The big bang sent six elemental t-shirts hurtling across the virgin universe. These infinity shirts each control an essential aspect of existence: Space, Reality, Power, Soul, Mind… and ClueCon. After sending monks, sheikhs, gurus, and a shaman to the vast reaches of Mount Everest on an epic quest to retrieve the most sought after ClueCon Infinity Shirt, the shirt is taken to an underground lab in Atlantis that creates the softest and most durable synthetic material known to man. You will not want to miss out on the best t-shirt ever created!

To be continued….

Join us in Chicago or online October 25th-28th, 2021!

  The world of events changed for everybody in 2020. Usually, every August would mark the time for our annual developers’ conference in Chicago, ClueCon, which has been around for 17 years. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, August 2020 instead brought about an experiment for the ClueCon team – we hosted ClueCon completely virtually, with almost everything that makes the conference what it is: our Coder Games hack-a-thon, networking opportunities, and the informative presentations and workshops that make the conference an educational opportunity for our community.

  ClueCon Deconstructed turned out to be a huge success, and served as a useful experience for launching SignalWire Events and the SignalWire Work platform. Since then we have greatly improved how we host virtual events. We now have an extremely skilled team that works specifically in the world of online events, and with the help of this team and a much more structured process, in February 2021 we held a mini-ClueCon to focus mainly on workshops and presentations.

  As the world slowly and hopefully changes for the better in 2021, we are looking forward to gathering together in Chicago this October at the beautiful Intercontinental Hotel on the Magnificent Mile. However, as everywhere in the world is on a different timeline in combatting the pandemic, for the first time we will be welcoming remote attendees to the party too! Using the improved platform and virtual events process we’ve built since ClueCon 2020, we’ll combine everything we know about hosting ClueCon virtually with the classic format of an in-person conference.

  The ClueCon team has already been fully vaccinated and we welcome anyone who is comfortable traveling during this time to join us on October 25-28, 2021. There will be plenty of masks and hand sanitizer available for all attendees to make sure everybody there feels comfortable and safe. The health of all the team members and attendees is our first priority, and we are only having the in-person conference as we feel it is safe to do so. That being said, we recognize it simply won’t be feasible for everyone to commit to coming to Chicago this year, and it’s difficult to know what the state of the world will look like over the next 5 months. Because of this, we’re doing everything we can to accommodate those who will be joining us virtually from anywhere in the world!

  Attendees joining us online will be able to partake in all parts of the conference – there will be screens all over the venue to allow those attending in-person to interact with those online, and you’ll even be able to join us for networking events like the classic Gigabit Reception. So grab some snacks and your favorite drink! Nothing will be off-limits to remote attendees; join us for each presentation, workshop, our Coder Games hack-a-thon, and all the networking events!

  Additionally, we will have some of our speakers with us in Chicago, and other speakers will be calling in virtually from other parts of the world. We’ll be integrating the virtual conference as best we can with the in-person conference, so you’ll still be able to interact with speakers, other guests, and the ClueCon team no matter how you choose to participate! This is our plan to slowly bring more people together during this uncertain time, and we hope you’ll join us either in Chicago or from the comfort of your own home. We’re confident that the tech we’ve built, along with the events team we’ve curated, will make this experimental hybrid event a success. 

If you want to explore Chicago and you feel comfortable doing so, we highly recommend joining us at the Intercontinental Hotel! Unfortunately, virtually we won’t be able to provide you with the tasty meals and experience of the city – so if that’s a priority for you, do consider joining us in-person!

  Over the next few months we will have more details available, including a list of speakers and a week-long schedule of the event. In the meantime, you can take advantage of early-bird pricing. Registration is open at cluecon.com/register.

  We can’t wait to see you there!