The Week That Was: WebRTC Conference & Expo 2013

It was a long long week. But a very interesting one.

Hands down, WebRTC Conference & Expo is the largest event of our tiny industry. Tiny because it felt like a tight knit of people, and there lies the problem - it is still in the VoIP domain and not in the web domain.

Someone asked me at the end of the first day what was the best part of the conference – I assume he tried to get my view on the demos shown. My answer? It wasn't anything specific – it was the people there. I had the opportunity to meet so many of you – people I've been interacting here in my blog and elsewhere on the internet – in person. Video calling, and WebRTC for that matter, may provide new means of communications but they will never really replace that magical time of hanging out with someone. Of sitting around a table for dinner with people and enjoying yourself.

I assume you want some highlights from the show, so here are mine:

• Around 700 attendees, which means we're in an exponential growth of people and interests around WebRTC
• Around 35 demos – most polished and ready for use by anyone – next time someone tells you WebRTC isn't ready for primetime, you can say to him he is clueless
• There were real products with real end customers using it already, which to me is a validation of the need
• No interesting gaming companies. Yet
• Very little innovative use of the data channel. I hope to start seeing it in one of the next events
• Some booth vendors had only Powerpoint to show (these were the incumbents), which was sad, considering a lot of startup companies came out with running services that have paying customers on them already
• There are some super smart people working in this domain, and it was a joy to work to them

If you are looking for more, then the WebRTC World website has that coverage. To top it off, Andy Abramson has done a great job of aggregating the news around the show on a daily basis (Tuesday A, Tuesday B, Wednesday, Thursday).

And if you are looking for the session I had with Ken Workun from Genband about WebRTC Disruption, then here's the slide deck:

[slideshare id=23587371&doc=g-1webrtcdisruptionsv2-f-130627143004-phpapp02]

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Have a great weekend, and a safe travel back home for those who were in Atlanta.