Panels & Roundtables
Blazing the Trail – the Future of Telecom
FreeSWITCH Roundtable
Wednesday, Aug. 14th – 3:45PM
Moderated by Luca Pradovera
The founders and core developers of the FreeSWITCH project will be discussing how FreeSWITCH helped shape telecom and where they envision the industry going next. From Ma Bell to the CPaaS era and beyond. Don’t miss this chance to connect with experts and be part of the future of telephony!
Anthony Minessale
Founder – FreeSWITCH
Anthony has more than 25 years of experience in software engineering, that led to a career dedicated to advancing Software-Defined Telecommunications.
Anthony was the original founder and author of an Open-Source Software-Defined Telecommunications platform called FreeSWITCH, created in 2005. Today, the FreeSWITCH platform is used as a critical component by enterprises worldwide, including Zoom|Phone, Five9, Amazon Connect, Vonage, and Dialpad.
Brian West
Co-Founder – FreeSWITCH
Brian is one of the original founders of the FreeSWITCH open source project, and an advanced communications pioneer. He is a key player in helping SignalWire build a cutting edge platform that will disrupt the telecommunications status quo. In his current role as Director of Support Engineering, Brian enjoys interacting with and helping customers to solve some of the unique challenges they encounter.
Michael Jerris
Co-Founder – FreeSWITCH
Michael is a founding member of the FreeSWITCH Open Source project. Michael has been working with open source since the early 2000’s and has contributed heavily to the Asterisk Open Source PBX and helped maintain the project infrastructure. In 2005, he joined the FreeSWITCH project as a founding member and has been working on the project ever since. Michael manages the platform and infrastructure side of the FreeSWITCH project and works directly on the code doing new features and improvements.
Chris Rienzo
VP of Engineering – SignalWire
Christopher is the lead on the STACK engineering team, which is responsible for building the SignalWire platform for enterprises. As a longtime user of FreeSWITCH, he started contributing early on with FS 1.0 writing modules, then decided to take a leap and bring that experience to SignalWire.
Jakub Karolczyk
Senior Software Engineer – SignalWire
Jakub is a VoIP Developer focused on video engineering with over 15 years of experience in building telecommunications systems. As a programming and debugging guru, he uses his years of experience to build and improve the SignalWire platform.
Harnessing the Power of AI – Cutting Through the Noise
AI Roundtable
Tuesday, Aug. 13th – 4:00PM
Moderated by Evan McGee
Join industry experts for an in-depth roundtable discussion exploring the transformative impact of AI on the telecommunication industry. Cutting through the noise of the wild west of new companies and innovations coming out daily to glean insights into what approaches and areas will end up shaping the communications world as we know it.
Jeff Pulver
Founder – Pulver.com
Jeff helped change the way the world communicates and shaped the worldwide market acceptance of VoIP. He is an internet pioneer that has founded/co-founded numerous startups, like; Free World Dialup, VON, Vivox, pulver.com and Vonage. In 1995 defined “VON” to stand for Voice/Video on the Net. Jeff’s public policy work in Washington contributed to the reason services like: FaceTime, Messenger and WhatsApp are free.
Anthony Minessale
Founder – FreeSWITCH
Anthony has more than 25 years of experience in software engineering, that led to a career dedicated to advancing Software-Defined Telecommunications.
Anthony was the original founder and author of an Open-Source Software-Defined Telecommunications platform called FreeSWITCH, created in 2005. Today, the FreeSWITCH platform is used as a critical component by enterprises worldwide, including Zoom|Phone, Five9, Amazon Connect, Vonage, and Dialpad.
Kristian Kielhofner
Founder – Atomic Canyon
Kristian is the Co-Founder and CTO of Atomic Canyon, a startup deploying AI in the nuclear energy sector. He has spent his entire career developing technology solutions for interesting problems, founding companies like Star2Star, Tovera, and now Atomic Canyon.
Diego Gosmar
Chief AI Officer – XCALLY
Diego Gosmar is the Chief AI Officer at XCALLY, specialized in Artificial Intelligence with particular focus on Generative Conversational AI, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Sentiment Analysis, Conversation Analysis, AI Agent interoperability, Sustainable and Ethical Conversational AI. He is a member of the Open Voice Interoperability and Trustmark group from the Linux Foundation AI & Data, a no-profit San Francisco and International organization, dedicated to the definition of standards and guidelines for Conversational AI ethical and responsible use.
James Tagg
Founder – Valis Corporation
James Tagg is a serial entrepreneur, physicist, and award-winning author. He was one of the original inventors of the touchscreen now found on all mobile 
phones. He founded Truphone, the world’s first global mobile network, making the first VoIP call on a mobile phone and developing the eSIM. During COVID-19, he built a quantum computer in his garage, which explores ‘the measurement problem’ allowing faster quantum computers to be built. He is currently the Chief Architect for World Mobile a Web3 mobile carrier launching in the USA. His first book, Are the Androids Dreaming Yet? Explores the limits of Artificial Intelligence and the differences between humans and computers.
