Archive for the ‘Conferences/Events’ Category

Ribbit Rocks at SXSW Interactive Festival

Friday, March 20th, 2009 | located in Awards, Conferences/Events, Platform, Ribbit CRM | No Comments »

I am very proud to announce Ribbit took top honors in the Innovative Web Technologies category in Microsoft’s BizSpark Accelerator at SXSW, beating out over 200 company entries. The Accelerator event highlighted the web’s most exciting new innovations through demonstrations in front of a live audience of industry professionals and technology trendsetters.

Ray Lee, Director of Strategy and Business Development for Ribbit, discussed the innovation of Ribbit’s Communication Platform which opens the previously walled off telephony industry to developers worldwide — enabling new forms of innovation, communications, and services.  The judges were pleased and at the end of the day, gave us a nice little glass trophy to take home to our boss.

Ray, beaming with pride, shared this little nugget:

“Winning the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator is a great validation of Ribbit’s platform strategy. The judges really responded to the fact that innovative, high-value applications are being built using Ribbit’s voice and data integration capabilities. And, by highlighting the success of our Ribbit for Salesforce application, we were able to demonstrate a proven business model for enabling our 12,000+ developer community, and carrier partners to innovate and deploy on the Ribbit platform.”

The Ribbit Communications Platform also got rave reviews during the panel discussion “What Does Awesome Sound Like?,” on the impact of voice integration on user interaction, led by Chuck Freedman and Brendan Lee of Ribbit. A highlight of the panel was a demonstration by Ryan Stewart, Adobe Platform Evangelist, showing the first augmented reality telephone call – showcasing the flexibility and power of Ribbit functionality. We shot some video from this session and will be posting online in the next couple of days.

Douglas MacMillan from BusinessWeek had this to say when he wrote up a little piece on Ribbit:

“The tool can be used to dial up a land line or mobile phone, much like VOIP services like Skype. But unlike Skype, it can be molded to perform neat little tricks like transcribing phone calls and instantly analyzing what’s being said. One of Ribbit’s most popular third-party developers is Salesforce.com, which now lets workers dial up clients straight from the web-based CRM software.”

Doug also captured Ray and Chuck in this little video interview:

Ribbit from Doug MacMillan on Vimeo.

We shot some photos while there, and I was able to do a few video interviews as well that will be posted over the next couple of days (thinking I need to hone my video editing skills as it takes me way too long to do this).

Chuck also shared some some tid bits on his panel, some folks he met and talked about our ‘Your Call’ initiative over on the Developer blog, which round out our week there nicely.  It was a good time for the Ribbit team and I am expecting a few more of those in the near future.

Tags: innovative web techology award, Ribbit, sxsw, sxswi, sxswspark

Ribbit is going back to school. Sort of.

Friday, March 6th, 2009 | located in Conferences/Events, Ribbit Mobile | No Comments »

I love the diversity of the Ribbit product line and the various ‘channels’ we get to play in - CRM, Mobile, Telco and ‘Internal’ plays as it surely keeps things interesting here.

It is also great to see the various verticals we extend our services to, and one especially that peeks my interest is the Education sector. I have spent a large chunk of my life, in my various roles, helping ‘educate’ folks in some form or another and believe there is a huge opportunity for Ribbit to do some good within Universities and schools around the world. Seems no better place to dip our toes in than at the upcoming ACUTA conference taking place on April 19-21 in Atlanta, Georgia.

We will showcase our private beta version of Ribbit for Mobile, a service that transforms any physical phone into a physical/virtual “dual world” phone, enabling consumers to use their current phone plans in any number of new and evolving Web environments, live at the event, in booth #217.

Educational institutions are using the secure Ribbit platform to quickly build communication-enabled applications that are purpose-built to address their students’ and faculties’ needs. From academic, workflow and business processes, to coordinated on- and off-campus communications, Ribbit empowers educational institutions to communication-enable and enhance every facet of their operations.

Words of wisdom from our Director of Business Development, Alain Mowad:

• “The Ribbit platform gives educational institutions the power to create customized, robust, and secure applications to fit their needs quickly and cost-effectively. And, it’s exciting to show the education industry how Ribbit for Mobile can easily integrate into their communications and increase function and productivity, in both academic and business environments.”

Using Ribbit’s Programmable Communications Platform, communication features and functions are universally accessible through a multiplicity of common programming languages, over both public and private IP data networks. Ribbit bridges the traditional world of telephony with the emerging world of Web-based and mobile communications allowing widgets, applets, applications and workflows to be quickly prototyped, tested, deployed and shared.

More good things to know about Ribbit for Mobile:

• Ribbit has addressed both the underlying network and platform issues that until now have held back widespread deployment of rich media communications systems. The Ribbit platform resides outside of the institution’s facilities making available, from the Internet, all of the facilities required to support the complete life cycle of building and delivering communication enabled applications and services.
• Ribbit’s platform is highly secure and follows strict guidelines around privacy and security of data, allowing educational institutions to comply with privacy and security regulations. It requires no software downloads or installation for developers, IT managers or end-users.

Alain will be chained to the booth (#217) during the show, so make sure you stop by and say hello.

Tags: acuta, Conferences/Events, education, mobile, Ribbit, ribbit for mobile, voice to text, workflow, workflow apps

Ribbit heads to eComm and Sales 2.0

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 | located in Conferences/Events, Public Speaking | No Comments »

I think we shall just call the month of March, “conference month”, as it seems there is something going on every week, which is a good thing I guess, as it means more chances for you to meet the Ribbit crew!

The team is fully rested from last week’s TechCrunch event, and now head to:

eComm 2009: March 3-5, 2009 in Burlingame, CA
Crick, Martin and Wes will be leading sessions (info below) and you will find several Ribbert[ers] roaming the halls over the three day conference.

• Ribbit API for the Flash Platform, led by Wes Leonardo (Sr. Flash Platform Engineer, Ribbit) on Tuesday, March 3rd from 7:30 - 8:30 PM in Salon H - Join Ribbit Sr. Developer Platform specialist Wes Leonardo as he shows you the nuts and bolts of the Ribbit API for the Flash Platform. See how easy it is to make phone calls, check voicemail and send SMS messages straight from your web application. Ribbit makes adding these voice-over-the-web solutions easy to implement with a very easy to understand API. If you want to add the latest web technology to your applications, you’ll need to check out this session.
• Where’s the money in Voice 2.0? led by Martin Geddes (Head of Strategy, BT) on Thursday, March 5th from 4:00 - 4:15 PM in Salon E - In the Voice 1.0 world — a trillion dollar business — the revenues came from selling minutes and calling features. In future, a very different business model will drive growth. Value increasingly comes from managing interactions between businesses and consumers — getting the right people together on the right medium at the right time; and from transactions during those interactions. Martin shares some of the latest research and ideas on how this will happen.
• TeleDarwinism led by Crick Waters (Co-founder, SVP Strategy and Business Development, Ribbit) on Thursday, March 5th from 4:15 - 4:30 PM in Salon E -”Transmutation” through “survival of the fittest” or “genetic migration?”  Will the convergence of programmable telephony and Internet communications change the evolutionary mechanism of this two trillion dollar industry?  Telecommunications is not the first industry to face disruptive technology shifts that destabilize and threaten incumbent business models. Far from it. A number of industries have experienced and survived tumultuous disruptions even more profound than those facing today’s incumbent carriers. Through these episodes there are companies that have survived and those that have succumbed. Best practices and successful strategies used by the leading incumbents in those industries serve to illustrate how carriers can successfully respond to today’s changing landscape. To commemorate Darwin’s 200th birthday, Feb 12 2009, let’s consider an Origin of Species lens to look at how industries might adapt to survive environmental change. Can the concept of Natural Selection be reasonably applied to technology innovation?

Sales 2.0: March 4-5, 2009 in San Francisco, CA
One of our customers, Will Stacy (Director of Marketing, Santander Consumer USA Inc.) will be speaking here and I am told…plans to say a few nice things about us. Ha.

• Accelerating Productivity – New Sales 2.0 Tools on March 5th at 10:30am - Fasten your seatbelt. Three sales experts share their experience with adopting new Sales 2.0 tools that have dramatically accelerated their sales results. Learn about innovative solutions in mobile technology, e-signatures, online appointment setting, online collaboration and more. Each presenter will join a panel discussion designed to set priorities for implementing sales acceleration tools.

Next week, several of us pack our bags and head to Austin, TX for SxSWi. Our own Chuck Freedman has a nice little roundup of what we plan to get our hands in while there (Circus Mashimus, Chuck’s panel on the 16th) AND we will be announcing a fun little contest we have planed for the SxSWers as well, so stay tuned.

Tags: Conferences/Events, Crick Waters, ecomm, Events, Ribbit, sales 2.0, sales2.0, sxsw, wes leonardo

Event Roundup: TechCrunch’s Whose Cloud Is It Anyway

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 | located in Conferences/Events, Ribbit CRM | 1 Comment »

Last Friday, the Ribbit crew gathered at the TechCrunch Whose Cloud Is It Anyway (Ribbit was also a sponsor) to hear some key visionaries such as Marc Benioff (CEO, Salesforce.com), Vic Gundotra (VP Engineering, Google) and Werner Vogels (CTO, Amazon) discuss emerging applications in the cloud and the provide insight on the cloud computing infrastructure of the future.

Our friends over at Ooyala captured the event and also got a little face time with our own Greg Goldfarb (scroll down to the 17th video) who shares some nuggets on what Ribbit has been up to on the CRM side o four house:

We took a handful of photos while there and the complete set can be seen on Flickr.

Tags: cloud computing, cloudcomputing, Ribbit, ribbit for salesforce, ribbitforsalesforce, techcrunch

Ribbit receives rave reviews at Adobe MAX for Platform launch and Killer App Challenge

Thursday, November 20th, 2008 | located in Conferences/Events, Platform | 1 Comment »

This week at the Adobe MAX Conference, Ribbit announced the launch of the Ribbit developer platform, opening the doors to software developers, integrators, and carriers around the globe that are looking for ways to develop and deploy the next-generation of telecommunications services. The launch has implications for broad sectors of the global telephony industry — developers, integrators and carriers alike.

The Ribbit Team was at hand to answer questions and showcase partner applications built on our Ribbit 2.5 Platform. The new platform enables developers to bring new communication services to market — designing, testing, deploying, pricing, billing, and monitoring the application, performing each of these functions in a user-friendly, Web-based, on-demand environment.

The news of our Platform release was picked up around the planet by news outlets and bloggers including TMCNet, Venturebeat, Mashable, CNET, PCWorld, and syndicated on Marketwatch, International Business Times, Digital Producer Magazine, IT Business Net, PR-USA. The industry and developer reviews were more than positive. Often highlighted was Ribbit’s Killer App Challenge we had announced Monday,  where we are awarding $100,000 for the best business productivity, media, social network, and next-generation applications to be created using the Ribbit API.

Tags: adobe max, BT, cnet, Flash, flex, Killer App Challenge, MarketWatch, mashable, Ribbit, Ribbit 2.5, Telephony, VentureBeat

Ribbit’s Killer App Challenge Launches at Adobe MAX

Monday, November 17th, 2008 | located in Conferences/Events, Contests, Platform | No Comments »

Ribbit is pleased to announce our $100,000 Killer App Challenge, a chance for developers to create the next killer application on the Ribbit open platform for integrating voice communications in applications, web sites, and communities.

The competition begins immediately and will conclude in March 2009. Cash prizes totaling $100,000 will be awarded to the most compelling, creative, and useful application in each of five development categories, as well as a grand prize for the best overall entrant.

The Killer App Challenge is an unparalleled opportunity for creative professionals, developers and entrepreneurs to have their ideas launched on this global stage. We’re looking for the kind of apps that will improve interactions between business and user, help brands better interact with their audiences, and evolve social networking into the next level of essential communication..

The five contest categories are:

1. Media, Advertising and Entertainment — Add unprecedented interactive value to a media campaign by captivating a target audience through rich voice capabilities
2. Social Networking and Communication — Create a Web 3.0 preview application that connects people via Open Telephony
3. Business and Productivity — Integrate voice and rich communication features into a business application workflow
4. Carrier, Network, or ISP Integration — Integrate innovative voice capabilities into an existing cable, carrier, mobile network, or ISP
5. Wildcard — Create an application that uses voice to improve the usability of any device or interface, from vending machines to ticket kiosks

Developers retain full ownership of their applications, so even those applications not chosen as a contest winner can be deployed to deliver exciting new voice capabilities to customers, partners and employees.

For a complete description of the rules and prizes of the Ribbit Killer App Challenge, visit www.ribbit.com/killerappchallenge

Tags: adobemax, BT, Flash, flex, Ribbit, Telephony, Voice

We are LIVE at MAX

Monday, November 17th, 2008 | located in Conferences/Events, Uncategorized | No Comments »

This week we are LIVE at Adobe MAX Conference in San Francisco and will be talking about how with Ribbit you be more creative, more productive and add value and profitability to your work.

There will be lots of useful information for developers at MAX: all week long we will be showcasing some powerful new apps at our Booth #314; we will also be announcing an exciting new contest to get the community fired up; and best of all Chuck Freedman, our Director of Ribbit’s Developer Platform will be presenting at MAX on Monday, November 17, 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm - so be sure to check in regularly at the Ribbit developer blog for all the laterst information on MAX.,

We hope to see you all at MAX 2008 in San Francisco.

Tags: adobe max, Flash, max, Ribbit

Ribbit At Adobe MAX, November 17-19th

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 | located in Conferences/Events | No Comments »

Ribbit is alive this month as we get ready for the Adobe MAX Conference in San Francisco on November 17th-19th. MAX is the largest gathering of Flex and Flash Developers in the world and it gives us our best opportunity to talk directly with our 7,000+ developer community to share our latest platform tools and inventions.

Being a programmable phone company, means our greatest asset is our developers and we’ve been working hard to bring this community everything they need to integrate rich voice and communication into their Flash and Flex projects. We’ll have Ribbit Developers on hand at MAX the entire time, to show you what we’ve been up to and how to use Ribbit to help change the way we all think of communications.

We are particularly excited that Chuck Freedman, our Director of Ribbit’s Developer Platform, will be presenting at MAX on Monday, November 17, 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm

If you are coming to MAX, plan on coming by our booth 314. We’ll be looking forward to seeing you.

Tags: adobe max, Flash, open API, Ribbit

Hello Again

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 | located in Conferences/Events, Platform, Ribbit Mobile | No Comments »

Ribbit 2.5 Update: Yes, we have been very quiet here at Ribbit. Mt. View offices as our Developers work to put the final touches on our new Ribbit 2.5 API which enters pre-release this week. The new release will support a host of exciting new features including Outbound SMS Messaging, Contact Caching, and Call Event Monitoring. We are really excited about the encouraging feedback we have received, especially on our roadshows where Chuck Freedman, the Director of Ribbit’s Developer Platform, has been engaging our greater developer community. If you would like to sign up for the pre-release hop on over to our sign-up page and we will reach out when new seats are available.

Conferences

Emerging Technology Conference, Sept 22- 25th, MIT Campus: Ribbit was proud to be invited to the Emerging Technology Conference on the MIT campus in Cambridge, MA where we had the opportunity to exchange ideas with fellow tech innovators such as Intuit, Microsoft, Amazon and Intel, and a host of engrossed student developers. Conversations ranged from exciting partnership opportunities to ideas for integration with interesting new applications such as virtual worlds and online gaming. Our Ribbit 2.5 API was well received and we are thrilled to be recognized as a leader among the developer and innovator community.

Partnerships

Ribbit Joins Oracle’s CRM On Demand Inner Circle: Ribbit is busy building partnerships with Industry leaders. In late September, Oracle announced Ribbit’s addition to its prestigious Oracle PartnerNetwork. This enables the industry-leading Oracle(R) CRM On Demand application to add voice automation via Ribbit’s carrier-grade telephony platform. By incorporating voice into the Oracle CRM On Demand workflow, mobile workers can dramatically increase productivity and close more deals while on the go.

Ribbit Partners with Sylantro Systems: Ribbit Partners with Sylantro Systems: On Oct, 15th 2008 Ribbit announced a partnership with Sylantro to integrate the Ribbit Platform with Sylantro’s Synergy Platform and Synapps Web Services. The joint solution will enable developers to create and monetize rich, powerful, Flash-based telephony applications more quickly and easily, bringing the innovation from Ribbit’s growing developer community to Sylantro-powered service providers. At the Sylantro Global Summit in Las Vegas, Sylantro and Ribbit demonstrated this joint platform on Ribbit for Salesforce and was well received by the developer community.

Where to Catch Us Next

AJAX world, Oct 20-22nd, San Jose, CA: Chuck Freedman will be presenting at AJAX World, the largest West Coast event devoted to AJAX, Rich Internet Applications, and Enterprise Web 2.0. We will demo how easily your customers or clients can make and receive calls from your flash application without leaving the webpage or picking up the phone.

Dreamforce, Nov 2nd–5th, San Francisco, CA: The Ribbit team will be at the Dreamforce Conference on Nov 2nd–5th at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Dreamforce is the largest Software-as-a-Service event, focused on generating developer, partner and customer success with Salesforce CRM applications and the Force.com platform. Our Team will be available to talk about how Ribbit for Salesforce delivers voice memos and voicemails, directly to Salesforce accounts, from any mobile phone.

To stay up-to-date with all that’s new at Ribbit including new features, Conferences and Announcements be sure to sign up on our developer page.

Tags: AJAX World, dreamforce, Emerging Technology Conference, MIT, On Demand Inner Circle, Salesforce, Sylantro

Ribbit at Flashforward: The Crowd Goes Wild

Friday, August 29th, 2008 | located in Conferences/Events, Platform | No Comments »

Flashforward isn’t your ordinary conference…and that the crowd at last week’s show agreed that Ribbit isn’t your ordinary platform.

Flashforward 2008 followed on the heels of 360|Flex, a key conference for developers who work with Adobe Flex. Team Ribbit made a big showing at 360|Flex, hosting the full-house Summer Spawn developer workshop and gaining great accolades for their presence at the show.

But Flashforward took it to a whole new level. Calling on Flash developers to “Ignite Your Passion,” Flashforward brought Ribbit’s Director of Developer Platform Charles Freedman to center stage, asking him to share Ribbit with a packed house of 800 designers and developers—people from household-name enterprises to highly-focused design and development boutiques.

Here’s Chuck on stage at Flashforward.

You can see Chuck’s slides from the presentation here.

One thing this diverse crowd had in common was its excitement about Ribbit. Chuck’s show update sounded more like news from a concert tour than a tech conference. A throng of Flash programmers waited offstage for him, pressing close as he exited the speaker room and swapping questions, contact information, ideas—all with a vision for what Ribbit could bring to their business.

From using banner ads to spark customer call-ins to new ways of bringing sales reps closer to Web offers, the Flash crowd caught the Ribbit magic and saw the reasons to put our platform into action in their development work. Things like minimizing the steps between Web activity and call center conversations, direct response to banners, and other ways of engaging customers in connecting with offers seemed to pull developers right in our direction.

Another highlight from the show came when the Flashforward organizers asked Chuck to lead a lunchtime workshop. The competition for this crowd’s time was stiff: beautiful San Francisco weather and a great venue (Nob Hill) for sightseeing, along with several other workshop opportunities.

Ribbit packed the house, attracting a full 10% of conference participants to a crowded meeting room, filling it to the point where those who didn’t arrive early had to be turned away. We’re sorry that we couldn’t go hands-on with everyone, but we’ll remember the interest as we plan for future events.

In the meantime, if you want to learn more about how Ribbit works, these videos from our recent Spawn developer workshop break it down into easy steps.

Tags: flashforward Chuckstar developer platform, Ribbit