TADSummit, KazooCon & VON: Evolution Roundup

It’s been a busy autumn for us in the Nimble Ape team with Dan speaking at five events in as many weeks with four brand new talks. RTC.ON (read our overview of RTC.ON here), TADSummit, Kazoocon, VON: Builder and VON: Evolution.

TADSummit

At the end of October, Dan spoke at TADSummit about how passkeys will change how the general public handles passwords… or more specifically, he talked about how the adoption of passkeys means no more passwords but questioned whether this will completely eliminate the need for passwords. Dan reflected on whether passkeys remove two factor authentication from the process, and whether strong passwords and strong two-factor auth mechanisms still function better than passkeys. Spoiler: Dan thinks so.

You can check out his session over on the TADSummit Youtube channel.

And you can check out Dan’s slides for the Passkeys talk here.

Passkeys, FIDO2, WebAuthn…what does it all mean?

It’s great to see so many everyday brands embracing passkeys: Whatsapp, Uber, Google, Apple, Amazon and Ebay are among those who have added passkey support recently. Have a look at https://passkeys.directory/ to see if you can migrate to using passkeys today.

KAZOOcon

After attending TADSummit virtually, Dan hopped on a plane to Las Vegas in the USA for Kazoocon. Kazoocon is run by 2600Hz who maintain the Kazoo open source project - while in Vegas the announcement was made that 2600Hz had been acquired by Ooma. This was Dan’s first time attending Kazoocon and was lucky enough to present on the first day of talks about how the two parts of the media industry (Real-time Comms and the more traditional Broadcast/Media Delivery parts) are merging more and more as time goes on, spurred on by changes since the global pandemic.

Unfortunately the talks weren’t recorded but you can see Dan’s slides for the Merging Media Industry talk over at Speakerdeck.

There’s a little bit of artistic licence in this talk when it comes to how simple it is to implement QUIC for real-time stuff: Without intervention, the Media over QUIC specification might very well not cater to real-time scenarios. There’s been a bit of follow up discussion on this topic on the fediverse.

VON: Builder

And then finally there was VON: Builder and VON: Evolution in New York hosted by Vonage co-founder Jeff Pulver. VON: Builder was co-curated by Dan, and he gave a talk on controlling physical objects with WebRTC.

You can find his slides for controlling physical devices with WebRTC here.

VON: Builder was a special event for both Jeff and Dan; they both believe in the power of connecting those working on APIs across the different parts of the real-time communication industry. Bringing together some of the most well known brands and speakers is hugely rewarding and also allows for new ideas to start flowing.

The New York skyline looking awesome in the sun

VON: Evolution

VON: Builder was followed by two days of fireside chats at VON: Evolution. Jeff put on a fantastic roster of interesting people and their stories. From internet regulation, to mention of BT getting rid of the PSTN by December 2025 and hearing about how the energy sector is looking at innovative ways to collect usage data, it was a varied and fascinating range of conversations.

Dan and Jeff talked about the state of WebRTC and its part to play in the whole media ecosystem going forward into 2024 and beyond.

A fireside chat with Jeff at Von: Evolution NYC

VON: Evolution London

Jeff is a true visionary who is passionate about connecting people and creating fresh ideas. If you missed out on the New York event, he’ll be in London running VON: Evolution London on 6 December 2023 where he and Dan will be speaking about the state of WebRTC among other things.

We hope to see you there,

- Dan and the Nimble Ape team