The Difference Between Your Project Succeeding or Burning To A Crisp Is Actually You. Dan Jenkins, Founder at Nimble Ape & Director at CommCon Events TADSummit EMEA Americas 2020 For far too long Open Source projects have been getting in their own way; with no marketing budget to shout the loudest it’s always an uphill battle to get their fair share of the marketplace. But ultimately, we as Open Source project owners and maintainers are the problem. We need to start thinking about Open Source projects as Products and Services that need to be promoted in their own right. It’s no longer good enough to just have a project website with a wiki and a download link. It’s up to us to sell our love for our creations and make others see the advantages of using them. We need to get out of our own way and show the world what Open Source can do for them and right now we’re failing. Join us to find out what you can do to get out of your own way and succeed.

1. The Difference Between Your
Project Succeeding or Burning
to a Crisp Is Actually You.
Dan Jenkins - TAD Summit EMEA Americas 2020

2. The Zoom Effect.

3. The Global
Pandemic.
Didn't change a thing...
It just brought it to the
forefront of the mind.

4. You're Getting in Your
Own Way.

5. Make Way.
Make Haste.

6. A Little About Me.
• Chief Ape.
• Founder of Nimble Ape Ltd.
• An RTC Consultancy in the UK.
• Organiser of CommCon.
• Builder of Lego™.
• Masher upper of cool sh*t.
• @dan_jenkins
• dan@nimblea.pe
nimblea.pe | commcon.xyz
Dan Jenkins

7. The Difference Between Your
Project Succeeding or Burning
to a Crisp Is Actually You.

8. So What Is the Zoom Effect?
Zoom is becoming a verb.
Much like Hoover did.
Which is super depressing.

9. Upfront Warning.
This Talk Is Going To Follow a TED Talk Format.
Lots of Opinions...
Possibly Not Much To Back It Up...
But You'll Hopefully Go Away Thoughtful...

10. Onwards!

11. Why Do We Hear
About Zoom Every.
Single. Day.

12. Why Do We Not See Jitsi
Meet's Interface on the
News?

13. Everyone Knows
of Slack.

14. Why Doesn't Everyone
Know About Matrix/
Element?

15. Everyone's Heard
of Twilio & Vonage.

16. But Very Few of Us Know
About Jambonz.
(Granted... It's Pretty New)

17. Everyone's Heard
of Avaya & Cisco.

18. But Asterisk, FreeSWITCH,
Kamailio and OpenSIPS Are Still
Relatively Under Utilised in
Enterprises.

19. WHY?!

20. Because Promoting a RTC Open
Source Project Is Intrinsically
Difficult.

21. IT Admins (and Developers)
Are Inherently Lazy.

22. Scrap That.
We Are All Inherently Lazy.

23. We all Want To Try
Before We Buy.

24. That Means a
Trial With a
cPaaS Is Easy.

25. And Taking the
Time To Setup a
RTC OSS Project Is
Time Consuming.

26. "Just Give Me
a Platform I
Can Log Into".

27. Every Project Should Have a
Showcase Application.

28. This Is Easy for Projects With Little
to no External Dependencies.

29. Introducing Dana The
Stream Gatekeeper.

31. Its Turned Into a
Showcase Project
for Asterisk & It's
Newer APIs.

32. Self Promotion Over.
Back to the Problem at Hand.

33. Let's Take a Minute and
Take a Look at Some of
the Most Well Known
RTC Open Source
Projects.

34. "Chat" Projects.
• Matrix / Element
• Mattermost
• Rocket Chat
• Zulip

35. VoIP Projects.
• FreeSWITCH
• Asterisk
• Kamailio
• OpenSIPS
• 2600Hz's Kazoo
• Drachtio
• PJSIP

36. WebRTC Projects.
• Janus
• MediaSoup
• Medooze
• Jitsi Video Bridge / Jitsi Meet
• Pion
• Ant Media
• Kurento
• Licode

37. Looking at Only
the WebRTC
Projects...

38. Which of These Is
the Most Popular
Today?

39. Jitsi Meet.
Note - Not Jitsi Video Bridge

40. But Why?!

41. apt-get install jitsi-meet
https://crosstalksolutions.com/how-to-install-jitsi-server-on-ubuntu-19-10/

42. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZCX2gBln1s Thanks Chris!

43. Jitsi Meet Is Feature Rich.
• E2EE
• Screen Sharing
• Mute Controls over Remote
Participants
• YouTube Streaming
• Around 75 Participants per
room
• And many many more.

44. But All Those
Other Projects
Can Do Those Too.
Shocking... I know.

45. So Why Does Jitsi
Get All the Glory?

46. Because They Have a
Feature Rich UI and a
Project Deployed 99%
With a One Liner.

47. But Ultimately, Even
"the Best of Us" in
Jitsi, Isn't Competing
With Zoom.

48. The UK Govt.

49. The South African Govt.

50. The BBC

51. Netherlands Govt.

52. WHY?

53. Quite Frankly,
It's our Fault.

54. You Heard Me!

55. Users Are Blind.

56. They Don't
Know Any
Better.

57. They Don't Know Zoom Is
Insecure.

58. They Don't Know Zoom Does
Bad Things to Your OS.

59. But We Do.

60. Users
Don't
Read
Ars
Technica.

61. So Why Do People Use Zoom?

62. Because
It's Easy
and It
"works".

63. It Might Offer Sh*T Audio
Quality but It "works".
And That's all Users Care About.

64. What's the
Underlying
Message Here?

65. Let's Take a
Leaf Out of
Element &
Mattermost's
Books

66. Make It Easy To Sign Up to a
Project's Cloud Platform.

67. And Where That's Not Possible...
Follow Jitsi's Example With Near
One Line Demo Installs With
Amazing Example UIs.

68. And if That's Still Not Possible
Then at Least Make Your SDKs
Modern and Fully Functional.
Make Using Your Project Easy.

69. We Can Complain
About ...

70. Zoom.

71. MS Teams.

72. Slack.

73. Twilio.

74. Ring Central.

75. Skype.

76. Webex.

77. <Insert Cloud Service Here>.

78. But They're the Ones
Who Have Scaled to
X Growth During the
Pandemic.

79. Want a Slice of the Pie?

80. Build a Better
Tomorrow.

81. Build Something
That Shows How
Sh*t Zoom Really Is.

82. Build Something That
Shows Why <Insert
Your Project Here> Is
the New Hotness.

83. Thanks.

84. Actually...
I'm Not Quite Done.

85. I've Been Totally Unfair to
People and Projects I
Class as Friends.
And I Want To Make That
Right.

86. The Trouble Is That RTC
Projects in Particular
Are Incredibly Difficult
To Show Off to
Potential Users.

87. Installations Are
Not Simple.

88. And
cPaaS = GDPR
Nightmare.

89. And
cPaaS = ££$$.

90. Wouldn't It Be
Awesome To Have a
Combined Marketing
Budget & Legal
Protections

91. Wouldn't It Be Awesome To
Have a Joint Organisation
With a Sole Purpose of
Promoting Open Source
RTC Projects?

92. Sounds Like an
RTC Cooperative
to Me.

93. Told You It Would
Be Thought
Provoking Didn't
I...

94. OK, Now I'm Done.

95. Thanks.
@dan_jenkins
dan@nimblea.pe