Supporting Twilio’s Signal 2018 Conference: Event Comms, SDK, and More

Orion Labs had a strong presence at Twilio’s Signal 2018 conference, held this past week at the Bill Graham Auditorium and in the plaza in front of San Francisco City Hall. Here are our team’s key highlights from the event.

Orion: Signal’s Official Staff Communications Provider

Orion AppTalk Plus deployment at Signal 2018Orion sponsored onsite communications for Signal 2018 staff and vendors to keep the entire conference running smoothly. We distributed over 60 Kyocera devices running the Orion Push to Talk app, instantly connecting the Signal team via PTT. Additionally, each device was powered by Twilio Programmable Wireless.

With a command post inside Bill Graham, the Orion deployment team distributed Orion devices to the staff and remained onsite for support. This was a great collaboration between the Orion and Twilio teams; look for more details soon.

“Voice as the New Interface” and Orion’s New SDK

Orion Co-Founder and CEO, Jesse Robbins, spoke on the theme of “Voice as the new interface: Transforming field services with natural language processing”. Jesse talked about how the Orion connected voice platform is transforming the enterprise and public safety workplaces. He also provided a live demo of the Orion platform and supported devices. He overviewed how Orion is partnering with the developer community to build voice bots and workflows for the Orion platform.

See the video below or view it on YouTube:

As part of building further collaboration with the developer community, Orion announced beta access to Orion Labs Software Development Kit for IBM’s Node-RED. Developers can build rich voice and location workflows using a visual drag-and-drop interface. Orion’s hosted version of Node-RED+SDK for Orion Pro subscribers is also available. Stay tuned for more details about the beta program.

Key Signal 2018 News and Voice Industry Trends

Twilio took the opportunity to share big news with the 3,000+ attendees. Twilio announced their Super SIM for global capability. In addition to T-Mobile USA, Twilio has also partnered with the 3 Group, Singtel and Telefonica to deliver a global connectivity solution. Each carrier has a strong regional focus; 3 Group (Europe), Singtel (Asia) and Telefonica (Latin America). The Super SIM will use a multi IMSI solution to support the global footprint. Twilio also announced its support for NB IoT with T-Mobile.

The social impact arm of the company, Twilio.org, committed to helping a billion people over the next ten years. They also announced they’d donate up to $10 million worth of their Flex product to nonprofits.

Orion in the Signal 2018 Community Hall

Orion Onyx giveaway at Signal 2018Because many Signal attendees were developers, CTOs, and other technical folks, we invited our Engineering team to join the show. Our Head of Engineering Dan Phung and Web Platform Manager Jim Chambers met with attendees to explain what Orion does and learn about problems their organizations are working on.

We also gave away more than 100 Onyx devices to “Voice as the New Interface” attendees, many of whom were trying Orion for the first time. Not only did they walk away with their very own Onyx, but also they connected on Orion with other attendees to chat and network.

Signal 2018 was a fantastically fun and productive event. We were proud to be part of it and extend our thanks to the Twilio team!