Real Time Communications Conference & Expo at Illinois Tech

When: Tuesday October, 12 – Thursday October, 14

Where: Virtually on SignalWire Events – Register now at no charge!

IIT Real Time Communications Conference

Speech technology has changed the nature of our daily interactions. From voice assistants to conversational bots, speech and artificial intelligence technologies give way to amazing opportunities for business applications as well as academic research.

Natural language understanding (NLU) is foundational to voice-powered technology. When this technology is performing at its best, the user experience is natural, fluid, and efficient. When it breaks down, the results can be frustrating. Despite recent advances in the field of AI, most conversational technologies still require a high degree of design skill to make this technology useful and effective, but there remain many challenges that impede optimal human-computer voice interaction. 

This track brings attendees up-to-date on current and emerging NLU technology, analyzing how state-of-the-art technology is applied and the potential implications when it fails. We will cover concepts related to conversational AI including, but not limited to, optimization and implementation of NLU engines, conversational design, voice biometrics and authentication, as well as best practices for the collecting, generating, and annotating of voice data. This track will highlight recent developments in NLU, challenge the operational impact of emerging technology, and identify opportunities for growth and improvement in the field of VoiceTech.

Track Highlights

Real-time Artificial Intelligence: outsmarting robocall scams with NLU – Alex Lartey, Just AI

Voice Biometrics – A catalyst for continuous authentication – Leo Ring, Daon; Jason Beloncik, Daon

How to Build and Curate Great Datasets for AI Speech Model Training – Mathew Lightman, Deepgram

Named Entity Recognition for ASR-generated Call Center Transcripts – Sam Davidson, University of California, Davis

Power of Real-time Zero Shot Learning in Human Conversations – Toshish Jawale Symbl.ai

About the Conference

The IIT RTC Conference is a globally recognized collaborative event, where industry and academia connect. Leveraging its unique academic setting, this annual conference brings together technical professionals and business executives from the data and telecommunications industry, standards bodies, policy and regulatory institutions, and academic educators and researchers to promote an open exchange of ideas to lead future development in the rapidly changing field of real-time communications.

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Stay tuned to our Conference website and mailing lists for further updates. Or follow us on:

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When: Tuesday October, 12 – Thursday October, 14

Where: Virtually on SignalWire Events – Register now at no charge!

By 2025, the Internet of Things is expected to connect 25 billion smart objects to the network. Applications and their enablement play a critical role in harnessing this growth in connectivity, and the data generated by these objects. IoT relies upon a vast confluence of technologies and standards – including sensors and actuators, wearable computing, communications & protocols, network, storage and compute infrastructure, big data and analytics, middleware, security, visualization and control and finally immersive applications.Thanks to its multidisciplinary approach, IoT has revolutionized many aspects of traditional paradigms.

IT technology development, whether it is Silicon, Multimedia Communication, Devices & Systems, Software, Solutions, System Integration & Services is being augmented through this new IoT paradigm. Vertical industry segments such as manufacturing, healthcare, digital workplace technologies, transportation and public sector continue to heavily invest their resources to capitalize on this burgeoning market which is poised to have an overall impact of many trillion dollars. Through these applications, the data collected can foster breakthroughs in decision making, operational efficiencies, safety, and security and have an impact on nearly every aspect of the customer experience.

This track brings together researchers from academia and industry who will describe their latest work in various fields relevant to this new, state-of-the-art, IoT paradigm.

Track Highlights

AI/ML are not sufficient: How to program billions and billions of IoT devices – Henning Schulzrinne, Columbia University – Track Keynote

Artificial Intelligence for Internet of Things: End-to-end software stack to consume and capitalize on IoT enabling state-of-the-art AI – Amisha Agarwal, Northwestern University

Time sensitive IoT: relationship to the metaverse and its support in 5G – Anthony C. K. Soong, Futurewei Technologies, Inc.

Smart Wireless Connectivity for IoT Applications Enabled by Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces – George C. Alexandropoulos, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

WebRTC on the Edge for video conferences and devices – Tim Panton, pi.pe gmbh

About the Conference

The IIT RTC Conference is a globally recognized collaborative event, where industry and academia connect. Leveraging its unique academic setting, this annual conference brings together technical professionals and business executives from the data and telecommunications industry, standards bodies, policy and regulatory institutions, and academic educators and researchers to promote an open exchange of ideas to lead future development in the rapidly changing field of real-time communications.

Follow us

Stay tuned to our Conference website and mailing lists for further updates. Or follow us on:

Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook

When: Tuesday October, 12 – Thursday October, 14

Where: Virtually on SignalWire Events

Register now!

Transition to Fully Virtual Conference

We have arrived at the difficult decision to transition to a fully virtual RTC Conference and Expo this year. When we began planning earlier this year, the COVID vaccination roll-out was just beginning, and infection rates had begun to decline. We felt that by implementing multiple on-site mitigation measures, we could safely host those members of the community who sought to meet face-to-face, while simultaneously relying upon the real-time communications methods offered by Signal Wire Events to deliver the premier global thought-leadership event for industry and academic experts in the rapidly changing field of real-time communications to a remote audience who may be unable or feel uncomfortable attending in person.

Unfortunately, due to the more recent rise of Covid cases throughout much of the US, and elsewhere around the globe, including here in Illinois, we decided it was in the best interests of the community to cancel the in-person portion. We will miss face-to-face meetings in the corridors, at lunch and in the sponsors’ booths, but we will be able to recreate some of this experience using SignalWire’s small-group options while protecting the health and well-being of our speakers, staff, partners and industry and academic colleagues. This protection still remains our top priority. We know this is the right decision to ensure the safety of the entire RTC Conference community.

We are very excited to move forward virtually! Without the expense and burden of travel, we expect an expanded audience will enhance opportunities to engage speakers and participants in a mix of talks, panels, and large- and small group discussions, using the methods that Real Time Communications provide. Best of all, we are eliminating registration fees, allowing the community to remotely attend the event online for FREE!

About the Conference

The IIT RTC Conference is a globally recognized collaborative event, where industry and academia connect. Leveraging its unique academic setting, this annual conference brings together technical professionals and business executives from the data and telecommunications industry, standards bodies, policy and regulatory institutions, and academic educators and researchers to promote an open exchange of ideas to lead future development in the rapidly changing field of real-time communications.

Follow us

Stay tuned to our Conference website and mailing lists for further updates. Or follow us on:

Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook

Global hackathon focused on programmable communications

Prize Pot: $20k (plus lots of goodies)

Registration is now open for the Chicago location of TADHack Global 2021 taking place on September 25 – 26. For the 8th year running, TADHack Global will be the largest telecom-focused hackathon in the world. The Real-Time Communications Lab at Illinois Tech has been proud to partner with TADHack Global beginning with the inaugural event in June, 2014. Previous hacks include programmable telecoms (voice, video, messaging), internet of things, cloud computing, robotics, machine learning, speech and face recognition, mobile payments, enterprise communications, decentralized web, blockchain, encryption, open source, and many other technologies. Check out the Youtube video on the first 7 Years of TADHack

This Fall, we’re excited to be returning to Kaplan Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship on IIT’s Mies Campus. With a focus on attracting innovative and entrepreneurial students from across campus and beyond who come to learn how to convert their creative ideas into significant businesses, services and new solutions, Kaplan is the perfect venue for TADHack.

This year, we have an awesome line-up of sponsors to hack on, including:

• Symbl.ai (conversation intelligence, https://symbl.ai)

• Jambonz (open source CPaaS, https://jambonz.org)

• SubSpace (the network for real-time applications, https://subspace.com/)

• AWA (https://awa.network – stealth start-up coming out at TADHack)

• Telnyx (voice, SMS, verify (two factor authentication), phone numbers, fax, IoT, identity, WebRTC, https://telnyx.com/)

Communications is fundamental to the human condition. Now it is programmable, and we are only beginning to scratch the surface of what is possible using it to improve people’s lives. Please come join us at TADHack where you’ll have fun, meet amazing people from around the world, learn important new skills, and perhaps even change the world with your hack. TADHack is for everyone!

When: Tuesday October, 12 – Thursday October, 14

Where: Hermann Hall on IIT’s Mies Campus, or Virtually on SignalWire Events

Register now!

The cloud is one of the defining technologies of the twenty-first century. By virtue of increased flexibility and cost-effectiveness relative to traditional IT, it has put vast computing resources at the fingertips of billions of people. At the same time, rapidly rising mobile data consumption, coupled with the high costs for deploying 5G are forcing operators to re-examine how they deploy next generation networks. This is leading network operators to begin transitioning to advanced technologies such as a cloud-native 5G mobile core architecture, virtualized Radio Access Networks (vRAN), and increased reliance on machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI) to enable network automation.

This evolution makes it possible to build, deploy, and operate new communications services quickly and with relative ease. It increases the number of communications developers and ushers in an era of “programmable real time networks” that are focused not only on technologies such as 5G, virtualization, and machine learning (ML), but also on potential future intersections with technologies such as dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS), blockchain distributed ledgers, quantum computing, and many others.

This transition toward programmable networks gives rise to a new class of developer, network engineers armed with the ability to programmatically interact with the networks they administer. Programmatic interfaces enable network engineers to automate the creation of new network services, rapidly accelerating real time network creation and service activation functions, and to monitor and scale existing network services in real time to meet the rapidly increasing demands of the applications that run on top of them.

This track will focus on the technologies behind the shift to programmable real time networks, new skills required for the emerging class of network developers, and how these technologies are democratizing the way developers and network engineers create value and solve problems in disparate verticals. We will also delve into the intersection of voice, video and messaging technologies with other disciplines to examine potential threats and opportunities as developers and customers define new cutting-edge services and create new, disruptive applications.

Track highlights include:

Energy Efficient VoIP systems – Altanai Bisht

Network services as code made possible by collaboration across standards and open source – Charles Eckel, Cisco

XDN (Experience Delivery Network) as an Architecture for Our New Interactive World – Chris Allen, Red5 Pro

Network “biodiversity” – why visions of 5G ubiquity & monoculture miss the mark – Dean Bubley, Distruptive Analysis; Sander Rotmensen, Siemens AG

TVWS – Turning Spectrum Scarcity into Spectrum Opportunity – Hender Jimenez, Microsoft

Achieving herd immunity against robocalls – Henning Schulzrinne, Columbia University

A multisided marketplace platform for telco enabled products – Marius Waldum, Working Group Two AS

Global RTC in a Post-COVID World – William King, Subspace

About the Conference

The IIT RTC Conference is a globally recognized collaborative event, where industry and academia connect. Leveraging its unique academic setting, this annual conference brings together technical professionals and business executives from the data and telecommunications industry, standards bodies, policy and regulatory institutions, and academic educators and researchers to promote an open exchange of ideas to lead future development in the rapidly changing field of real-time communications.

Follow us

Stay tuned to our Conference website and mailing lists for further updates. Or follow us on:

Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook