I was fortunate enough to land myself a ticket to Signal in London last week – the innovative developer conference for cloud-communications expert, Twilio. The one-day event is a celebration of all-things innovation, complete with insights from Twilio customers, developers, and partners.
#SignalLondon was my very first adventure into Twilio events, so I was focused on getting as much out of the experience as I could. My main aim was to learn everything possible about the wonders of Communications APIs, and how Twilio have earned a billion-dollar share of the market. According to some of the biggest names in the industry, this brand is the king of all things “CPaaS” (Communications Platform as a Service), and after Signal, I finally know why.
Introducing Twilio
Twilio are innovators in the market thanks to their omni-channel communications platform, which is hosted on the cloud. The platform provides APIs to software developers around the world, who can use the technology to build exceptional customer experiences from scratch. The unique value proposition behind this brand comes from the fact that they’ve managed to strip down all of the basic and complex features of business telephony and contact centre communication, to create something that’s accessible for everyone.
By diving into the nitty-gritty parts of communication, Twilio have made almost every possibility available for coders who want a reliable, scalable, and flexible environment to work with. With Twilio, and /unified-communications/cpaas, businesses can explore new opportunities with their communications framework. Whether it’s intelligent call routing, rules-based messaging, or authentication at brand-new heights, there’s something for everyone with Twilio.
Experiencing the Twilio community was enough to convince me that Twilio really put the unity into unified communications.
Signal Begins with the Wizard of Apps
The Twilio Signal event started off with an introduction from the CEO Jeff Lawson. As the man responsible for Twilio’s future, Jeff is a master of innovation. The 39-year-old father of two began the business back in 2008 with two of his friends, and he’s best known today for hosting live coding sessions on stage in front of crowds of his fans. Jeff has shown the world how easy coding can really be.
Lawson began Signal in London with an inspirational introduction to the brand, complete with an update on the latest developments in the company. The screen behind him announced “Code is Creative“, which was Twilio’s way of encouraging business leaders and coders to come up with new ways of working, and new ideas.
Lawson then went on to introduce a few of the UK’s leading “doers” (Twilio’s term for innovators), asking them to come up onto the stage and explain how they’ve managed to innovate new and improved solutions using Twilio software. Each person that took the microphone had something new to share about the way they had changed the world with Twilio. This year’s notable people were:
- Clement Sauvage, Les TonTons Livreurs
- Mark Quinn, CarFinance247
- Tom Mellon, DVELP
- Kathleen Corr of NSPCC
Twilio Sells Trust
Jeff noted that at Twilio, the most important thing they sell is “trust”. Today, the Twilio platform processes more than 28 billion interactions every year – that’s a lot of consumer engagement to manage. According to Jeff, it’s also available 99.999% of the time.
Agility is at the heart of Twilio’s platform. The system is incredibly scalable, and has a minimal entry cost too. As your business continues to grow, the platform can grow with it. Now, customers can access telephone numbers in more than 100 different countries, and the developer community continues to expand. Twilio currently has 1.6 million developers, with more than 500,000 in the EMEA region alone.
Lawson finished up his insight into Twilio with a strong message about the upcoming concern of GDPR, and the approaching deadline in May. He noted that Twilio was well on-track for GDPR compliance, and that GDPR APIs were currently being developed to help other organisations reach the same level of compliance.
An Incredible Experience
The day continued with training, strategic, and technical sessions for all Signal attendees, with many supporting influences present, such as Amazon Web Services, DocuSign, Algolia, Google Cloud, Square, IBM, VoiceBase, and Ytica, which all had their own speaker sessions in the main hall.
The day finished with an afterparty called $Bash, where all of the partners, speakers, and attendees got together to play games developed by the community, and drink the occasional beer. There were even prizes available for winners. Overall, the experience was truly unforgettable. Before now, I never really understood the possibilities of the Twilio platform. However, I left the event desperate to grab a copy of “Coding for Dummies”, so that I could start my own CPaaS adventure.
You can watch the opening keynote presentation at the Twilio Signal site.
