The relentless force that is Jeff Pulver refused to rest on his laurels Tuesday, instead exhorting the crowd at the VON show to think bigger and work harder.
In a keynote presentation titled "Nothing is Impossible," the most-recognized person in the Voice over IP arena told attendees at his conference that they should set their sights higher than merely providing voice services over the Internet.
"We're still in the early adopter phase of this market," said Pulver, who gained mainstream notoriety earlier this year when the FCC granted his petition to keep his company's Free World Dialup service free from regulatory constraints.
Among VON regulars and the VoIP community, Pulver is a known quantity, and blends in well with the geeks-r-us mentality of the nascent market (how many other conference organizers and CEOs give keynotes in summer-of-love shirts and take digital pictures of the crowd at their own speeches?). If you're tapped into Pulver's world you probably already follow his personal blog, where you can hear not only about his Capitol Hill travails, but also about side trips to the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame ceremonies.
With such boundless energy, it's no surprise that Pulver sees a bigger world for IP communications than phones plugged into DSL lines. "There are lots of opportunities to make it [IP communications] better," Pulver asserted, adding that the VoIP world could use some Apple Computer-style marketing or product innovation.
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