Why are developers so excited about the new tools? Agile programming, AJAX, Ruby on Rails, and other tools are being connected to widgets on the Internet. The market is ripe for developers to mashup in real time and to deploy services worldwide. Share the experience of these panelists as they discuss their own experiences.

Thomas McCarthy-Howe has nineteen years of experience in telecommunications product development. He is currently an independent consultant to service providers, enterprises and equipment vendors in the design and development of next generation communications equipment and services.

Thomas has held senior management and engineering positions at industry leaders such as Comverse, Versatel Networks, PictureTel and Aware. As a member of the PictureTel engineering team, Mr. Howe designed audio and video software of the first PC-based video conferencing system, as well as software for the original version of NetMeeting, and as Aware Inc.'s software architect for the first commercially available ADSL chipset. In 2007, Thomas won the O’Reilly Emerging Telephony Mashup Contest.

In addition to his writing and teaching, he currently serves on several technical advisory boards and boards of directors.

Patrick Murphy serves as COO of The Thomas Howe Company. He brings 17 years of business development, sales, finance, HR, and marketing experience primarily within the Internet and Telecom industry. He started his career working with nonprofits in housing and community organizing efforts. Pat has been involved in four startup experiences and countless product launches over the last 20 plus years thus some characteristics of the serial entrepreneur seem to be part of his DNA.In 1991, he earned an MS from the University of Massachusetts/Boston's McCormack Institute of Public Policy. A BS in management (Finance/HR) was earned from Boston College in 1987.Pat has a long history of involvement with his community.His current Board of Director positions include Cape Cod and Islands United Way, Cape Cod Technology Council, and the Cape and Islands Workforce Investment Board. Pat also serves as the Vice Chair of the Barnstable School Committee helping to oversee a $60 million dollar District as a publicly elected volunteer official.

Jay Phillips is an innovator in the spaces where sophisticated VoIP development falls apart and where Ruby rocks. As the creator of Adhearsion and its parent company Codemecca, Jay brings new possibilities to these two technologies through his work on the open-source Adhearsion framework. Adhearsion vastly improves VoIP development with
Asterisk and simplifies the integration of other
collaboration technologies for small to enterprise businesses and the independent hacker alike.