Jordy Blog

My brother and business partner Gabe will be helping to lead a discussion on FreeSWITCH and Asterisk at the the Utah Open Source Conference tomorrow.

Gabe is the CTO of our small startup company (Izeni), and our team has built, and continues to build, some pretty cool projects based on these (and other) open source telephony technologies.

Some of the recent FreeSWITCH customization projects we’ve built for our clients include a custom call center that can handle up to 100 concurrent agents on commodity hardware, and a distributed SIP load tester that’s capable of pushing thousands of concurrent SIP calls (suitable for stress testing extremely large telephony infrastructures).

But those are just 2 examples of the many ways a company can customize a free software phone switch to enhance their current products or services with open source telephony. Whether you need a hosted IVR (Interactive Voice Response) solution, or just some method to bridge phone calls, record calls, make outbound calls, etc; FreeSWITCH and Asterisk are up to the task.

Anyway, if you’re in Utah and are interested in learning more about Open Source telephony, you should come by tomorrow to check out the discussion. You can also can review the (expansive) FreeSWITCH and Asterisk feature sets. And if you need some phone-related development done for your company, that kind of work is highly specialized, easy to outsource, and right up our alley. We’d love to help!

Along those same lines is something that’s been on my mind lately: I’d be interested in starting a Utah FreeSWITCH Users Group, originally meeting in only in Utah Valley, but hopefully spreading as the FreeSWITCH project comes into more common usage. If you’re local and would be interesting in participating (or leading), please let me know.

And if you think of some way you’d like to have your product interact with phones, text messages, even IM –that’s just what we do. We’d love to help you work through it –even if it’s just to help you see what’s possible.

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I’ll be taking part in my second-ever protest today. My first was a recent “End the Fed” rally at the SLC branch of the Federal Reserve Bank. Today I’m attending a couple of the Utah Tea Parties.

Frankly, I’m outraged by the tax and spend policies that BOTH major parties have been adhering to lately. Actually, most Republicans prefer the “borrow and spend” method, which is even more insidious: passing our debt to future generations and incentivizing inflation as a “cheap” means of paying that debt.

I think Jefferson said it best:

We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds… [we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers… And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for [another ]… till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery… And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.

Although Daniel Webster was more succinct:

The power to tax is the power to destroy.

If you agree with either of those statements, you should join us!

Here’s the most complete set of Utah locations I have found so far:

City: Salt Lake City ~ 1st Event
When: April 15, 12:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Where: Federal Building Plaza, 125 South State Street
Program
Activist and Author Candace Salima
Attorney General Mark Shurtleff
Congressman Jason Chaffetz (3rd District)
Congressman Rob Bishop (1st District)
For more information, contact Adam Gardiner at agardiner14@gmail.com (801-814-8963).

City: Logan
When: April 15, 4:00pm – 6:00 pm
Where: 241 North Main Street (south of Logan Library/City Hall)
For more information, contact Susan Southwick at susanksouthwick@gmail.com.

City: Salt Lake City ~ 2nd Event
When: April 15, 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Where: US Post Office Salt Lake City, 1795 W 2100 S
For more information, contact David at saltlaketeaparty@gmail.com (801-377-8224).

City: Provo
When: April 15, 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Where: Old Utah County Courthouse at the corner of University and Center
For more information, contact David at saltlaketeaparty@gmail.com (801-377-8224).

City: St. George
When: April 15, 5:00pm – 7:00pm
Where: Vernon Worthen Park, 300 S 400 E
For more information, contact Rinda Hunter at rinda.hunter@washco.utah.gov.

City: Vernal
When: April 15, 5:00 pm
Where: 150 East Main Street
For more information, contact Susan Southwick at susanksouthwick@gmail.com.

City: Richfield
When: April 15, 5:30pm – 7:30pm
Where: City Park, near 300 North and Main Street

I hope to see you there!

By the way, I’ll be spending most of my time protesting inflation: the hidden tax.  I’ll do a post illuminating the disasterous effects of inflation later.

Izeni will be at BYU’s Web Startup Group tonight to give a short demo of our first product, CallClock.

CallClock is a mobile (hosted) timekeeping system to help employers and contract workers record work time for payroll, invoicing, job costing, and project management. CallClock is still in private beta, but Izeni joins other local companies in using it in-house while we’re finding bugs and adding features.

If you’d be interested in being a part of our private beta, let me know. If you’re in the Provo area tonight and want to see it work, swing on by.

I got this email from Parents for Choice in Education last night.

Transparency in Education Forum, Jan. 14th

On Wednesday January 14th, the Sutherland Institute is hosting a forum called Transparency in Education, featuring John Fund of the Wall Street Journal.  The forum will include a sneak peak at Utah’s new transparency website.

We encourage you to attend the forum, both because of the importance of transparency and because John Fund is a great speaker (He’s spoken at PCE events in the past).

From our perspective, financial transparency in education is crucial to empowering citizens and increasing accountability, especially in an education system with limited choice. Increasing transparency is one of the main reasons we created the website www.UtahEducationFacts.com.

As we mentioned in our latest email bulletin, transparency will be a key issue in the 2009 legislative session.  Last year, the Legislature passed a law requiring government agencies at the state level to post financial data online for public scrutiny.  Senator Niederhauser of Sandy is sponsoring a bill for 2009 that will extend the transparency requirements to local government, including school districts and charter schools.

The event costs $25 per person and is on Wednesday, January 14th from 2 to 4 pm in downtown Salt Lake City.  To reserve a seat, call (801) 355-1272 or visit www.sutherlandinstitute.org.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *
For more info about the event, see this flyer.

To learn more about financial transparency in education, go here.

Please consider becoming a member of Parents for Choice in Education if you haven’t yet. It’s free, and it’s a darn good way to stay abreast of movements in education reform (which I think we need now more than ever).

By the way, I’m putting events like this on a colaborative Utah Liberty Events Calendar. You should subscribe if you’re into that kind of stuff (and let me know if you’d like to contribute).

Gabe and I want to be sure that our start up company, Izeni, has a cash runway that’s long enough to ensure that we can have a proper lift off. To that end we’ve been doing some consulting and contract work (mostly low-hanging fruit) to slow our burn rate, and it’s worked fairly well because we’re in bootstrapping mode and our expenses are relativity low. So, although we’ve never really sought contract work, we do like it; and I thought I’d do a quick post officially soliciting it.

So without further ado, Izeni will be accepting all kinds of technical consulting and contract work. Our specialities are Python coding; website development (particularly using the Django framework); Linux systems administration (Apache, *SQL, Postfix, Mailman, IPtables, Samba, Bash, etc.); and VoIP-based telephony (Asterisk and Freeswitch).

We can also do general computer and network support, online marketing, and a myriad of other technical and business odds and ends.  :)

Izeni is based out of Utah, but we can also telecommute.

Please let me know if you have any contracting and consulting opportunities or know of any companies looking for web guys, programmers, or other technical contractors. Otherwise, feel free to repost this (pass the word along), or just keep us in mind.

A few months ago, I wrote that Governor Huntsman’s “monitoring” of gas prices was just political BS, and that purposely encouraging a misunderstanding of basic economics for political gain was a bad idea.

Well, it turns out I was wrong: just the threat of State oversight made Utah gas vendors stop being greedy, and now Utah enjoys some of the cheapest gas in the nation!

(OK, you’re onto me: that was BS too. But Utah really does have some remarkable gas prices right now.)

Anyway, my friend and former neighbor Kerk (who is also an Economics professor at BYU) has an excellent post that could serve very well as a follow up to my aforementioned rant:

Current Gas Prices (December 2008)

Look at the above map from GasBuddy.com. The price of gasoline in northern Utah these days is about as low as any place in the US. If you live in Utah you know the press here goes into fits of apoplexy whenever gas prices in Utah are higher than the rest of the country. Last Spring all we heard about was how the greedy gas station owners were profiteering and charging unfair prices to Utah drivers. In 2006, KSL radio host, Doug Wright, tried to organize a one-day boycott of gas stations because Utah gas prices were the 4th most expensive in the nation. Now that prices are down no one is talking about who is being unfair to who. Using the same arguments, one could argue that motorists are now colluding to drive down the price of gas and harming gas station owners. Of course this is silly, but it makes as much sense and is just as logical. Inevitably, in the future some time the price of gas in Utah will rise above the national average and our local press will go nuts again. Remember this picture when that happens.

Brilliant!

I think we’d all be better served with an understanding of basic economics. That way we can let our news media go back to talking about family-pet hit-and-runs, celebrity lookalikes, local American Idol runners up, and the like. That’s right, Doug Wright: we should be boycotting you.

Seriously though. Whenever you hear some news anchor or some politician spouting out things that are blatantly stupid, you should ask yourself: “Are they stupid, or do they just think I’m stupid.” Then ask yourself which is better. Do you want news by dumb people, or news for dumb people?

Interestingly, I heard it reported that because of relatively lower wholesale gasoline prices, station owners are actually making more money right now with low retail prices than they were making with high retail prices. Go figure.

Yes, we are being (relatively) gouged on super cheap fuel.

Outrage, anyone?

This Christmas our family gift is a years’ supply of food storage –and I’m thrilled to have it.

I decided I’ll also be giving the gift of food storage to my family and friends. No I’m not buying it (although I think a box or a bucket of wheat makes a tremendous gift idea), but I do offer my time as a resource in food planning and food packing. (For anyone who has canned their own food, you know this has potential to be a major time commitment.) The offer is good until next Christmas, but please give me a call right away so we can get you started today.

For those of you who are not my family and friends, I’d still like to help you with your food storage planning; basically determining what food items you’ll need and where you can buy them. I’ll point to a few resources in case you want to do it yourself, but please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or just need help getting started. I was relieved to have a great friend who talked me through it, and I’d like to pass the favor along.

For anyone who wants to get started on there own emergency food storage, you should check out he following resources:

StockUpFood.com is a free food storage calculator that helps you determine your emergency food planning needs based on family size and how much food storage you would like, whether you want enough for just 1-month or 2 years. StockUpFood.com also helps you track what food storage items you buy (and use) so you can keep a running total of what you need to purchase –plus it gives you a “percentage completed” to help you track progress toward your goal. Very cool –especially for people that want to ease their way into emergency food storage.

The LDS church also has some great resources their provident living website. By far the most useful resource there (for me) was an order form for the dry-packed food products, which are purchasable in bulk sized bags or by the can. It’s easy to fill out out (using the food storage calculator I linked to above), and you can just bring it along to at any Family Home Food Storage location. There you can buy the vast majority of your food storage in large bags, and you can get them at a pretty great price. And if you want your emergency food canned (for longer storage and easy rotation) you can dry-pack can it right on location and just take home the items you need. This is a lot of work, but if you’re doing canned food (instead of bags or buckets) it’s by far the most convenient way to go. You can also buy it pre-canned, (which is even more convenient) but you’ll end up paying more.

The Lindon LDS Family Home Food Storage is only open on Tuesdays and Thursday, but you’ll want to call to check availability in your location. They also lend dry-pack canning equipment out, in case you’ve already purchased food in bags but want it canned.

I should mention that many grocery stores (at least in Utah) have foods like dry wheat and beans by the bucket and the bag. Selection is fairly sparse, and buying a full years’ worth of food would take up several grocery carts; but it can be done. I bought a lot of bulk food stuff at Macey’s, a local grocery chain which has pretty good prices. I wish I’d held off on some of the bagged food I got there since I still want to dry-pack can most of it anyway, but the buckets are a great way to get a little at a time if you need to stretch out your food storage purchases over several paychecks. You can also get large water basins, wheat grinders, empty buckets, and other equipment there as well.

Lastly, if you live in Utah and are (or would like to become) an emergency preparedness junkie, check out UtahPreppers. It’s new, but judging by the people who run it, I think it will probably be a pretty great resource.

I’m pleased with how much opportunity for personal development and professional networking there is in Utah. Yes, I do want to see it grow even more, but it’s nice have more good options than I could possibly attend.

Tonight for example, the Utah Tech Events and Utah Business Events calendars show four events in which I have genuine interested, all occurring at the same time.  At 7:30 tonight I would be perfectly content to be at any of these four events:

1. Twelve Horses: Brand Evolution
2. Ignite Salt Lake
3. BYU Web Startup Group
4. Utah Python Users Group

Incidentally, I’d also enjoy being at home with my family, but this abundance of events centered around professional networking and personal development shows that Utah really does have a great (albeit budding) tech and business ecosystem. These mostly non-profit knowledge-sharing groups constitute, I believe, some crucial intangibles that are important underpinnings to a vibrant economy. I’m glad to see them, and I’d love to see them grow.

Anyway, there’s no excuse to not be developing your personal and professional skills at some of these events. Just don’t try to substitute them for hard and diligent work. :)

If you’d like to be a contributor to out local tech and business calendars, please ping me or any of the other calendar admins. Especially if you’ve got a utah-based business or tech group and would like a channel to attract more people, we’d love to hear from you.

I just added the BYU Web Startup Group to my comprehensive list of Utah Tech Groups.

From their website:

The Web Startup group was founded to bring together people interested in creating new sites and services online. Group members include web developers (programmers and designers), marketing and business-minded individuals, creative idea people, and others with technology related skills. The group meets regularly to discuss and make Web Startups come to life. If you are interested in making a difference online then join us!

Their next meeting will be this Thursday and will cover Android and “Jump Starting your Website”.

I also added one of the founders, Adam Chavez, to Utah’s Business Blog Aggregator and invited him to contribute his events to the Utah Tech Events Calendar. If you or anyone you know should be added to these Utah business community sites, please contact me.

BTW, there’s also a Utah Business Events Calendar which hasn’t caught on nearly as much. Let me know if you’d like to contribute. Maybe I’ll merge the two calendars in the future; we’ll see.

Anyway, checkout the Web Startup Group. I think they could end up being a really valuable resource to the Utah business and technology communities.

I dislike both major-party presidential candidates so profoundly that I would feel extremely uncomfortable giving my vote to either of them. Sure, I like Obama even less than McCain, but luckily I live in a “landslide” state where I don’t have to make the difficult decision of whether I’ll vote for the proverbial “lessor of two evils”. In Utah, I can vote my conscience with a pretty solid confidence that the direct outcome will be exactly the same; Utah will see a landslide win for McCain either way, so why marshal support for someone I don’t even like?

Instead, I’m voting for Chuck Baldwin.

“Why haven’t I heard of Chuck Baldwin”, you ask. Well, it’s either because the main stream media thinks you’re stupid, or because it wants you stupid. I’ll let you decide which.

Chuck Baldwin is the Constitution Party’s candidate for president. If he won (which he won’t) I would be comfortable that our nation would be in good hands.

“But why vote for someone who can’t even win?” Well, technically he could win, but he won’t. Either way voting for someone you like makes a heck of a lot more sense than voting for someone you don’t like –especially if you live in a state (like Utah) where your vote is mostly symbolic.

My vote is a protest: I’m sick of big government Republicans that are nothing more than socialists in sheep’s clothing. They’ve done our country harm, they’ve done my party harm, they’ve done my family harm, and I want them out.

I’ve got a lot to say about how the Republican party has lost its way, but I’ll forbear for now. Suffice it to say that I think it may very well cost us this election –and we deserve to lose. Not that the Democrats are any better (in fact, they’re much worse).

I’ve also got a lot to say about our current voting system, but I’ll forbear for now. (Watch for my upcoming rant.) Until then if you live in a relatively uncontested state, you really should look at your real options: Check out Chuck Baldwin!

In the recent bailout fiasco, while both major-party candidates were using scare tactics to push pork legislation through –chiding each other all the while for not being socialist enough– Chuck’s stance against the banking bailouts was constitutional and exemplary. No wonder they didn’t want to invite him to the debates.

Now that’s leadership.

Happy voting!