As the new Open Source Solutions Advocate at Sangoma, I want to reach out far and wide to friends and colleagues to present myself as one of your main points of contact for OSS at Sangoma, including the ubiquitous Asterisk telephony toolkit and its popular FreePBX web interface.

With over twenty years of experience exploring, programming dial plans, and satisfying customers in the Voice over Internet Protocol space – mostly as a solopreneur consultant at the helm of Penguin PBX Solutions – it is humbling to join the steady hands on deck here at Sangoma as they lead Open Source development inside both the Asterisk project and the FreePBX project code repositories. The amazing staff’s continued stewardship of these critical pieces of infrastructure over many years at the upstream tip is hard work, and we appreciate and welcome your help!

Please (continue to) contribute in the Asterisk forums and FreePBX forums to ask questions, find answers, and scratch your Open Source itch. Feel free-as-in-speech to (keep) lasso(ing) me into interesting threads, as one highly anticipated part of this new role is to officially assist my fellow forum community members. From first-time posters in need of basic documentation links, to seasoned Open Source security researchers responsibly searching for their next bounty, I’ll endeavor to be there for you in the forums @penguinpbx

Top 5 items:

1. New OS Office Hours for free-as-in-beer 1:1 (or slightly larger) conversations to better understand your problems.
2. Distribute current OS packages into as many GNU/Linux distributions as possible.
3. Refresh of the Asterisk Exchange (possibly with a new name) for advertising cool stuff to buy or sell, with free listings for OS.
4. Improve OS training and certification, including dCAA and dCAP program updates.
5. Launch of AstriDemoCon, kicking off the three day AstriCon 2025 event in Florida this February 11-13 – with hands-on, step-by-step, Slow & Steady Demonstrations AKA Basic Training in the morning on both Asterisk and FreePBX, and then race-for-the-gold Fast & Furious/Dangerous Demos in the afternoon. Fun! Games! Phones! Prizes! Thrills! VoIP!

Thank you for your time, especially to all those who provide so many great insights on the Asterisk forum, where I’ve enjoyed posting so much over the years. I look forward to learning and sharing more with y’all far into the future. 🤠