Let me repeat, communication is the backbone of humanity. It’s all about human connections and reaching out to each other in best possible ways. Contemporary communication is powered by technology, which aims to make it easier and efficient for human beings to connect across the planet, without any boundaries and limitations.

Ok, ok, before you click away from what seems like an abstract essay filled with profoundness, let me get to the point!  At a two-day conference by Twilio (Signal 2016) in San Francisco, the team from Mobiuso witnessed several proofs and examples of these, while also taking in a lot of expert knowledge on technologies powering today’s communication.

The conference started with Jeff Lawson, Co-founder and CEO of Twilio delivering the keynote address. One of the very first new products he announced was Programmable Wireless. Given our health care background, we could not help but think of possibilities emerging out of this new technology, especially around emergency patient care. This announcement sort of set the tone of the conference.

After the keynote, the entire conference was divided into multiple tracks, each covering specialized topics around webRTC, Bots, Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language processing and ways for enterprises around the world to use communication in efficient ways to grow their business, respond to their consumers and users efficiently and make the world a better place.

For me, there were three things which emerged out primarily from this conference.

1. Business need to make their communication more human centric, more responsive, more empathetic. They need to reach out to their customer, anticipate their needs and respond in a manner which tells the customer that they are important parts of the business. Today’s communication needs to be quick, informal and informative. Long waits before customers can hear a human voice is not going to sustain the businesses for long.
   
2. Business communication needs to be more intelligent. Also, intelligence should be possible through unstructured business communication. Quickly and intelligently identifying the context from user’s view point and then responding accordingly. Chat bots are emerging as very strong tools from this perspective, replacing a lot of human and mechanical interference between customers and information. The means businesses around the world should start investing in creating infrastructure and capabilities to utilize these technologies. At Mobiuso, we have already identified this need and have invested in building skills and knowledge around building applications which can bring the fruits of these technologies to our consumers.
   
3. Text based communication is replacing voice communication. In fact, text is possibly going to be a very powerful tool, controlling many aspects of communication – between humans and with even hardware. IoT does not have to be difficult to use, though it might be difficult to build. In one of the sessions, Pek Pongpaet of Impekable actually demonstrated drone control capabilities through text bots. This trend is here to stay.
   

The conference had diverse examples of enterprises and individuals, large and small businesses building wonderful for-profit and non-profit organizations. Ryan Leslie (Grammy Nominee) and Crisis Text Line are prime examples of how communication can provider real, concrete results.

The conference ended with a great party $Bash, leaving us with fun memories and lots of learning and new ideas to pursue.

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RUCHIR KARANJGAOKAR | M O B I U S O