We’re Back From the SIGNAL Developer Conference

We recently travelled to the USA to participate at the SIGNAL developer conference organised by our awesome client Twilio. This was our third time being there and we liked it. The conference brings together thousands of tech people who also use Twilio products that we test. It is worth noting that Twilio technology is used by 1.6 million developers around the world. Impressive!

Talking with these engineers, product professionals and clients helps us better understand how Twilio products are used and provides us with useful information that we can use to improve our services. Furthermore, SIGNAL conference is an amazing event to learn about the newest trends in telecommunication and take part in its development.

This year we attended the conference as a four-man team. In our stand anyone who was interested could learn about the testing products and services we provide. Conference visitors were able to take a look at our cloud based server testing tool apimation.com and our new mobile application testing platform Test48.com. We also brought along our robot that can automate mobile application interface tests. Additionally, we showed how we can automatically measure mobile data and battery usage on a testing device. Such practical demonstrations are effective and many people came to us and asked what certain devices are and what can be done with them.

Even though most of our time was spent at our stand, we also tried to listen to some speakers. Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson’s presentation was inspiring to us. It was interesting that he not only runs this enterprise, but also still develops and is not afraid to do that on the stage in front of thousands of engineers. Our employees tried to also attend presentations done by Twilio employees who spoke about newest products that we work with every day. Twilio also had their own stand where their product teams were available for conversations. It was an excellent opportunity to talk to product professionals and get answers to questions of interest.

During the SIGNAL conference new products are usually announced and this year was not different. This article includes the essential new products presented. One of the most interesting products is the Twilio Programmable FAX API. Yes, there still are companies that use such means of communication and finally they’ll be able to send and receive fax in a modern way – from their applications and services.

Approximately half of 900 Twilio employees are engineers and the engineer culture is very noticeable also in the SIGNAL conference. Each visitor received a special Hackpack gadget that could be programmed and tinkered with during the event. This year Hackpacks were equipped with LED lights, a mobile communication module and a fully programmable computer. By using these devices, visitors were able to draw images on a huge display. Awesome! What would you do with this device?

Thanks to Twilio for organizing this amazing event! We’ve arrived home with a ton of positive emotions and new contacts with whom we might have an excellent collaboration in the future. We plan to be at the SIGNAL conference in London later this year, too.