WebRTC.ventures has been involved with the Real Time Communications Conference at the Illinois Institute of Technology for a number of years now. We’ve been attendees, speakers, exhibitors, hackathon winners, and in 2019, we also organized the WebRTC track. WebRTC.ventures founder and CEO Arin Sime was the WebRTC Track Chair at the IIT RTC Conference this year. WebRTC.ventures engineer Alberto Gonzalez also spoke at his alma mater’s conference, and he previously posted a summary of the talks he attended here.
In this post, we’re including video from each of the talks on the WebRTC track. We appreciate IIT (and the conference sponsors) for their financial support that allows these sessions to be recorded. You can view all the recordings from the conference on the IIT playlist here.
The videos below are listed in the order they were presented at the conference.
RTC in a World of AI and ML
Chad Hart, Moderator (webrtchacks & cogint.ai)
Chris Wendt, Panelist (Comcast)
Varun Singh, Ph.D., Panelist (callstats.io)
Vijay K. Gurbani, Ph.D., Panelist (Vail Systems)
Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence technologies are permeating software applications. Real Time Communications (RTC) is no exception. Automated transcripts on calls and swapping your background for a back image on your video conference call are just two emerging examples of dozens of AI in RTC use cases. While there is tremendous promise, the low-latency, high-bandwidth nature of RTC does bring many unique challenges. In this panel we will bring together practicing industry experts to: define what machine learning means for RTC; examine the impact of machine learning on RTC industry; look at how technologies like speech analytics, computer vision, and voicebots are being applied here; and forecast where the intersection of these domains will lead.
WebRTC with React Native SDK and SignalWire
Michael Jerris (signalwire.com)
The Relay React Native SDK allows you to integrate Relay into React Native applications, enabling developers to directly make audio and video calls to phone numbers, SIP endpoints, browsers and other apps. Using the React Native SDK, you can add immersive, scalable communication – from video conferences and softphones to mobile gaming – all available right in your own app.
WebRTC 1.0: Leveraging New Features
Bernard Aboba (Microsoft)
This session will cover the status of the WebRTC 1.0 specifications as well as browser implementations, covering new features that developers can take advantage of.
How and Why Quality Impacts Productivity in a Contact Center
Varun Singh (callstats.io)
This talk will talk about why measuring quality is important in callcenters and how it impacts productivity. In addition, this talk will cover callstats.io’s journey for operation management and agent productivity.
Advanced WebRTC Testing with KITE Network Instrumentation
Dr. Alex Gouaillard (CoSMo Software)
KITE engine enables synchronized testing between two or more WebRTC clients, which is essential for a true interoperability test. In this talk, we will show how KITE’s new network instrumentation module allows to programmatically vary NAT type, firewall settings, bandwidth, and network quality (jitter, packet loss and delay) on a per-participant basis. It allows to test in the lab for call quality and for several key underlying technologies.
SFUs, Simulcast, and SVC: What’s New in WebRTC?
Lorenzo Miniero (Meetecho)
Simulcast and SVC (Scalable Video Coding) are potentially great assets when it comes to distributing video in a multiparty session via WebRTC, especially when SFUs (Selective Forwarding Units) are in place. Both allow, in their own way, for different recipients to receive different versions/qualities of the same source stream, depending on either application’s logic or network constraints. This is clearly a very powerful and effective functionality. That said, their support in existing WebRTC deployments, and browsers in particular, is continuously evolving, and there are several moving parts developers should be aware of. This talk will try to shed some light on all this by presenting the latest developments on Simulcast (and the different ways browsers implement it today) and an insight on what’s happening with respect to SVC instead.
The Latest with Real-Time AV1 and AOMedia
Dr. Alex Gouaillard (CoSMo Software)
Everyone has heard about AOMedia and the genesis of the AV1 codec, but few are aware that within AV1 there is a group dedicated to the Real-Time version of the Codec. This group is, among other things, in charge of the RTP payload spec, a standard that would allow to use AV1 in RTP, SRTP, and by extension WebRTC. In parallel, around a dozen AV1 implementations have been today revealed, and several of them achieve Real-Time encoding speed, not to be confused with high-throughput. Late June, Cisco showed in NYC the first real-time live demo of a full AV1 capable, real-time, WebRTC implementation (client-side, server side, transcoding back to H.264 when needed…) for video conferencing in their WebEx product. A few days later at CommConUK, then a couple of weeks later at IETF, CoSMo, also an AOMedia member, showed the same thing for streaming integrated with their MilliCast Platform. People attending this talk should leave with a good knowledge about the state of AV1 implementation today, the major players, and what can be used to create a POC today. The presentation will be extremely focussed on the Real-Time case, as opposed to the usual presentations which are focused on VOD streaming (the Netflix model) and might care less about the encoding speed for example, or RTP / WebRTC. About AV1 Encoders, which ones are usable for Real-Time Comms today, which ones are getting there, will be addressed in this talk.
Trivia and Gaming with WebRTC
Kyle Bank (Phenix)
In large-scale trivia applications and gaming scenarios, every millisecond counts! Kyle Bank will share Phenix’s experience building a platform that delivers real-time streaming at broadcast scale over WebRTC. Real-time streaming use cases with Phenix span trivia, gaming, auctions, sports and betting.
The 2019 IIT RTC conference was a definite success! In addition to interesting sessions like those above, there were lots of opportunities to network with the WebRTC speakers and other communication experts during the conference. Plus, Chicago’s a pretty fun city to visit! The WebRTC.ventures team looks forward to meeting you at next year’s conference!
