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2014 Annual General Meeting Notice

Meeting Date: Tuesday, 13 January 2015

1 – Announcement: Annual General Meeting

Section 12 of the By Laws of the SIP Forum (the “Forum”) provides that the Forum hold an Annual General Meeting that is open to all members. In accordance with the By Laws, this document shall serve as official notice for the Annual Meeting of the SIP Forum to be held as follows:

1.1 – Date / Time of meeting

The general meeting will be held:

Tuesday, 13 January 2015
2:00 – 3:30 pm U.S. Eastern Standard Time
Via WebEx
Login URL, Dial-In Number and Passcode: To be sent in follow-on message via the mailing list

2 – Subject Matter for the Meeting

In the meeting, a review of the financial operations, including a review of the audit for fiscal year 2014, will be provided, as well as a review of the operational activities that have occurred since the last General meeting.

In addition, Full Members will be asked to vote on two items.

2.1 – Voting Items

Two official voting items are on the agenda:

Election of new board members;
Discharge of Board Member liability.

Please note:

As the 2014 Annual General Meeting will be held remotely, via WebEx, all Full Member Representatives must complete the online ballot or fax or email their Proxy vote using the Voting Form Proxy document prior to the AGM.

Votes must be received from > 50% of Full Members in order to have a valid election, and in order to have a valid vote regarding the Discharge item.

The deadline described below for returning ballots via surface mail is Wednesday, 07 January 2015 and via fax or email Friday, 09 January 2015.

3 – Board Member Elections

Members of the Board of Directors serve for two-year terms, with terms expiring at the general meeting that takes place at the end of this term. Elections for new board members will take place at this general meeting.

There are eight (8) Board seats opening this year. They include four seats held by current directors Mary Barnes, Andrew Hutton, Robert Kinder and Gonzalo Salgueiro, as well as four additional seats that are currently unfilled. The seats held by Dr. Alan Johnston, Gernot Scheichl and Richard Shockey are not expiring.

3.1 – Voting Limits

Our current Bylaws indicate that only four Directors may be Participant Members at any one time. Since the seats occupied by one participant member (Mary Barnes) is up for election, and the seat held by Richard Shockey is a non-participant board member seat, up to three Participant (Individual) Members can be elected in this election.

You will be voting by expressing a preference order for candidates. This preference order will be used to tally the Directors who are elected.

3.2 – Who Can Vote

Each Full (paying) Member is entitled to a single vote on the matters being presented for a vote.
Each Full Member has the right to vote either electronically, or by an agent authorized by a proxy validly executed by the Full Member. A proxy shall be executed by written authorizations signed by the Full Member, giving the proxy holder the right to vote the vote.

Full Members not voting electronically (using the online voting method) can utilize a proxy form provided with this general meeting announcement package. The proxy provides a method to vote for the Director candidates, and grants to the Managing Director of the SIP Forum the right to cast the vote on behalf of the Full Member giving the proxy. Alternately, a Full Member can cast a vote electronically, as described in Section 5 of this notice.

The Board strongly urges you to submit an online vote via the SIP Forum website.

3.3 – Candidates for Election

Mary Barnes – MLB@Realtime Communications (current board member standing for re-election)
John Barnhill – GENBAND
Andrew Hutton – Unify (current board member standing for re-election)
Robert Kinder – Cox Communications (current board member standing for re-election)
Gonzalo Salgueiro – Cisco Systems (current board member standing for re-election)
Chris Wendt – Comcast

3.4 – Candidate Statements and Biographies

The statements by the candidates about their desire to serve on the board, along with their biographies, are shown here as provided by each candidate. The Board strongly recommends you read these, as we seek Directors who will add substantial value, so it is crucial your vote is well informed.

Candidates are listed in alphabetical order by last name. Please do not allow this
order to influence your voting.

The Board has not endorsed any slate of candidates.

3.4.1 – Mary Barnes – MLB@Realtime Communications

3.4.1.1 – Statement of Candidacy

I have been working with SIP and other Internet protocols since 1998. While working in the 3G.IP forum in 1999, I was a key contributor to the document comparing SIP versus H.323 as the call control protocol for the IMS architecture, which was submitted as a 3GPP contribution and resulted in the selection of SIP as the call control protocol for IMS. Soon thereafter, I served as editor of the Functional Architecture specification and as vice-chair of the Architecture WG in the Mobile Wireless Internet Forum (MWIF) where SIP was a central component of the architecture.

I have been involved in the SIP Forum for well over a decade. I participated in the discussions during the development of SIPconnect 1.1 and actively followed the User Agent Configuration Task Group. My primary motivation in continuing in my SIP Forum BoD position is to ensure that the interoperability of SIP continues to improve, in particular ensuring that there is interoperability between WebRTC endpoints and SIP. I also remain very interested in interoperability for video. I also believe the NNI task group is essential in ensuring that we as an industry are working towards interoperability supporting an all IP infrastructure.

I firmly believe that the SIP forum has an important role in continuing to define interoperability specifications, profiles and certification to facilitate the further deployment of SIP infrastructure and endpoints. I believe that it has become much more important to collaborate with other forums and SDOs in the past few years. The NNI Task Froup, which is a joint activity with ATIS, is a good example and I believe that establishing a collaborative activity with IMTC focused on WebRTC is also very important and would be a top priority for me in the upcoming term. And, last, but certainly not least, I think we need to continue to evolve the SIPNOC event.

3.4.1.2 – Biography

Mary Barnes is the Principal Consultant at MLB@Realtime Communications, LLC. Mary has been involved in system architecture and product development for real-time communication systems for over 25 years, focusing for the past 16 years on IP communications and standards development.

She applies the depth and breadth of her experience with real time architectures and protocols to a variety of activities, including advising a startup (Wrethink) on a realtime communications network architecture and related protocols, working with a cable service provider in product engineering and next generation product planning and serving as a technical expert evaluating patents and related technologies.

She is an active contributor to the IETF. She is the author of RFCs relating to the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), Centralized Conferencing, NAT/Firewall traversal, Geographic Location Delivery and Telepresence. She currently serves as chair of the DISPATCH working group in the Real-time Applications and Infrastructure (RAI) Area. She is also a board member of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB). She is past chair of the SIPPING and CLUE (Telepresence) WGs and the IETF Nominations Committee. Prior to joining the IAB as a board member, she served as Executive Director of the IAB. Mary also served as the Vice-chair of the Technical WG in the Unified Communications Interoperability Forum (UCIF) (since merged with the IMTC).

Prior experience includes a position as Principal Engineer in the Video Solutions Group at Polycom and various positions at Nortel. Her final role was as Senior Advisor for Nortel, leading the IETF standards strategy for the Carrier VoIP and Application Solutions business unit (now Genband). She was also a senior manager/advisor for Nortel’s 3G IP research, participating in industry standards forums and prototyping a mobile IP based system. She is the inventor of several patents related to this work. She also designed and developed real-time software for Nortel’s DMS-based GSM and Enterprise products. Prior to her 22 years at Nortel, Mary developed real-time embedded software for GPS and video reconnaissance systems for Texas Instruments. Mary has a BS in Computer Science with a minor in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia.

3.4.2 – John Barnhill – GENBAND

3.4.2.1 – Statement of Candidacy

It is with enthusiasm that I respectfully submit my nomination to serve on the Board of Directors of the SIP Forum. Since I first attended a SIPNOC meeting in June of 2012, I have been very impressed with the work of the Forum, particularly identifying issues of broad importance to the industry and on behalf of its members. I have been impressed that many of the issues being addressed are critical from a technological view point, but also create a nexus with the corresponding policy debates and implications occurring elsewhere. I strongly believe that it is important for the Board of the Forum to remain active in helping to shape the ongoing policy debate through participation in these events and through the active leadership of its Board of Directors in selecting the issues that are most important and working with the Board to craft positions that are required, representative of the members, and feasible to implement.

My interest in serving on Board of Directors stems from my long career in the industry and my ongoing fascination with how people communicate with each other. I closely follow the cultural and political changes occurring and how they are being enabled by technology. Serving on the Board would afford me the opportunity to continue to work on these issues and continue to participate in the creation of positions leading to industry changing outcomes for our member companies.

3.4.2.2 – Biography

John is currently a senior member of the Office of Corporate Development at GENBAND, responsible for Regulatory Affairs and IP transformation. In this role he monitors regulatory activities and their impacts on GENBAND customers and works with industry experts to identify strategic trends in the communications market. He works closely with product and sales teams to develop and recommend solutions that satisfy the customer needs arising from those trends. He is assigned to the ATIS IP-Transition of Public Safety Related Applications Task Force (PSRA-TF) Committee, the ATIS-SIP Forum IP-NNI Task Force, and is a member of the FCC Technological Advisory Council working on PSTN transition issues.

Prior to joining GENBAND, John spent 27 years at Nortel where he held various roles in Marketing, Sales, Technical Support and Customer Service. His notable programs include running the TAS/ ETAS organization, initiation and delivery of Nortel’s Number Portability program and the delivery of the CS2000 and CS2000 Compact to support the roll out of Voice over IP to the global market. Later, John was instrumental in gaining approval for the CS1500 soft switch to deliver advanced services to rural market customers.

John has a Degree in Architecture from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and has completed the Program for Technology Managers at the Kenan-Flagler School of Business at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

3.4.3 – Andrew Hutton – Unify

3.4.3.1 – Statement of candidacy

For over 15 years, I have been actively involved in the development of SIP-based products and have seen SIP move from the early adopter phase to the current position in which SIP is widely deployed and the protocol of choice in many markets. There is, however, still much work to do for the SIP Forum, not least in helping to ensure a smooth transition from the legacy PSTN infrastructure to an all IP world.

I was first elected to the SIP Forum board in December 2012, and at that time I stated that I would help to extend the reach of the SIP Forum in to Europe and that I would work to keep SIPconnect relevant and current.

On the issue of extending the reach of the SIP Forum, I have over the last two years developed links with major industry Forums in both Germany (BITKOM) and the UK (NICC), and now have the responsibility of liaising with these Forums.

Regarding the SIP Forum’s SIPconnect specification, I have taken a leading role in starting the discussion on requirements and bringing the industry together to start work on the SIPconnect 2.0 SIP Trunking specification which is now in development. I am co-editor for the SIPconnect 2.0 Task Group.

I am active in the IETF where I contribute to SIP-based standards and chair the IETF SIPREC (SIP Media Recording) working group. I am also an active participant in the IETF & W3C WebRTC working groups, and as such am well-placed to understand the issues relating to WebRTC interoperability with SIP and the impact WebRTC may have on the SIP industry.

I would very much appreciate your support.

3.4.3.2 – Biography

Andrew Hutton is Head of Standardization at Unify and has over 25 years experience within the communications industry. Andy is an experienced software engineer with extensive knowledge of communications protocols.

Prior to his current role at Unify, Andy gained many years’ hands on experience developing SIP-based communications products (SIP Phones, Gateways and Servers) and related interworking and deployment issues. Andy has been engaged in many projects related to SIP-based multi-vendor connectivity and interoperability.

An active supporter of open standards-based communications; Andy is active in the IETF as well as in other International standards organizations and forums such as EENA (European Emergency Number Association) and the W3C.

Andy is a Chartered IT Professional member of the British Computer Society (MBCS CITP).

3.4.4 – Robert Kinder – Cox Communications

3.4.4.1 – Statement of Candidacy

It’s been an honor serving on the Board of Directors and co-chair of the SIPconnect Interoperability Certification Task Group [SC-IT] where I’ve been very active working to advance the program. My contributions include hosting the SC-IT bi-weekly calls, certification process flow design, documentation management, vendor support, SIP Forum membership recruitment and participation on the SIPNOC Program Committee.

I’ve also presented at the 2011, 2013 and 2014 SIPNOC meetings. I hope you will re-elect me to continue the standardization and interoperability efforts.

3.4.4.2 – Biography

Robert Kinder is a Sr. Product Development Manager with Cox Business, a $1.6B division of Cox Communications where he’s responsible for the specification, development and launch of IMS and SIP Voice services. With over 25 years of experience, Robert previously held positions in Product Operations, Product Management and Distinguished Member Technical Staff with Cox Business, Tollgrade and Siemens for a variety of SIP, PacketCable, softswitch and BSS/OSS products.

Robert has a deep operational understanding of SIP networks and applications. Working directly with hardware/software manufacturers and end-customers, Robert has a direct appreciation of how SIP interoperability challenges impact field deployments and ideas for what can be done through the SIP Forum to improve SIP interworking.

3.4.5 – Gonzalo Salgueiro – Cisco Systems

3.4.5.1 – Statement of Candidacy

I have been actively involved in the SIP Forum for many years, serving on the Board of Directors as well as co-chair for three different Task Groups. During my tenure, I have been actively engaged in efforts geared toward driving the widespread adoption of SIP as the technology of choice for real-time IP communications. My key focus areas have been on multifaceted industry, standardization and interoperability testing activities in support of the ubiquitousness of SIP and WebRTC-enabled collaboration solutions and applications.

Considering my extensive industry experience and customer support background, two primary objectives and points of emphasis for me are: (1) An increased level of engagement in the WebRTC standardization and interoperability activities and (2) Raise awareness about the dire need to improve the inherent serviceability and troubleshooting preparedness capabilities of SIP at a protocol level. I believe there is tremendous value in the creation of a feedback channel that reaches out to vendors, carriers, SIP network operators and implementers (i.e., taps into participants of SIPit and SIPNOC) and can be effectively targeted to have an impact in prioritizing and driving standards development efforts in the IETF in this area (e.g. similar to the work currently being undertaken by the INSIPID WG).

I greatly appreciate the opportunity and your consideration for this position.

3.4.5.2 – Biography

Gonzalo Salgueiro is a Principal Engineer at Cisco. He is an established subject matter expert and industry thought leader in Collaboration technologies, multimedia communications protocols and architectures as well as network design and deployment of real-time voice/video/data over IP. Recently, Gonzalo has been focusing on various emerging technologies and the Services opportunities they offer. His current areas of focus are WebRTC and the IoT.

As a member of the Global Technical Center (GTC), Gonzalo helps shape technical and organizational strategy, leads innovation initiatives for the Technical Leader community, as well as drives engineering excellence in support of customer success. For many years Gonzalo was an Escalation Engineer and senior advisor for many of Cisco’s largest and most critical UC networks. Gonzalo’s engineering and industry engagements coupled with his Services background give him a unique perspective on real-time communications architectures and how they can deliver customer value.

Gonzalo is an established member of numerous industry organizations and is a regular presenter and distinguished speaker at a variety of technical industry conferences and Cisco events around the world. He currently holds various industry leadership roles, including serving as a member of the Board of Directors of the SIP Forum, co-chair of the INSIPID Working Group in the IETF and co-chair of the WebRTC Task Group, IPv6 Task Group and FoIP Task Group in the SIP Forum. He is an active contributor to various industry organizations and standardization activities in the IETF, ITU, IEEE, SIP Forum, W3C and the IMTC.

After 17+ years of work in networking and real-time communications, Gonzalo has co-authored a book, 12 IETF RFCs, 1 IEEE and 4 ITU contributions, numerous white papers and academic research papers on various technical topics. He is also co-inventor of eleven patents (issued and pending) and has contributed to various open source development efforts. He holds an M.S. in Physics from the University of Miami.

3.4.6 – Chris Wendt – Comcast

3.4.6.1 – Statement of Candidacy

My entree into the service provider and SIP telephony world began 10 years ago when joining Comcast. Probably not the most traditional path for most currently in the telecommunications industry, but I consider that a good thing with a slant on bringing a different perspective. I dove right in and being employed by a tier 1 provider have experience with many SIP implementations, worked closely with many Tier 1 SIP equipment providers and have in-depth first hand design experience of deploying large scale SIP/IMS for both residential and commercial services. As one of the first service providers to fully deploy IMS, I was deeply involved with design and architecture of IMS implementations and pain of overcoming the missing part of the IMS specs particularly around scale, HA, failover, geo-redundancy, LEA, and device management and provisioning, working hand in hand with vendors. As part of my role, I also worked closely with CableLabs and the definition of the PacketCable 2.0 specification with its eventual integration into 3GPP specifications.

Most of my focus for the past 3 years has been on extending communications beyond just voice and beyond the telephone. Exploring technologies like WebRTC, push notification, multi-user chat based sessions, multi-layer video coding, I have been leading the definition of Comcast’s next generation communications infrastructure as a platform for building communications into applications on mobile and set-top box devices, and extending communications as a platform for building communications capabilities into new applications and on new devices.

I hope to bring my past SIP deployment experience as well as some of the perspective on how “real-time communications” is evolving and how it impacts the communications service provider world to the SIP Forum, and hope my position and perspective can be a positive influence on the direction of the SIP Forum going forward.

3.4.6.2 – Biography

Chris Wendt is currently Principal Lead Architect for Comcast IP Communications platform services, formerly part of the CTO office at Comcast. For much of Chris’s 20-year professional career, he has been involved in multimedia communications, from early work at Bell Labs on DSP algorithms for 3D positional audio and low-bitrate voice codec work using the MBone VoIP network, to RTSP streaming of MPEG-4 video, audio, and 3D facial animation, to his current work with Comcast on one of the largest current deployments of IMS/SIP and latest focus on WebRTC-based next generation communications and applications. Chris has held positions including software architect of mobile chipset multimedia solutions, leading small startup software engineering teams building video streaming services, and spent 4 years as an independent consultant on many projects involving video/audio codecs and IP streaming.

Chris is currently a co-chair of the ATIS/SIP Forum NNI Task Force and follows closely activities in the 3GPP, IETF and W3C. He holds a BS in Music, and a BSEE, and MSEE from Drexel University in Philadelphia.

4 – Discharge of Liability for Board Members and Managing Director

The By Laws of the SIP Forum require that, at each general meeting, the members vote on whether to discharge the Board Members and the Managing Director from liability for actions or inactions resulting from their service to the SIP Forum over the prior year. In all annual general meetings to date, this has been presented, and the Board Members have been accordingly discharged. At this time, the Board represents that the Directors and Managing Director have collectively performed all required responsibilities for this past year, and requests discharge from liability. Full Members shall vote Yes or No on their ballots to so discharge the Board and Managing Director.

The Board recommends a Yes vote on this item.

5 – Procedure for Voting

The By Laws permit voting by proxy, using paper ballots or electronically submitted ballots that are returned using a method that the Board deems sufficient to establish the authenticity of the ballot

5.1 – Written Proxy

Included in the bundle distributed to the Full Members with this Annual General Meeting Notice is a voting form (in PDF file format) entitled “2014-sf-ballot.” If a Full Member intends to submit a ballot to vote by written proxy (instead of using the online voting application), each Full Member should do the following as described immediately below in Section 5.1.1.

5.1.1 – Minimal Procedure for Proxy Voting

The Full Member shall mark the aforementioned voting form (either by modifying the document to indicate the mark, or by printing the document and marking it in ink) to:

Rank your votes for Director’s candidates. Mark your first preference “1”, your second preference “2”, and so on. You may vote for as many candidates as you wish, but we recommend you vote for at least 6.
Approve or reject the discharge of Directors’ liability.
Deliver the Voting Form to the SIP Forum Managing Director prior to the date of the Annual General Meeting by sending the Voting Form via surface mail to the address listed on the ballot, or send a facsimile to the fax number listed on the first page of the document. Please note that if surface mail is used, the Voting Form must be sent to arrive NO LATER THAN WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 07, 2015 or if Fax or email delivery is used, the Voting Form must be sent to arrive NO LATER THAN FRIDAY, JANUARY 09, 2015.

5.2 Electronic Voting

The Board has concluded that two methods are acceptable for electronic voting:

Full Members may cast their vote on an Internet web page supplied by the SIP Forum for this purpose. The web page voting method must (a) assure only one vote per Full Member, and (b) permit only one, Member-designated representative of the Full Member to cast the vote, and (c) the voting interface must be password-protected. The SIP Forum has implemented a web interface that meets these requirements, and which will be used for the voting for this year. A URL for this voting method is supplied immediately below in Section 5.2.1.
Alternately, it is sufficient for Full Members to mark the paper Voting Form ballot, and return it to the Managing Director via electronic mail as a scanned image file or PDF. The Managing Director shall use reasonable efforts to assure that the received email has been sent from a domain name that appears to be from a Full Member organization. The 2014 AGM Voting Form ballot is attached to this Meeting Notice.

5.2.1 Web Ballots

Full Members wishing to vote by electronic ballot shall vote at the following URL:

https://www.sipforum.org/vote

Because this URL is login-protected, the actual procedure to vote is as follows:

Log in. Login to the SIP Forum website using the username and password of your designated voting representative.
(Please contact the SIP Forum Managing Director to confirm, or change, the name of this representative.)
Find the ballot. When logged in, a menu entry entitled “2014 Gen’l Meeting vote” will appear in the User Menu in the upper left corner of the webpage. Click this entry. A ballot form will appear.
Board candidate question. Please rank your vote for Board Member candidates. Note that the candidate list will be dynamically rearranged to show your ranking as you rank each candidate. Please do NOT rank two candidates equally.
Liability Discharge question. Vote Yes or No on the liability discharge question.
Vote. Click Submit Vote to complete your vote.

You may then log out of the website.

5.2.2 Email Ballots

Follow this procedure to vote by email:

Mark the Voting Form ballot (as above)
Print, and sign a paper copy of the marked ballot document
Scan the marked ballot document, and email the scanned, signed document to Marc Robins, the SIP Forum Managing Director. (PDF, JPG, TIFF, or GIF are all acceptable electronic formats)

Please note that you may NOT simply send an email with your voting choices as text in the email body.

5.3 – Deadline for Ballot Return for Proxy Voting

Voting Form ballots sent to the Managing Director by Fax or Email to be handled by proxy must be received

ON OR BEFORE FRIDAY, 09 JANUARY 2015 (two business days before the Annual General Meeting) in order to be counted.

Ballots cast via the web page method may be cast at any time up until the Managing Director calls for the voting time to be closed at the Annual General Meeting. (This will permit electronic votes to be cast after Board candidates have answered questions from members at the general meeting.)

5.4 – Ballot Counting

Ballots, including those received in email, via fax, and those cast on the web interface, will be counted when the vote is called in the Annual General Meeting. Results will be announced at the meeting (assuming the tally method results in clear winners), and official minutes taken to reflect the voting.

– END –

SIP Forum 2014 General Meeting Notice
December 12, 2014

Document number: GA-25-0