Interview with Brian K West one of the developers on Asterisk

Asterisk Interview

An Interview with Brian K West, and his role on the development of asterisk which earned him a coveted spot to speak at the recent AstriCon in Atlanta, Georgia

Carlo Caparras: Hi! Brian, tell me about your background and what is your role here in asterlink (www.asterlink.com) that made AstriCon choose you are a speaker?

Brian K West: I'm 27 year old self taught computer enthusiast, I have a background in ISP Management, VoIP and QoS, Perl, C and PHP. Working with you to help build top quality PSTN/IAX/SIP/h323 product offerings. I have in the past contributed cdr_odbc.c CDR backend module for asterisk and many other minor patches and a few major ones I am also an IRC Op on #asterisk on freenode.net, I help new users from time to time with problems. I'm also a bugmarshal on the asterisk project and founder of #asterisk-bugs on freenode.net I'm also an avid bug hunter.

Carlo Caparras: Ok, more about yourself....

Brian K West: not much more about me I can think of… I didn't go to college.. hell I didn't even get to finish high school.. I had to take my GED 3 months early because I couldn’t stand school any longer. I love a challenge and school wasn't that I think VoIP is the next big thing and I am glad to be in the middle of the ocean before it fills up with sharks.

Question 1: Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Well I'm 28 going on 12. I still feel like a kid at heart 90% of the time. I don't think I'll ever grow up... what's the fun in that? Self taught on just about everything. I learn quickly and can problem solve very rapidly. (Yet I did aweful in school.. downright aweful.. F didn't mean Fabulous)

Question 2: How long have you been working with Asterisk? What drew you to Asterisk?

Well I have always been interested in communication and phone systems. We were looking for a phone system to replace the kludge of cisco/pbx stuff we had setup that wouldn't drop or loose calls. I started playing with Asterisk about 16 months ago. Since then I have learned C and done more than I ever thought I could ever do.

Question 3: How do you find working at Asterlink?

I love it. It's a challenge and I love a good challenge.

Question 4: What do you see as your most important/useful contribution to the Asterisk codebase?

The very first thing I ever contributed to the code base was cdr_odbc.c, shocking it was the first thing I wrote in C and let me tell you ODBC is great but the documentation is worse than Asterisk docs. Since then I have contributed countless fixes. I'm number two in karma behind anthm. We both totally beat Asterisk silly on a daily basis.

Question 5: Do you have any fun pet projects at the moment?

I have so many ideas it's just a matter of making the time to bring some of them into reality. I would rather work on making the software more stable first.

Question 6: What do you think are Asterisk's main strengths?

It's Open Source.

Question 7: Do you have favourite telephony hardware for use with Asterisk?

Personally I would use DELL PowerEdge servers on all jobs if possible. I have had extremely good luck with dell hardware.

Question 8: What is your favourite distro for running Asterisk on?

Gentoo... it's not just for ricers ya know. I like the fact that I don't have to focus on dependencies when installing anything on the system and I can focus more on working with asterisk or what ever task I might be doing at the time. It just works(tm)

Question 9: Where do you see asterisk going in the next couple of years?

I see the project dropping the PBX and just being called "*" Or the PBX formally know as "Asterisk".

Question 10: What's your opinion on the various hardware integration projects out there?

Hardware integration should focus more on things like DS3 cards, DSP Hardware code translation boards and echo canceller... and if someone will bring to life an SS7 stack for asterisk we could level the playing field in the telcom world.

Question 11: Do you see Asterisk being more like an appliance in the future?

I think of Asterisk as a box of Lego(tm) bricks. You can make it do ANYTHING.

Question 12: What things do you think would be important in an Asterisk IDE?

All you need is emacs the only REAL editor out there.

Question 13: How do you find the Asterisk community?

It's more like a family.

Question 14: Did you have a good time at Astricon?

I had a blast... you'll have to ask about my keynote address. THIS GUY RIGHT HERE... I'm sure I'll never live that down, but it's ok I did entertain everyone (bkw_ + jager = FUNNY). It was also my first time to ever do any public speaking so I was nervous a bit. AND NO I didn't imagine the audience nude. THAT JUST AIN'T RIGHT!!!

Also did I say bkw_ + jager = FUNNY? ;)

Question 15: Do you find you have much work keeping people in line in #asterisk?

Ah its all fun... some people thing I'm this huge prick, but really I'm not. I only have a few small rules that need to be followed and the very first one is that you MUST say Hi before busting in the channel and asking questions or demanding support. It's just rude ya know.

Question 16: What is your favourite food/drink?

Chocolate and Dr. Pepper... Chocolate is a food isn't it? Did I mention jager?

Soucre: SineApps.com

Asterisk PBX Seattle