I became part of the Vonage API business (formerly Nexmo) as Vonage acquired TokBox in August 2018. I lead a team who evangelize and market our leading Vonage Communications API portfolio that allows companies to create innovative customer experiences leveraging voice, video, texting, social messaging, and authentication. We power innovation in Telehealth, remote Education, Financial Services, Hospitality, eCommerce, Conversational Commerce, Customer Service and many other markets.

Independent consultant providing hands-on "do whatever is needed" strategy, evangelism and marketing support at start-ups and small emerging companies. Typically took a direct operational role at the companies I consulted for, including (see below) Altocloud, Agora, TokBox and Vonage.Speaker and writer on the business value of emerging Collaboration, Video and WebRTC technologies. For a period I was an Advisory Board member, session moderator, and blogger for TMC's twice-a-year WebRTC Conference and Expo.

Responsible for market evangelism, global events and social media for TokBox, a real-time communications leader providing a global WebRTC-based platform for embedding Live Video into mobile and web application experiences that bring people together. The TokBox communications platform as a service (CPaaS) enables live video experiences for thousands of innovative organizations worldwide, and includes video consultations, video chat, high-scale broadcasting, messaging, screen-sharing and recording. TokBox was acquired by Vonage in August 2018.

Technology lead for a completely volunteer-run call center for the 2016 national election supporting up to 70-100 concurrent callers and office operations across many other functions. Technology stack included cloud calling apps, Ubuntu Linux, Skype, Firefox, Gdocs, and Slack. The networking into old buildings consisted of very flakey old wires composed into multiple bonded/redundant networks with Peplink/Cradepoint routers and LTE backup, giving 100% uptime despite continuous losses of different pieces. Plus lots of hardwired Ethernet and some Ruckus wireless.

Broad marketing and evangelism responsibility including public speaking and articles, web content and collateral, event planning and execution for Agora.io's real-time communications platform as a service (CPaaS). The Agora.io platform provided improved Quality of Experience (QoE) for worldwide Internet-based video and voice communications through a virtual global network optimized for real-time and mobile-to-mobile communications.

Early contributor and marketing lead for Altocloud, at the time an emerging SaaS startup combining machine learning and predictive analytics for customer journeys with real-time communications. Since acquired by Genesys, the Customer Experience company.• Responsible for all marketing activities, digital content and supporting sales and customer success activities• Deployed HubSpot marketing automation, with Salesforce integration, for lead generation including website content, lead nurturing programs, email campaigns and inbound marketing• Managed PR processes with analysts and media to drive company awareness• Managed attendance and speaking at major events including Enterprise Connect 2014 and 2015 and Magento Imagine Commerce 2015

Created and delivered thought-leadership content to drive solutions campaigns for our leading-edge collaboration, mobility, unified communications and customer experience solutions. Defined integrated cross-portfolio software solutions around key mobility, video and collaboration customer business needs and led cross-functional marketing teams that brought these to market globally.• Key member of leadership team creating a solutions marketing approach for company’s $2 billion Unified Communications portfolio that drove consistency across integrated marketing campaigns• Identified customer needs and defined cross-portfolio collaboration solution content• Led team to deliver extensive marketing assets globally including sales, partner and technical training• Supported global marketing campaigns and briefed customers, analysts and media worldwide

Led product marketing and cross-functional teams to position and introduce Avaya Aura® as the major new SIP-based communications architecture foundation supporting the entire Avaya enterprise portfolio.• Established differentiated market positioning for critical new $250M+ core company product• Delivered marketing content for major company launch and follow-on market expansion, including competitive analysis and continuous outreach to industry analysts and media• Created and delivered extensive global sales and technical training to drive new indirect channel behavior to adopt and sell new technologies• Led cross-functional marketing team successfully positioning the UC integration roadmap following the company’s $900 million acquisition of Nortel’s enterprise business in 2010

Led a solutions marketing team that positioned Avaya as a recognized thought-leader in Communications Enabled Business Processes (“CEBP”) – a software development platform for integrating communications into business applications and processes.• Developed vertical industry use cases and key customer reference relationships• Built thought-leadership content and drove global marketing campaigns and partner training

Led a range of product marketing teams that drove market awareness, go-to-market and sales enablement campaigns for contact centers, customer self service with IVR and Voice Portals, IP telephony, voice messaging, unified communications, mobility and IP phones.• Positioned and launched extensive range of enterprise communications products• Traveled globally as a customer and event spokesperson covering all portfolio areas• Led multiple projects to integrate, position and communicate the customer value of large and complex corporate and technology acquisitions

Co-founded Quintus, a 5-person AI software start-up, and provided broad business leadership through venture funding and growth to a 500-person CRM contact center company, leading to a NASDAQ public offering and subsequent acquisition by Avaya.As VP Marketing: positioned the company in the marketplace as a leading “eCRM” software provider of Internet-enabled customer service solutions.• Managed Quintus’ multi-million dollar marketing budget and led all marketing and PR activities• Worked closely with investment bankers on prospectus for successful $1.7B first-day Nasdaq IPO (Nov 1999)• Played hands-on role as executive team member in executing four acquisitions of other product and service companies to create a differentiated market positioning in omni-channel contact centers• Personally wrote and delivered all customer and media communications, and drove internal alignment, through a challenging corporate failure and sale of company assets to AvayaAs VP R&D, VP Consulting, and CTO: Led software design and development teams through multiple company phases as a provider of (i) software application development environments for AI and expert systems, (ii) CRM solutions for customer service and help desk, and (iii) innovative enterprise business applications for Internet-enabled omni-channel contact centers.• Defined and drove new company directions in both the CRM and contact center markets• Created company’s first professional services team deploying customer service solutions within customer environments• Led software development, product management and SQA teams delivering complex software solutions including software IDEs for Prolog and early client/server and object-oriented business applications• Personally wrote compilers and system-level software in C and Prolog across many platforms• Executive leadership through years of start-up growth and venture-capital financing

Conducted and published academic research within teams led by Dr. Alan Bundy at the Department of Artificial Intelligence in expert systems, directed rule-based inference, logic programming and natural language processing. Delivered peer-reviewed papers at international AI conferences, taught undergraduate courses, and supported the research of Masters and PhD students.☛ https://app.box.com/s/ca4v9d289yijn77phd1w☛ http://google.com/search?q=lawrence+byrd+alan+bundyInternationally recognized as the key designer and implementer of the software development environment and program debugging model for the logic programming language Prolog, originally implemented in Edinburgh DEC10 Prolog, PDP11 Prolog, C-Prolog and later expanded commercially within Quintus Prolog.☛ http://google.com/search?q=lawrence+byrd+prolog