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You will not be sold to by default
Turning up is not an invitation to be pitched. Vendors are welcome as people and as experts. Selling, where it happens at all, has its own clearly labelled space.
Principles of an independent UC communityBuilt by the people
who do the work.
Layer10 exists because the people who run, build and deliver communications technology deserve somewhere to talk to each other that is not a sales floor. These principles are how we keep it that way. They are public, so you can hold us to them.
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Contact lists sold
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Community talks anyone can buy
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Trackers on this site
You
Decide the subjects
Not an events company
looking for an audience.
One of you.
Layer10 is run by and for people who work in UC, voice, contact centre, AI and CPaaS. Everything on this page is something we wanted from an industry network and rarely found: honest conversation, no hard sell, and a real say in what happens next.
We are not neutral about everything. We are firmly on the side of the people in the conversation, rather than the people paying to be near it.
What you can expect
Eight promises
you can hold us to.
They apply to every Layer10 event, from a dinner for twenty to PACKETLOSS. If we fall short of one, tell us. That is what they are for.
02
You will know who else is there
Every event says who it is for, and whether suppliers are taking part, before you register. No surprises once you arrive.
03
Your voice sets the agenda
Subjects, speakers, cities and new formats come from members nominating and voting, not from whoever paid the most.
04
Every platform gets a fair hearing
Multi-vendor and cross-platform by design. No paid preference dressed up as editorial judgement.
05
Evidence beats adjectives
Real deployments, real numbers and honest lessons, including the ones that went wrong. Hype gets questioned, politely.
06
Disagree about ideas, never about people
Challenge is the point of getting together. Personal attacks are not, and they are not tolerated.
07
Nothing is recorded without your say-so
Recording, quoting and attribution need your explicit consent, and closed sessions stay closed.
08
Everyone can take part
Accessible venues, registration and formats, checked properly rather than assumed.
The lines we do not cross
What we will
never do.
An independent network only stays independent if some things are simply off the table. These are.
Sell your details. We do not sell or share contact lists, and never will.
Treat you as a prospect. Coming to a Layer10 event does not put you in anybody's sales pipeline.
Promise sponsors a captive audience. Nobody is told they are buying access to you.
Let money buy editorial control. Sponsorship pays for things. It never decides what gets said.
Quietly add vendors to a peer event. If an event is enterprise-only or partner-only, it stays that way.
Make the pitch the default. Community content comes first, and commercial content is always labelled as such.
Where you come in
This is your network.
You shape it.
Some things are ours to get right: logistics, accessibility, moderation and the integrity of the programme. The rest is yours, and we would rather say so plainly.
You choose the subjects
What gets worked through at an SDP, voted for at a MOS, asked at an ICE or put on a SIP stage.
You choose the cities
Where MOS opens next, and where events go after that, follows where members put their hands up.
You put the speakers forward
Including the people the conference circuit keeps missing, and including yourself.
You decide who sits together
Which events stay peer-only, and where mixing enterprise, partners and vendors actually helps.
You can invent a format
Six is where we started, not a limit. If the shape you need is missing, tell us.
You help decide how members are heard
How the community is represented in programme decisions is itself a decision members shape.
You decide what goes back to vendors
Blockers raised at an SDP are summarised and fed back to the vendors concerned, with no names attached.
You decide what is recorded
Sessions are only recorded, filmed or written up when the people speaking have agreed to it.
You hold us to all of this
If an event falls short of these principles, tell us. We will say what we changed.
How we judge ourselves
Value,
not registrations.
How we will know Layer10 is working. We would rather be judged on this than on how many badges we print.
| We count | Rather than |
|---|---|
| How many subjects came from community nominations | How many sessions we ran |
| The balance of practitioner, partner, independent and vendor voices | Raw headcount |
| People coming back, and more of them contributing | Registration numbers |
| Conversations that carry on after the event | Slides downloaded |
| Whether you felt able to speak openly, without being sold to | Satisfaction scores alone |
| Visible changes made because members asked for them | Ideas collected |
| Paying our way without selling access to you | Sponsorship revenue alone |
Layer10_
Built by the community.
Shaped by you.
Shaped by you.
Technology connects systems. People move the industry forward.
Tell us the subject you want worked through, the speaker you want to hear or the city that should be next.