About the Authors

Jim Van Meggelen is President and CTO of Core Telecom Innovations, a Canadianbased provider of open source telephony solutions. He has over 15 years of enterprise telecom experience, for such companies as Nortel, Williams, and Telus, and has extensive knowledge of both legacy and VoIP equipment from manufacturers such as Nortel, Cisco, and Avaya.

Jim was the architect of two of the world's largest managed enterprise voice networks, each solution serving roughly 20,000 users in more than 1,000 communities across Canada and providing telecommunications in 5 different languages through 6 time zones, administered completely from a central location. These networks pioneered the use of extensive automation and database control in a branch voice networkfunctionalities not generally available in proprietary telecommunications systems. Jim has now moved on from the world of proprietary telecom, and is commited to open source telephony.

Jim is one of the principal contributors to the Asterisk Documentation Project. He enjoys teaching, public speaking, improvisational acting, and writing.

Jared Smith is one of those rare individuals whose beloved hobby is the same as his profession. The son of a computer store owner, Jared wrote his first computer program at the age of 7 on his Commodore 64. The obvious choice of major for this geek-in-embryo was Computer Engineering, and Jared received his Bachelor of Science degree with a minor in Computer Science from Utah State University. He now has over a decade of professional systems administration and programming experience in the simulation, market research, and web analytics industries. As a key architect of one of the world's largest Asterisk installations, Jared has a wealth of hands-on telephony and VoIP knowledge, which he shares through users groups and various public speaking engagements. He is an active member of the Asterisk community and a co-founder of the Asterisk Documentation Project.

Jared is active in his community, donating Asterisk services to local schools and serving in his church. The greatest joy in Jared's life comes from spending time with his children, Caleb and Sydney Jo, and his wife, Jenny.

Leif Madsen is a graduate of the Telecommuncations Technology program from the Sheridan Institute of Technology and CEO of LeifMadsen Enterprise, Incorporated, a documentation and consulting firm specializing in Asterisk. He was one of the first Digium Certified Asterisk Professionals (dCAP), and assists with the Astricon conferences and trainings organized by IPsando, LLC.

Leif first took an interest in Asterisk while attempting to find a voice conferencing solution for himself and his friends. After someone suggested trying Asterisk, the obsession began. Wanting to contribute and be involved with the community, and noticing the lack of Asterisk documentation, he co-founded the Asterisk Documentation Project.