Telcordia Impact Players:
Darek Smyk
"Other people see things and . . . say 'Why?' . . . But I dream things that never were-- and I say: 'Why not?'"
John F. Kennedy quoting George Bernard Shaw
These words summarize the core philosophy of Dariusz "Darek" Smyk - a man who is never quite content with the status quo.
Darek's accomplishments include 16 patents in everything from telephony to multimedia services and packet-based and circuit-switched networks. They also include patents for TV-based caller ID service implementation, and web-based self-provisioning of telephony services. He is a Telcordia Fellow and has lectured and been published worldwide. And yet, after more than 20 years of service at Telcordia, Darek Smyk doesn't rest. He always seems to have another technology "itch" that must be scratched -- another "why not" to answer.
Today, Darek is the Director of Telcordia's Services Incubator and Systems Engineering, a position that is a result of one more "why not" question that Darek considered about five years ago. At that time, Darek wondered why Telcordia was not leading the implementation of converged services that span wireline, wireless and cable networks, circuit-switched and packet-based networks, as well as, voice, video and data.
Darek knew that Telcordia, like most of the industry, was organized into stove-pipe wireline, wireless and cable organizations, and the task of tying all three together seemed an overwhelming challenge. Then, Telcordia colleague Volnie Whyte, gave Darek a Harvard Business Review article. It postulated that despite popular belief, employees of large corporations are not powerless, and with perseverance and dedication they can bring to fruition significant initiatives. The article highlighted an employee who overcame various corporate obstacles and managed to create a "temple of learning" within a large corporation. Inspired, Darek set out to create a Telcordia "services temple," which he called the Converged Services Incubator.
The objective of the Converged Services Incubator was to stimulate realization of new services which would cut across wireline/wireless/cable networks. Darek hoped the efforts would provide unique services for converged providers, and simultaneously extend the value of the Telcordia Services Delivery Platform, thus leading to increased revenues. This would be accomplished by inventing innovative, revenue-generating "triple-play" applications and showcasing them to prospective clients.
"I wanted our customers to ask themselves their own 'why not' questions," explains Darek. "Especially, why not use the Telcordia platform outside of its traditional domain?"
Over time, Darek secured executive sponsorship, gathered together a small, extremely capable team, and launched a gradually expanding Converged Services Incubator. "Looking back, I was really lucky to assemble a team of very bright, creative and enthusiastic researchers and engineers, including Jacek Korycki, Subir Paul and Robert Peszek - just to name the few early pioneers of converged services," recalls Darek.
The early initiative proved to be on target when a couple of years later, Telcordia reorganized and merged the wireline, wireless and cable business units, repositioning Telcordia's platform as the Converged Applications Server. Today, the Services Incubator is a well established group, helping to drive Telcordia product strategy with an impressive portfolio of innovative services based on the Telcordia platform. The Incubator is an innovation showcase for the Telcordia IMS product line, is exhibited at major industry conferences, and is demonstrated, almost daily, to various current and prospective clients.
Still, Darek and his team continue asking "why not" questions. "Why not" leverage our own platform to invent and deploy unique multimedia collaboration services within Telcordia? "Why not" empower third-party application programmers to leverage the re-usable application building blocks built into the Converged Application Server?
And the questions continue.
"The best thing is that we still have many more 'why not' questions on our minds - that's what makes our jobs exciting," Darek concludes. "After all, why not be excited about coming to work every day?"
Why not, indeed?