TL;DR

• FreeSWITCH v1.11.2 shipped with major security fixes.

• Hackathon challenges, a keynote from Anthony Minessale, and a roundtable on AI voice in production.

• Chicago nights, recordings coming soon on Youtube, and 2027 tickets are open.
  
  

ClueCon 2026 Recap

Another ClueCon is in the books! This year's conference brought together developers, builders, and telecom veterans for a full week of hackathon challenges, late-night networking, demos, and lots of discussion around voice AI. Here's everything you missed (or a chance to relive your favorite parts).

FreeSWITCH v1.11.2 release!

The first thing to kick off the conference week was a new FreeSWITCH release! This is an important release containing extensive security hardening across the core, mod_rtmp, mod_xml_rpc and mod_sofia, alongside the new interface allowlist, stricter DTLS/STUN validation for media sessions, and a modernized build system. 

We strongly encourage all users to upgrade to v1.11.2 as soon as possible! View the release notes here.

The Coder Games

ClueCon always starts off on Monday with a day of hands-on challenges designed for developers and builders alike, and this year's Coder Games hack-a-thon didn't disappoint. Participants raced pinewood derby cars, fixed daily rage moments using AI agents, and prompted their way to the prize in our new vibe coding challenge.

FreeCYCLED Hacks

At this year's FreeCYCLED Hacks, attendees built their own pinewood derby cars from household materials, ditching keyboards for glue guns and sandpaper. A few took a more organic approach, carving cars out of vegetables. 

At the end of the day, the whole fleet hit the track for a head-to-head showdown to crown the fastest car.

The SignalWire Challenge

The SignalWire Challenge tasked participants with building a real-time AI voice agent to solve one of their own daily rage moments. Think memberships that are made deliberately hard to cancel, or phone trees that keep you in a loop. Attendees built agents they'd actually want to talk to, then put them to the test live.

The Prompt Pit

This year featured a new Coder Games challenge: the Prompt Pit! This vibe code-off turned prompting into a live sport: a game-show-style coding championship where developers went head-to-head building real, working apps in just minutes. 

Challenges ranged from a translator for turning your real, impolite thoughts into corporate-safe speech, to fortune cookies that came with legal disclaimers, to a petty complaints composer that transformed tiny grievances into wildly overwrought formal complaints. It all built up to the final showdown, where finalists raced to create an entire fake startup on the spot, fake product included.

Presentations

Throughout the week, we witnessed an incredible run of speakers, digging into everything from securing agentic workflows at enterprise scale to what "carrier-grade" voice AI actually looks like in production. We explored deep dives on FreeSWITCH, Kamailio, and OpenSIPS, AI's real-world impact on both people and infrastructure, building next-gen contact centers, and why most voice AI agents are still being built the wrong way.

One highlight was Anthony Minessale's keynote, where he made the case that this community spent twenty years solving the hardest problems in real-time voice. And that battle-tested foundation is exactly what's needed to power the AI voice era. Just like we disrupted the industry once with FreeSWITCH, we're here to do it again.

AI Roundtable: Is AI Voice Ready for the Real World?

On Wednesday, we hosted a candid roundtable moderated by Adam Kalsey, joined by Anthony Minessale, Alex Balashov, James Tagg, and Devang Sharma. The conversation got right to the harder questions: what does it actually take to run AI voice in production? Is there an "AI slop" problem in voice the way there is for text and images? Is AI always right for your use case, or could an old-school IVR ever work better? 

There are no easy answers, but these are exactly the kinds of discussions ClueCon was designed to tackle.

Evening events 

ClueCon after hours might be the best part of the whole conference. Each night brought a new setting for attendees to hang out, network, and enjoy a drink with their peers.

Monday: The Welcome Dinner at Giordano’s

Monday started with the annual Welcome Dinner at Giordano's, where attendees got to enjoy Chicago's famous deep-dish pizza while trading stories from day one of the Coder Games.

Tuesday: The Gigabit Reception

Tuesday brought the main event: the annual Gigabit Reception, ClueCon's most beloved networking tradition, done up in full 1920s/30s speakeasy style. Even Sigmond dressed up.

There were cocktails, snacks, a jam session, and a few lucky attendees even stumbled onto a hidden surprise in Capone's vault…

Wednesday: Karaoke at Brando's Speakeasy

On Wednesday night, ClueCon took the party off-site with a trip to Brando's Speakeasy, a cozy Chicago tavern tucked in the Loop. A few were brave enough to sing karaoke. Others ordered a drink and watched the show or just sat outside to enjoy the evening. 

Dangerous Demos

We closed out the conference week with Dangerous Demos, hosted by James Body. In this fast-paced event, participants have to get dangerous in 3 minutes or less, or crash and burn in style. 

This year included many AI voice demos, a demo inspired by attempts to clone James Body himself, and even an entirely new version of the audience voting system (after the existing one crashed and burned earlier in the day).

The grand prize giveaway

We wrapped up ClueCon 2026 with our annual grand prize giveaway: a brand-new, custom engraved MacBook Neo! Each year, one lucky attendee walks away with the big prize. 

If you want to increase your chances for next year, register early for ClueCon 2027 and earn extra raffle tickets!

Missed it live? Catch it on YouTube

If you couldn't make it this year, don't worry. You can catch all the presentation livestreams and recordings on the FreeSWITCH YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications so you're the first to know when we post them!

See you in 2027

Planning for ClueCon 2027 is already underway, and early bird tickets are available now for just $599.99 when you stay with us at the InterContinental Hotel Chicago. It's the biggest discount on registration you'll see all year, so grab your ticket now.

Thank you to the 2026 ClueCon event partners!

ClueCon wouldn't be possible without the support of our amazing event partners! If you'd like to help us bring this conference to life next year, reach out to the team. We'd love to have you involved.