I’m happy to report that Jason Fischl has recently joined Skype as Director of Developer Relations. Among other things, he’ll be heading up the Skype Developer Program.

Jason’s no newcomer to the world of VoIP. Before Skype, he was Chief Technology Officer at CounterPath, the leading developer of cross platform softphones for desktops and mobile convergence products for the likes of AT&T, BT and Verizon.

Personally, I’m thrilled about Jason joining. We have a great opportunity to revitalize our developer program and he has the skills and experience to lead this effort. He has an excellent track record working with industry standards bodies like the IETF in and is a thought leader in open source software development.

Last month, Skype made news when we offered our advanced SILK speech technology – which is incorporated into Skype 4.0 for Windows – to developers for free, and positioned it as a new standard for high quality audio.

Jason’s new role will allow Skype to do more in this direction, continuing to give third-party developers access to tools like SILK – and making Skype a platform for ground-breaking innovation.