Come, come, come to the Astricon
Malcolm Davenport September 3rd, 2008
We are going, going, going to the Astricon.
We are having fun, fun, fun at the Astricon.
And I’ll bet, bet, bet I’m not the only Kraftwerk fan at the Astricon.
Waaaaaaaaayyyyy back in 2004 – back when the Olympics were in Athens, when Coke Zero was getting ready to taste infringe on Coke, when petrol was just $1.839 USD per gallon or half of what it is today, when Shaun of the Dead was opening in theathers, and when construction of the Burj Dubai began – the very first Astricon was held and we did something very silly.
Back in those days:
- A: Digium only had around 20 employees.
- B: We built this fancy VoIP telephony software called Asterisk.
- C: Nearly everyone in the company was going to Astricon.
- D: Astricon was only three hours away by car.
“Let’s relocate the company, minus shipping and receiving, to Atlanta for the week and run everything out of an office we setup in a conference room and push all of our calls and support and everything across the Internet!!! z0MG!” — Mark Spencer
So Digium’s trying to run our business including live sales and support calls over VoIP, and the hundreds of attendees at Astricon are all trying to stay in touch with their businesses over the free WiFi, and the hotel’s trying to run all of this over a pair of bonded T1′s.
…and Digium never tried that again.
This year, you’ll find me:
- At the Code Zone
- Attending Brian Aker’s (MySQL AB) keynote.
- Wondering what in the world is going on at Troy Davis’ talk “AGI Porn: Eight Things We Built With AGI.”
- Tossing hard questions at Kevin Fleming and Russell Bryant’s “Asterisk Ashram: Ask the Gurus” to see if there’s something about Asterisk that they *don’t* know. Who received the first call across Asterisk? What was the name of Digium’s Asterisk demo box that had a plexiglass case and blink’n lights? How many fingers am I holding up?
I’m also an earlier riser, so I’ll see you at the Continental breakfast for some coffee, tea, and juices. 
About the Author
Digium lifer, celebrator of 11 Digium birthdays, and Digium employee #4. "I like te-lephony and I cannot lie. You other vendors can't deny; When a call comes in with MOS so you can't hear and some echo in your ear you get angry!" - Sir Mix-a-Malcolm
Thanks Malcolm, I hope you enjoyed the talk. As an attendee, Astricon ran extremely smoothly – credit to everyone at Digium. See you next year.