Welcome to Astricon!
Danny September 23rd, 2008
It’s great to see the enthusiasm and excitement in the attendees of this year’s Astricon here in Phoenix. The outside temperature, which is approaching 100 degrees, is an apt metaphor for how the open source IP telephony market is heating up. Looking around at the conference I’m struck by just how broad a spectrum of attendees Astricon draws in terms of interests, skills, projects, application ideas, business models, native languages, etc. And the personalities of the attendees are diverse too – bald heads to pony tails, penny loafers to flip flops, t-shirts to button-downs, geeks to business owners (sometimes both), spotlight seekers to corner dwellers, well, you get the picture.
This week is somehow special though. Even though the participants at this conference come from many walks of life and for a variety of different reasons, this week those differences seem to take a back seat to the primary objective of helping shape the future of open source telephony. The Asterisk community is the single most influential ‘individual’ in VoIP today (as determined by VoIP Info a few months back) – and the reason becomes clearer each passing Astricon. So, for the next couple of days, those that are competitive and those that are complementary, those who are open source enthusiasts and those whose products are proprietary, will temporarily set their differences aside in order to be part of the bigger movement – which is Asterisk.
What is well diversified is sometimes better unified – that certainly seems to ring true for the Asterisk community.
Enjoy the conference!
About the Author
Danny Windham joined Digium in February, 2007 as CEO. In this role, Windham is responsible for setting corporate strategy and executing day to day business operations. Prior to joining Digium, Windham served as president and chief operating officer of ADTRAN, a global provider of networking and communications equipment. Windham joined ADTRAN in… more about Danny
