Disruptive Telephony

O'Reilly just cancelled ETel for 2008. Yes, indeed, it's sadly true as shown here:

Due to changed circumstances since ETel 2008 was announced, we have decided not to move forward with the conference this year.

It is somewhat ironic that part of the ETel 2008 graphic was this:

Obviously O'Reilly did.

Those of us on the ETel Program Committee were just informed of the decision yesterday. We are admittedly still in a bit of shock. This year's program had over 100 submissions and we were very much looking forward to what was shaping up to be an excellent conference this year. Great mixture of technical sessions, thought-provoking sessions and so much more.

We are not privy as to exactly why O'Reilly made the decision and on many levels it doesn't really matter. As far as O'Reilly is concerned, ETel is now dead for 2008.

Personally, I think it is a loss to our industry. I think it is also, frankly, a loss to O'Reilly. But I'll get into that perhaps in another post next week.

Right now, we on the ETel Program Committee are starting to look at what's next. I think for many of us ETel served a purpose in helping connect people who were looking at the bleeding edge of communication that just can't be found at any of the other shows. There are a lot of folks passionate about ETel... and quite a community has grown up around it. Many folks told me it was THE show they liked to attend most.

We've got a number of ideas about how to replace ETel... and we'll definitely be looking for feedback after we have a chance over the next week or so to put together a couple of proposals for folks to kick around.

For those of you who are passionate about ETel and what it came to mean, stay tuned.... (we'll need you soon!)

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