Wednesday, April 5, 2006

VON Canada - Day 2

Another good day on Tuesday, especially with the exhibit hall opening. Lots more people and buzz than Monday. Again, I just have time to post some Nokia N90 photos and clips - will post some closing thoughts and more photos tomorrow.

I also did my weekly podcast at the show. Yesterday, I did it using Jay Leno's Jaywalking format, where my cohort, Ron Gruia and I walked the floor and did the pod live over my cellphone. We recorded our impressions of the show floor on the fly, including some impromptu booth visits and comments from exhibitors. Should be posted later today.



Stefan Oberg - Skype, Kevin Delaney; boy wonder Skype developer from Toronto:

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Objectworld - they have a pretty compelling unified communications platform, including video. Here's a picture-in-a-picture effect of me photographing us looking at the screen which in turn is capturing us on video. Right photo - Stefan Dubowski, Telemanagement Magazine

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Toronto Asterisk User Group meeting - standing room only, Jeff addressing the meeting:

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The Americans among us (we have to let a few of them in, right?) - Carl Ford and Chris Celiberti, video guru Dave Burstein:

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And now for some video clips....

First, the opening few minutes of the Skype keynote. As you know by now, Niklas Zennstrom had to cancel last minute. Filling his place was Stefan Oberg, GM of Skype for Desktop. Stefan explained that eBay needed Niklas to be in China this week, and well, I guess China is a way bigger market, so....

Second, is the Toronto Asterisk User Group (www.taug.ca). I recently learned that Toronto has the world's largest and most active AUG - lucky us! One of my contributions to VON Canada was putting together a mini-event, where I connected with folks like Jim van Meggelen to bring the Asterisk community to VON. So, VON invited them to hold their April user group meeting at the show site, and they turned out big time. Their meeting last night was standing room only, and I got a short video clip of Jeff welcoming the group - he was quite surprised to see such a large turnout. Apologies for the abrupt ending of the clip - my phonecam ran out of memory! Jim is the other guy up on the podium with Jeff.

By the way, Jim is one of the leading exponents of open source, and is the co-author of the best-selling book published by O'Reilly, entitled Asterisk - The Future of Telephony. Also, I'd be remiss to not acknowledge Sangoma Technologies for sponsoring the refreshments, which were very popular with such a large and hungry group!

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