Asterisk Developers Conference

Last week the Asterisk Developers Conference, or AstriDevCon 2007, was held at the Georgia Institute of Technology Information Security Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Since a couple of TransNexus developers were attending, I visited the conference as a non-technical observer to see what was going on. I have to say that I was impressed with what I saw. Kevin Fleming has cultivated a productive relationship with Georgia Tech which has a long history of nurturing innovative new technologies and start-ups and Asterisk is a perfect fit with the Georgia Tech environment.

I was also impressed with the number and background of attendees. AstriDevCon 2007 was not a convention of beer drinking hackers (however, I think they would have been welcome) which some might suspect from an open source meeting. The attendees included developers from 31 different companies including heavy hitters IBM and Sun Microsystems. The topics discussed included improved security and new video features for Asterisk.

There is no doubt that Asterisk will continue its robust growth and development. Asterisk version 1.6 promises to provide another great stride forward. If you are in the telecom business and not seriously considering the impact of Asterisk in your strategic marketing plans, then the assumptions in your long term plans are probably very wrong.