Goodbye VON, Hello eComm

Lee Dryburgh, the founder of the eComm conference has floated the possibility of a second mini-conference during 2008, in the Fall. eComm made its first appearance back in the Spring, the week before the VON conference in San Jose, California. Then eComm, cunningly located ten miles up the road in Mountain View, attracted a lot of the VON crowd, as well as many well-connected Web 2.0 and Telco 2.0 people.

With VON apparently in free fall thanks to Pulvermedia's owners pulling out, many are suggesting that eComm should take over from VON, taking some of that VoIP family feeling with it. Today's Squawkbox podcast (from Alec Saunders and iotum) also considered this question, with Andy Abramson declaring himself in favour of a one-day conference in Silicon Valley, focused on C-level executives. Others suggested a European destination, perhaps with a 2-day span. Rich Tehrani (also on the podcast) did not express a preference; his company TMC, produce the Internet Telephony conferences that have been competing successfully with VON over the past years.

Many have praised Lee Dryburgh's efforts in creating eComm, which restricted speakers to 15 minutes each, giving a relentless pace and also high quality tech content, largely free of marketing puff. Dryburgh is no slouch in the industry himself, having created the definitive reference book on SS7 and having researched next generation telecom for Cisco Systems.

Reply from martyndavies on May 24, 2008 - 03:02 PM

I am reminded that I missed out a step here, and at VoIP User we haven't really talked about the failure of Pulvermedia. In short, the investors of Pulvermedia pulled the plug not long after Spring VON, and rumours began to circulate about staff being "let go". Jeff Pulver himself resigned, and shortly after Carl Ford also left, clearly leaving no-one able to run conferences. At the same time Doug Mohney of the VON magazine switched to online publication FierceVoIP, so it was clear that all was not well. Although the VON site remains, the shows discussed there are not taking place, and the VON magazine appears to be defunct.

For more background, Jon Arnold discusses this at his blog, and also Thomas Howe and Luca Filigheddu eulogize at their sites. All three of these guys have been regulars at the VON shows and at the core of that community.

From the VoIP User perspective, we're very sad to see VON disappear, and the team here made very many brilliant connections through VON.

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