[ text with links can be found on http://blogs.digium.com/2010/10/14/astricon-update/ ] AstriCon is less than two weeks away! If you haven?t booked your flight to Washington DC, now?s your chance! The main hotel (the Gaylord) is pretty booked, but that?s OK ? there are still rooms a few hundred feet away at some of the hotels around the complex (Aloft, Wyndham, Hampton Inn, Residence Inn) and there are more hotels within a short drive/cab of the venue. Speakers at AstriCon We?ve got some great last-minute speakers to announce ? I?m pleased to say that Ruben Sousa will be giving a talk on one of the largest open- source Asterisk installations in the world (100,000 users, 184 servers) which is arrayed across the University system in Portugal. We have a really solid line-up this year of talks focused on security and scalability from Kevin Lynn, Sandro Gauci, the Great Olle Johansson, and more! Many of the most active community developers, integrators, and speakers will be on hand, along with some very interesting announcements from Digium including the yearly roadmap and status update from the Digium engineering group ? don?t miss out on hearing what?s new and what?s coming up! With the huge number of features that have been added to 1.8, it?s possible that you?ll learn from someone at the show how the newest release of Asterisk can benefit your organization in a way you never expected. Win an Apple iPAD at the AstriCon Ringer Rodeo! ?Saddle up pardners!? and prepare to reap the benefit of being the fastest Asterisk geek in the West? make that ?East?. Well, the fastest Asterisk geek at AstriCon, anyways. We?ve devised a stunningly simple contest (it?s almost too simple) to give away an Apple iPad ? and with only a low number of opportunities to compete (during the show party), this could be the easiest iPad you win this millennium. Second and third prizes are a Polycom IP-650 deskphone and aPanasonic KX-TGP500 DECT wireless phone. The contest will demand the ability to hook up two SIP phones and an IAX ?trunk?, in addition to a small amount of dialplan programming. You?ll be given all the details you need and you will not have to know how to set up the actual phones ? we?ve done that part for you. Just like last year (when we gave away an unlocked HTC Hero Android phone) there will be a number of timed rounds with the winning time in each round going on to the leader board ? the dude (or dudette) with the fastest time on that board at the end of the party will be presented with said iPad at the end of conference session in addition to being admired and envied in equal measure by the gathered crowd! David Duffett will be the chief rodeo wrangler ? at the all-conference party on Wednesday night, look for the man in pinstriped jacket and cane. Etc. etc. I?ve been told there is a Water Taxi from the hotel dock to old Town Alexandria. This is a great place to have dinner, wander around, and see some of the sights of the DC area. And a boat taxi is always fun! A mile or two up the river from Alexandria, there is also lots to do in Washington, DC ? it?s a great time of year to be there when it?s not too hot, and not too cold. Developers: there is the AstriDevCon on Friday from around 8:00 to 5:00, which will focus on hard-core code development and discussion of particular issues in the codebase. If you speak C and find yourself typing ?make config? in your head when you meet someone new, this is probably where you?ll find some interesting discussion. Sign up here if you haven?t already. We do ask this to be a developer-only session, so please be familiar with the code and the issue tracker if you plan to attend. Also, don?t forget there is the chance to take the dCAP test at AstriCon ? kill two birds with one stone! See the AstriCon website for more details. Just two more weeks! See everyone there. JT --- John Todd email:jtodd at digium.com Digium, Inc. | Asterisk Open Source Community Director 445 Jan Davis Drive NW - Huntsville AL 35806 - USA direct: +1-256-428-6083 http://www.digium.com/