Mmm, that's very interesting to hear. It does confirm what I've suspected about the IT community at large -- that much more information needs to be spread to raise awareness of what's now possible, as well as holding more intro workshops.
I think our front-and-centre presence at IT360 will play very well into this, as we'll be getting a lot of print / web exposure out of it as well. So I really encourage anyone who's remotely interested in helping promote asterisk and open source telephony to join the planning list ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) and/or add your name to the wiki (http://wiki.taug.ca/wiki/LinuxWorld_2007_Planning). Activity is going to really ramp up this month. Cheers, spd On 3/5/07, Reza - Asterisk Enthusiast <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hello Everyone! Touching base with all with regards to a successful presentation on VOIP & Asterisk at the career fair on the 27th and 28th of February. We were sponsored by Career Door where both Henry and I had the honour and privilege to present at the career fair, which had an attendance of over 800 I.T. professionals, exclusively with IT experience. Right now I'm recovering from a complete burn out :). To my SHOCK only about 5% of the crowd knew of VOIP, and out of those 5%, only less than half had **some** exposure to VOIP servers. We had two, 1 Giga Byte Flash & two copies of "Asterisk, The Future of Telephony" as a give away, which received a warm enthusiasm and generated more interest in TAUG. Our presentation was scheduled for no more than 45 minutes - but on day 2 we had more time. Our Q/A period extended to another hour and half. The audience participation in the QA period was amazing. A lot of questions came up of what is possible and so on. I am still at a shock, that out of so many candidates, only a limited number had exposure to VOIP, needless to say Asterisk. I believe Henry and I played a key role, in attracting those individuals with little or no experience in VOIP. As more and more people, specially decision makers learn about Asterisk, I believe it will become a part and parcel of regular IT tasks within a small & medium size business. Sure TrixBox and other GUI's have a place - but more and more software developers are bridging their applications with IVRs where GUI would be a limiting factor. Asterisk & other Open Source VOIP servers are here to stay & will no doubt be an important part of IT, as it already has. Hope to see you all at the next TAUG meeting! Best, Reza.
-- | It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what | you know for sure that just ain't so. -- Mark Twain | | The Toronto Asterisk Users Group | Join the discussion group by visiting http://taug.ca
