What winners and why didn’t I hear about this? Before going there, we have an important announcement concerning the upcoming training. If you were holding out until the last minute, don't skip the next section.
Registration Closes Friday
The overwhelming response to the Open Telephony Training Seminar has resulted in an almost full house. There are two seats left so we will be closing registration at the end of business on Friday, February 8th. Yup – that is this Friday, the day-after-the-day-after tomorrow! If you’ve been holding out this long, the time has come to decide. Go to the registration page, there are some scholarship discount codes listed that were donated by some worthy companies.
The Contest
When we kicked off the Open Telephony Training Seminar we considered doing a promotional contest to stir up interest as other organizations have done in the past. After seeing the overwhelming response to this training we decided that a novel approach was in order. How could we give some lucky individuals an opportunity to win entrance to our event while enhancing the overall quality for all the participants?
We decided to scan the landscape and choose some worthy individuals who have contributed selflessly to the greater community instead of choosing somewhat random contest winners. This was not an easy choice since there are numerous people who help in so many ways on the forums, IRC channels and elsewhere. However, a few stood out and we have made offers to them and are thrilled that many of them are able to come! (It should be no surprise that these individuals all have close ties to different FreePBX based projects.)
Before listing the winners we regret that two important finalists had to turn down their offers. Andrew Gillis, founder of Asterisk@Home (renamed trixbox) and Edgar Landivar, founder of Elasitx were not able to take us up on our offer.
We are thrilled with the remaining finalists who will be class participants as well as aids and guest speakers:
- Ward Mundy requires no introduction, being the brains and personality behind Nerd Vittles, an inspiration to many and an obvious choice to kick off this event with a Key Note speech.
- Jonathan (Joe) Roper, original contributor of PBX-in-a-Flash (PIAF) as well as Commercial Director of A2billing.
- Tom King, well known for his past contributions to the trixbox community prior to focusing all of his efforts co-developing the PIAF project.
- Robert Keller, aka cosmicwombat, long time contributor across many of the projects, and producer of The VoIP Experience Podcast.
- Greg MacLellan, aka groogs, the longest time Developer of FreePBX still with the team, having been the second one to join after the original founders when it was still AMP.
Of course we are not going to let these guys get away with a free ride. They all have a common trait, a desire to help and give that runs deep in their veins, and as such, will be assets and inspirations to all involved with this event as they are to the community as a whole.
So give us a hand in congratulating both those finalists who will be attending and those who could not come for all the great contributions they have provided to our collective telecommunications revolution against the giants!
Philippe on behalf of the FreePBX Team