Pulver.com held its first ever edition of the VON show in Canada this past week.  Having attended US editions of the show that counted with heavyweights such as Henry Sinnreich (the father of SIP), Robert Pepper (Chief of Policy Development of the FCC), Eugene Roman (Group President for Bell Canada), Christopher Fine (VP, Global Investment Research Division for Goldman Sachs), and others, I would have to admit that the first VON Canada was a bit thin on high impact speakers.

However, to be fair to Jeff Pulver, Carl Ford, and the rest of the crew, it was still an amazing feat to accomplish what they did in such a short period of time (I counted less than 7 calendar weeks since the end of Spring VON, held in San Jose, which was a major success).  Moreover, they also needed to overcome the wait-and-see cautious approach predominant within the Canadian telecom industry.  The reason for that is the pending outcome of the CRTC ruling on VoIP, which has been discussed at length here and in other forums, such as Jeff's own blog.  I suspect this reluctance in making public statements regarding VoIP definitely overhung a bit this show.