I just noticed that Novell announced the cancellation of Brainshare 2009.
With all of the layoffs and musical chairs happening at Novell, this can hardly come as a surprise. It has been a long time since Brainshare has really been a "developers" conference. Novell has failed miserably at every effort to create a developer community.
So here is my take. Brainshare is an excellent forum for Novell to get some ink. Since Novell has shrunk to such irrelevancy, it is very hard for it to get any press otherwise. Since the current regime has yet to articulate at all what its strategy is, another Brainshare that exposes that weakness isn’t really necessary. However, cancelling the main event is just another indicator of the disarray that Novell is in.
Blaming it on the economy is rather brilliant. "Yeah, it’s the economy, that’s the ticket."