A lot of people are wondering what will happen to BrainShare USA with the pending Attachmate acquisition, here is some news from the official BrainShare website:

"Many of you have asked what the November 22, 2010 acquisition announcement means for BrainShare in 2011. Based on recent events and customer feedback, we have decided to delay planning for BrainShare 2011. We will announce plans for BrainShare at a later date. Check back here for future BrainShare communications."

More news can be found at http://www.novell.com/brainshare/

 

Am I amazed about this? No, not at all - as the acquisition of Novell by Attachmate is a process which is under the supervision of the SEC (Security Exchange Committee), there are all kind of rules which need to be followed. That process will take a two or three months and in that period "future focused messages" will be very difficult.

 

Also, imagine that the acquisition is finalized by the end of February or early March - then running BrainShare in the third week of March would be very difficult - also as people would expect to see a lot of news about this, with possibly new faces within Novell and future-focused messages from the new owners. So expectations would be high while the preparation time would be too limited, IMHO.

 

Realistically therefore many people, me included, were expecting such a decision for some time - and our goal is to minimize the impact all of the Open Horizons activities. After all, we are of course planning a whole year of activities in more and more countries around the world and new dates for BrainShare will have an impact.

 
On a personal note: I was very much looking forward to run the Moab Half Marathon on Sunday March 19, on the first day of original BrainShare schedule. As too many people want to join that very popular run, the organized a lottery and both Sander van Vugt (NL) and I have been "lucky winners" - we can both run thru the Moab dessert now, but will not have to go to the Salt Palace anymore afterwards. To be continued...