Sokol & Associates, a provider of Asterisk based products and services, and Digium, the original creator of Asterisk and pioneer of open source telephony, will be hosting the AstriCon Europe conference from June 19-27, 2006. AstriCon, the official conference of Asterisk, the industry's first open source PBX, will be touring Europe June 19-27th with scheduled events to take place in Berlin, Germany, Paris, France, and London, UK.

AstriCon Europe tour stops include:

-- AstriCon Berlin: June 19 & 29 at the Estrel Hotel & Convention Center

-- AstriCon Paris: June 22 & 23 at Le Palais des Congres de Paris

-- AstriCon London: June 26 & 27 at the ExCeL Center

Each of the AstriCon Tour's two-day events includes a day of in-depth Asterisk tutorials, including a developer's meeting, a day of general session and an exhibit of Asterisk related products and services. The tutorials cover material for beginners, advanced users and developers. Topics range from a high-level overview of the capabilities of Asterisk to an advanced session on redundant Asterisk implementations in carrier and call center environments. Among the tutorials offered are:

-- Asterisk 101 (an introduction to the Asterisk PBX)

-- Telephony 101 (an introduction to PSTN telecommunications by David Duffett, head of training and development for Aculab)

-- Asterisk Development 101 (by Kevin Fleming, co-maintainer of Asterisk and senior software engineer for Digium)

-- Asterisk Clustering & High Availability Solutions

The Asterisk Developer Meeting offers an opportunity for developers to review the current state of the Asterisk code base, to present proposals for new features, and to communicate directly with project leadership. The Developer Meeting also includes an Asterisk development primer offered by Kevin Fleming of Digium.

The General Conference Day features a keynote by Mark Spencer, creator of Asterisk and president of Digium, as well as presentations by Asterisk users, developers and entrepreneurs. Among the presentations are case studies, technical topics, Asterisk business model coverage, and more. Some of the presentations slated for AstriCon Europe are:

-- Asterisk Keynote by Mark Spencer - Features of Asterisk 1.4

-- Enabling the Video Revolution with Asterisk by Neil Stratford of Vipadia Limited

-- Embracing The Next Generation Telephony Platform by Jason Goecke of Presence Technology

-- Carrier Class Asterisk Solutions by Serge Krupa, CTO of Simitel

-- The Open Source SIP Platform by David Troy, CTO of PopVox, LLC

-- Internationalizing Asterisk by Stuart Fenton of Westany

-- Asterisk in the SOHO Environment by Randy Resnick, CEO of Resmo

-- Leveraging Legacy Communications Infrastructure by Leigh Fatzinger of Citel

-- Adding Relevance to Communications by Alec Saunders, CEO of Iotum

-- Building the Next Generation Network Switch by David Zimmer, CEO of Teresto Media AG

-- Implementing IAX2 in Java by Tim Panton, CTO of Mexuar

Each AstriCon tour stop also includes the Asterisk Expo, an exhibition of Asterisk related products and services. This year's Expo includes a list of leaders in the Asterisk market, such as Aheeva, Alliance Systems, Audiocodes, Axialys, Citel, Digium, GES, Kirk Telecom, Mexuar, Mix Networks, Ranch Networks, Xorcom.

Other events taking place at AstriCon include dCAP Testing (become a Digium Certified Asterisk Professional), BOF sessions (ad hoc interest group meetings covering all aspects of Asterisk) and an Asterisk "After Hours" networking session.

For more information, including the full event schedule, or to register for AstriCon, please visit the AstriCon website http://www.astricon.net.