While introducing himself to a packed hall of iPhone developers and entrepreneurs last week, Raven Zachary briefly mentioned one piece of bad news; an upcoming developer event he was supposed to co-chair later this month, had been canceled.
Zachary moderated a session on “The iPhone Market Opportunity” at
O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Summit and was set to co-chair O’Reilly’s iPhoneLive
Conference, but it was quietly cancelled last month with this note:
“We’re sorry to announce that we’ve made the difficult business decision
to postpone the O’Reilly iPhoneLive conference, which was to take place
November 18 in San Jose.
We are grateful for the support of those who had agreed to participate in
the event, particularly program co-chairs Raven Zachary and Bill Dudney, and
sponsor Catapulley.
O’Reilly will continue to explore the mobile space, including the
possibility of a more broadly focused event in the future. ”
A spokesperson for O’Reilly said she couldn’t elaborate much beyond the
statement. “It was a difficult business decision. We would like to continue
to explore the mobile space, but there’s nothing firm at this point,”
spokesperson Maureen Jennings told InternetNews.com.
Zachary said he knew the reason for the
cancellation, but referred questions back to O’Reilly for comment. “I’m
disappointed,” he said. “I plan to work with them in the future.”
No dimming of interest
He does not think the cancellation is a reflection of any dimming of interest in the iPhone. “Any sort of event that brings people together to learn about the platform will do well,” he said. “The opportunity for O’Reilly to do an iPhone conference in 2009 is good, and I believe they’ll do one. ”
When iPhone Live was announced in September, O’Reilly proudly noted in a release that “With less than three months between this announcement and the conference, the conference chairs are putting the program together with an agility and speed befitting the iPhone.”
Still, there’s more to producing a successful commercial event than the
program, and it’s possible the short time period was not long enough to
attract the level of sponsorship and attendees O’Reilly had hoped for.
