Perhaps the most eye-catching thing about Fall VON is the size of the Digium/Asterisk booth, which dominates the exhibition floor. My first take - which proved to be wrong was that Digium raised a new round of venture capital but what the open-source IP-PBX company has done is include several companies that are creating applications on the Asterisk platform. I had some time to sit down with CEO Mark Spencer, who said he's surprised by how actively telecom equipment makers are testing or adopting Asterisk - a far cry from the Linux world where Microsoft spent considerable time ignoring it. It was also interesting to hear Spencer's views on the eBay-Skype deal. Aside from being blown away by the valuation, Spencer said Skype's huge success is simply that it works. This is something he believes the VOIP industry has sight of as it becomes lost with establishing standards.