Kim Groneman, an administrator of the Novell Forums, writing to break the news on the BrainShare forum to prospective attendees (making it very clear that he is not an official spokesman, but simply a Novell employee and an interested party) observed that “registrations for BrainShare have been very low to this point.” 

Groneman also observed that Novell could have waited longer to make the decision, but that doing so would have greatly inconvenienced a much larger number of people including suppliers to the event, delegates (with possible non-refundable fights) etc.

Groneman offers this advice: “Of course, all registration fees will be refunded immediately....no worries there. There is one thing you need to do, however, if you have already registered and booked a hotel: Call the hotel directly and cancel your reservation. I'd hate for you to get slapped with a room charge because this step was overlooked. “

Both Dragoon and Groneman make it quite clear that this is expected to be a one-off cancellation, Groneman says “And to answer the question I'm sure some analyst will read into this... no this does not mean there will never be another BrainShare. These are special economic times for everyone that hopefully won't last too long, and we fully plan to do BrainShare next year if the circumstances of our customers and partners permits you to travel to the event.”

Quite a sad day for the 23 year (if memory serves correctly) continuous history of this event.  Lets hope its back, better than ever in 2010.