"As many of you know, Novell has held BrainShare for more than 20 years, and it is a tradition we are proud of. I also know that our customers and partners always look forward to this conference," Novell's Senior Vice President and Chief Market Officer, John Dragoon said in a statement. "Despite this, many of you have indicated that because of the current economic climate, you are under increasing pressure to reduce travel and other controllable expenses and are hesitant to commit to attending our BrainShare 2009 conference."

I'm going to be honest here - I've never been to a BrainShare and never had plans to do so. Novell has always done an above average job of keeping journalists like me in the loop on BrainShare related news either with pre-briefs or with press conferences that were webcast.

So no I won't miss BrainShare personally. However I was kinda/sorta expecting that Novell would roll out Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 at BrainShare this year. Without the BrainShare hook, Novell won't have that same milestone event to hail the arrival of their latest release. Then again there is always LinuxWorld - oh wait there is no LinuxWorld anymore either is there?