Andy Abramson reports that Paul Amery (interview) is no longer the Director of Developer Programming at Skype. I liked Paul a great deal and he had tremendous passion and enthusiasm for his work at Skype.
You may remember Amery was a keynoter at a past TMC event so I subsequently had the opportunity to spend a good deal of time with him.
I am not sure what the reason for this departure is but perhaps it was just time. Here is the statement the company put out:
Change has always been a constant at Skype and will continue to be. We will keep re-shaping our business to take advantage of the immediate and short-term opportunities in front of us. In this context, Paul Amery & Lester Madden have moved on from their current positions and we’re working closely with them to support them through this process.
For more on the departure I would direct you to a guest blog post by Amery where he spells out some of the successes which have taken place under his tenure. Specifically:
- We created the route to market you requested, in the shape of Extras Manager since 3.0 launch
- Downloads of third-party apps have increased from a few thousand a month to 40m downloads in 12 months
- Finally, we’ve made progress on Web Services. wolli will keep you posted on plans for the Directory Web Service, open sourcing plans and the shape of Client APIs
- Thanks to sterling work from Antoine, partners and press are reporting healthy relationships with SDP
- Events in Tokyo, San Jose, Prague and New York help you meet us often
- Comms are much better, I kicked off a monthly newsletter, and Halina is working hard on a new Devzone rebrand and launch. It looks good.
If you want to contact Paul, his e-mail is [email protected] and you can Skype him at: paul.amery.
See also:
Skype Journal: Skype Developer Partner Program in Flux
Tom Raftery: Is Skype bucking the Open trend?