Not to be alarmist, but I've asked othe (who is listed as a contributor on the vertcoin.org website) a few times on freenode #vertcoin recently if he's been in contact with anyone working on the new algo, and he said he's attempted to contact bushido several times over the past couple weeks, but gotten no response. So, not sure how we're gonna get someone to act as intermediary between devs and general public if devs aren't even communicating with devs.