There was a twitter contest this morning to see if anyone could accurately guess who the keynote speaker would be at this years Day of DotNetNuke Orlando event. Originally, a DotNetNuke shirt was offered as a prize for the right guess. There were plenty of guesses, but no one hit the target. Next, the deal was sweetened with a DNN boomerang. Still, no one guessed the right person – but there certainly were plenty of entertaining guesses! Finally, the stakes were raised to include not just a DNN t-shirt and boomerang, but also a frisbee. At the time of this writing, the keynote speaker was not guessed, so no one gets the swag. That shouldn’t prevent you from knowing who the speaker is though!
Keynote speeches in DotNetNuke have traditionally always revolved around someone technical. And why shouldn’t it? After all, DNN has grown from a single developer project, to a project that is literally supported and used by millions of people around the world – not all of these people are developers anymore. Some are end-users, designers, and of course, website visitors. Chance are, if you know anyone that’s used the internet, they have used DotNetNuke – even if they weren’t aware of it. Now, more than ever, DNN is being used by businesses of all shapes and sizes. This is evident in countless ways. This has been recognized by nearly everyone, and the 2010 Chicago Day of DotNetNuke by Nik Kalyani proved that developers and other users alike are thirsting for more than just development information. That keynote was 100% about community.
The next keynote speech is still being written, and it will undoubtedly deliver content that every developer wants and needs. However, the keynote speaker is not the person that you might expect, and probably not the person you’d expect to see at a code camp type event. With businesses all over the world now giving a fresh look at DNN, you as a developer will need to step up your game to keep businesses like Time Warner Cable, Sears, State Bar of California and ADP interested in your solution. This is exactly the point of the keynote.
Keynote Speaker
Since the DNN Corporation has existed, we’ve heard from many people. Mainly, we’ve heard from the main 4 founders, and some of the inner core (or trustee) members of the community. We’ve been hearing from core team members, project team leaders, and unofficial or symbolic community leaders. It’s probably a great time with all of the past and future changes that we hear it from the CEO of the DNN Corporation, Navin Nagiah.
Navin has been the leader of the DNN Corporation since the first round of funding. He leads a team of around 50 sales people, engineers, and others world-wide that all work extremely hard to bring you more and more updates to the DNN platform on every release, as well as community-related updates, like the hall of fame. Many of these people are names that you know… Shaun Walker, Joe Brinkman, Rob Chartier, Chris Hammond, Will Morgenweck, Scott Willhite, and many more.
As stated earlier, there is a lot of presentation information out there for developers, and there will continue to be more than ever before, moving forward. This keynote, while not being a deep-dive technical topic, will definitely inspire anyone that has anything to do with development. Navin will still be speaking to any and all developers that will be in attendance about how to build incredibly successful applications.
We cannot go into much more detail about the keynote content itself, but you can plan to be there to be inspired!
Content aside, there’s numerous reasons why Navin’s keynote should be important to you. Not the least of which being the fact that before and after the keynote, you will have DIRECT ACCESS to the very person that drives the company that helps to build value into the most popular open source CMS platform in the world!
Navin Nagiah’s Biography:
Navin is a senior business executive with extensive marketing, strategy, and operational experience in high-technology enterprises in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Prior to joining DNN Corp., Navin served as President and CEO of CIGNEX, an open source ECM company, and was the founder, president, and CEO of Xisource, a San Francisco-based enterprise software company with offices in London and Mumbai. Before Xisource, he was one of the founding employees of Internet Securities Inc., where he set up the company’s operations in India, China, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia, and was the managing director for Asia at the time of the company's $60 million merger with Euromoney (LSE Symbol: ERM). Navin also has extensive experience as a board member/advisor of pre-IPO companies and holds a Master's degree in electrical engineering from Kansas State University.
This blog entry is cross-posted from the Day of DotNetNuke website.