One awesome aspect of OpenForce in Las Vegas is its great variety and flexibility in the area of speaker sessions. Attendees of OpenForce can choose from a bundle of talks specific to DotNetNuke, or any concurrent sessions in progress at DevConnections at the Mandalay Bay (in the ASP.NET, VisualStudio.NET, SQL Server, SharePoint tracks.) Of course, this flexibility also allows attendees in those other tracks to sit in on the DotNetNuke/OpenForce sessions. So, how many of those people do we expect to attend our sessions in ‘08? I predict an awful lot.
Last November at OpenForce ’07, the conference floor was awash with thousands of Microsoft professionals. 5000 developers, IT pros, analysts, programmers, and consultants to be exact. In the mix, you had your DotNetNuke team members, speakers, and conference attendees. As well, DotNetNuke Corporation, Active Modules, and R2i all had exhibitor booths (dotted throughout the hall.)
Here’s an informal survey. If we’d had the opportunity in ’07 to ask every person in attendance “Have you heard of DotNetNuke?” how many of those 5000 do you think would have replied with a “yes”? Or if we’d asked how many how many had ever used DotNetNuke, how many would have nodded? Standing and talking to people at our booth was definitely both an enlightening and rewarding experience for us, as we got to answer many specific questions about people’s knowledge, perception, and use of the DotNetNuke platform. We were also able to speak about the DNN community and eco-system which has flourished around the DotNetNuke project.
Which brings us to OpenForce ’08. The goal? To have 5000 people leaving that conference centre at week’s end having an awareness of DotNetNuke and what it can mean for their projects/businesses. Is this unreasonable? I think not.
The only reason anybody will overlook DotNetNuke - or the DotNetNuke crowd - in Las Vegas is if they miss their flight or get stuck in the casino. They won’t miss our registration kiosk, info booth, or conference materials in their bags when they arrive at the Mandalay. They certainly won’t miss our large cluster of exhibitors on the conference floor, or the SWAG being handed out (still have my R2i hat from last year – nice!) They won’t miss all of the DotNetNuke titles displayed at the Wiley booth. They won’t miss the noise we’ll be making at our big community bash scheduled for Wednesday evening, where we’ll be handing out T-shirts and raffling off over 50 items donated by members of the DNN community (more info in next blog.) And who, after seeing the excitement and energy in this community, wouldn’t want to visit our OpenForce sessions and see what we’re all about…
My final conversation in this series is with Chris Chodnicki, who is the Chief Technology Officer at R2integrated. After being an exhibitor at OpenForce in LV in ’07, Chris has been an excellent source of feedback during planning for this year’s event. R2i is also participating in the following two session talks this year: “Panel Discussion: Scaling DotNetNuke Lessons Learned” w/ DNN Core team, Penton Media and Nick Christy of R2i (a case study session detailing Penton Media’s Windows ITPro site migration to DNN 5) and “Extending DotNetNuke Modules with AJAX” with Kevin Schreiner of R2i ~BW
"Viva Las Vegas! We're gearing up for another exciting week in Sin City. Perfect timing for a conference filled with great ideas and innovations from all over the country," says Chris.
"At OpenForce '08, R2integrated (R2i) will have a double-booth showcasing our award winning DNN-based sites as well as some new social based technologies. Come over and meet the R2i crew, and take a few minutes and learn about our just released new framework for building DNN custom modules called R2i Open Web Studio. R2i OWS is a new generation tool built from the top-selling DNN tool ListX that will now also support SharePoint and .Net based sites."
"R2i had an exhibit booth last year and signed up this year because of the success of last year's conference. At the booth we felt a bit like DNN evangelists and sharing the word about DNN to a Microsoft audience only familiar with Sharepoint / MOSS. It was also great to see the many faces matched to the names of the DNN community and interact directly with the DNN core team. We are really honored this year to also participate in two of the DNN sessions." - Chris Chodnicki is the Chief Technology Officer at R2integrated