It was exactly one year ago that I showed up for my first day of work at DotNetNuke Corporation. The past year has flown by. A ton of things have happened in the 365 days since.
You may (or may not) remember some adventurous tweets from Chris Hammond, Joe Brinkman, and myself discussing some of the details a year ago. It’s worth mentioning again, only because I flew in the night prior on Southwest, who lost my bag. While I waited for Southwest to finally admit that my bag was missing, Chris drove 10 laps around the massive San Francisco airport, waiting to pick me up.
The next day, while I was able to shower and shave, I ended up showing for my first day of work the same way that I arrived to the airport… In a t-shirt, shorts, and sandals! It was classic! And so my adventure with DNN Corp began.
Over the course of the past year, I have been involved in so many projects, meetings, events, and more. Looking back, there’s been so many things that I’ve been a part of, that it’s really difficult to quantify for this blog post. Here are some of my personal highlights:
- DotNetNuke product demonstrations
- Webinars
- Running the user group program
- Sending DNN goodies to user groups
- Help Fortune 1000 and other organizations learn more about DNN
- Participating in Movember
- Speaking at DNNConnections
- Helping to get two more Day of DotNetNuke events organized
- Getting my blog on over 70 times
- Generating over 40 DNN videos
- Having input on new features, new releases, etc.
- Generating internal knowledge bases, processes, and training
- Meeting new DNN community members and ecosystem vendors
- Working side-by-side with the likes of Shaun Walker, Joe Brinkman, Nik Kalyani, Chris Hammond, Philip Beadle, Cathal Connolly, Charles Nurse, Rob Chartier, and more
- Basically, getting paid to do the things that I LOVE!
The only bad part about the list above is that some of the coolest things I’ve done over the past year are things that I cannot mention publicly yet. Argh! 
My Promises
I promised a few things when I announced that I was going to be “working for the man.” Among those promises are the ODUG, Day of DotNetNuke, and continuing my social media presence. I promised to make sure that all of these areas continued to thrive and/or grow, even with my employment at DNN Corp. I am very proud to say that the ODUG is living well and doing just fine without me. The Day of DotNetNuke has had three events since I joined DNN Corp, in Chicago, Orlando, and Nova Scotia. And if you’re paying any attention at all, my social media presence had not faded away. I have over 16,000 tweets, I have been posting in the forums more, and although I cannot touch my goal of at least 3 blogs a week, I am still doing that too!
At the time of my announcement last year, a concern was raised on twitter about my participation in the forge too. A comment was made that I may not or would not create any new releases or projects. I am very happy to say that over the past year, I have founded the Widget Suite, a new Code Camp module, and I have had releases for the Media Module, Lightbox Gallery module, and the .Net oEmbed API Wrapper. In the case of the Widget Suite, it’s had a huge amount of traction this past year, so I’ve dedicated more of my free time to that project. I’ve even built out a team on it that’s currently 4 strong.
DNN Corp
I’ve also seen the company grow from me being about employee number 40, to 60 people now – with no signs of stopping. We have employees and offices spread over 5 continents, making DNN Corp truly an international company.
Being at DotNetNuke Corp is rewarding in so many ways. I always equate being part of the DNN community like being part of a family. In fact, I often call the DNN community my DNN family. DNN Corp is like an extension of my family. Between surviving our daily challenges, to hanging out, to our team building events, to our bowling leagues… It’s simply fun to wake up each morning, knowing that I get to come to work to play!
Looking back at all of this, I cannot express to you enough how grateful and honored I am to be part of such an exciting and fun organization, filled with some of the brightest and most energizing people you can hope to work with. I couldn’t imagine working anywhere else!
Thank you to everyone for a fun-filled, exciting, and truly rewarding experience! I hope it never ends…
Thank you to everyone that continues to be there for me, including my beautiful and wonderful family!
This post is cross-posted from my personal blog site.