We are once again in the heart of the planning season for DotNetNuke OpenForce. It is that time of year when we ask all of you to submit your session abstracts for this years OpenForce North America conference. I know that the last 2 years, we have had great response from our community and I expect that this year will be no different.
Like the last two years, we are accepting session submissions in 4 different topic areas: Development, Design, Administration and Open Source.
Development – These are basically session dealing with code. Whether it is topic on module development or building custom providers or dissecting the internals of DotNetNuke, anything that would appeal to the software coders is fair game.
Design – This topic area is targeted at the web designers. This goes beyond just talking about skins. It also includes topics like SEO, and accessibility and can even include Localization. These sessions should focus more on the aesthetic and usability aspects of building a DotNetNuke website.
Administration – This topic area is where speakers present sessions that address the needs of the end user. How do they install DotNetNuke, how do they configure it for a Web Farm or to run in the cloud(this is different that writing a module that uses cloud services), how can they improve site performance. These sessions really focus on the day to day use and administration of running a DotNetNuke website. This topic area is also a catchall for any business related topics.
Open Source – This final topic area is designed to show attendees how they can incorporate other Open Source tools into their development, design and administration tasks. It might be a topic on using XUnit for testing or using GIMP and Paint.Net for creating your skin elements. The idea here is to expand the attendees view of the Open Source community and to bring in fresh and complimentary ideas from other Open Source projects. These sessions should still be relevant to DotNetNuke in a very meaningful way. A topic showing all the wonders of using Wordpress for blogging is not appropriate.
Frequently Asked Questions.
Q. What are good topics?
A. This is a hard question to answer since we often don’t have a standard list of topics we want to see. Each year when we sit down to evaluate submissions we try to strike a balance. We want to have a few beginner topics like basic skinning and basic module development, some intermediate level topics like adding jQuery to your module or developing XHTML compliant skins. Finally we’ll look for advanced topics like a deep dive on the DotNetNuke installer or using the 960 Grid System for skin development. In addition to balancing the level, we’ll also try to make sure we have good coverage across different technology and web design trends. These are much more subjective since there are so many great complimentary technologies. In the past we have had sessions covering topics like Security, Silverlight, Unit Testing, Accessibility, Menu controls, AJAX, PowerShell, High Availability and scalability, Localization and Globalization, Continuous Integration, Subsonic, Web standards, LINQ to SQL and SEO. The key is that we look around at what is happening in the web development space and try to pick sessions that we think are current and relevant. Attendees are just like the rest of us – they see some new technology or new trends like Entity Framework, Cloud Services (Azure, Mosso, EC2), CSS Layouts (YUI, 960, etc), jQuery, Mega-Menus and many more, and the attendees want to find out how they can incorporate these technologies into their own sites running on DotNetNuke.
Q. Who Should Submit?
A. Are you a DotNetNuke expert? Do you like to share your DotNetNuke knowledge with the community? Do you enjoy speaking in front of large crowds? You are exactly the person we are looking for.
Every conference relies on the quality of its speakers and as proven last year, the DotNetNuke community has a lot of great speakers. While we anticipate that some core team members will want to speak, we are also interested in having speakers from the broader DotNetNuke community as well. So please don't hesitate to offer your speaking services. Even if you didn't get selected to speak last year, please submit sessions. We hope to rotate in some fresh faces and give a few more speakers the opportunity to present.
Q. How do I Submit my Sessions?
A. This call for speakers is specifically targeted at OpenForce North America. We will have a separate call for speakers for OpenForce Europe.
To submit your sessions, Login to the OpenForce09 site and then go to the Call For Speakers page.
Q. What do I get if I am selected to speak?
A. Every speaker at the DotNetNuke OpenForce North America conference will receive 4 nights of lodging at the Mandalay Bay Casino and Hotel along with free conference registration. Conference registration will allow every attendee full access to the expo hall, and all sessions at the DevConnections and DotNetNuke OpenForce conferences. (Pre and Post conference training days are not covered in the complimentary registration).
Q. When and where is the Conference?
A. This years conference is being held in Las Vegas, Nevada at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino from November 10th through the 12th. There will also be pre-conference and post-conference workshops available.
Additional conference details will be posted on the OpenForce 09 website as they become available.
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