#DNNWorld Conference Day 2 - Wrap Up

DNNWorld 2011

The first one was first thing in the morning and was by Cliff Reeves - General Manager of Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team. He talked about what Microsoft was doing to help and support small businesses through BizSpark and WebsiteSpark initiatives.

Navin Nagiah - CEO of DotNetNuke Corporate was up right before lunch, which is a tough spot to draw on the schedule for any speaker, where he talked about DotNetNuke from a CEO’s view point and how the company can work harder and achieve more. I was with him and his message right up until the video that he showed at the end of his presentation. Needless to say that the message contained in the video really irritated me and changing my perception on the future direction that DotNetNuke Corporate is heading. If you want to know more about my thoughts on the video your gonna have to ask...

Let’s talk about the sessions as that is what is really important at a tech conference. There were a couple of good sessions today and a couple of stand out sessions that really spoke to me and finally gave me some good useful information that I can apply to our business and ultimately help my customers. Both of those sessions came in the afternoon and were after the aforementioned “Video” so it was a bit of an emotional roller coaster today...

The sessions that I attended today were as follows:

Advanced Skinning for DotNetNuke - Ralph Williams Jr.

This was a decent session on skin development methodologies and common practices. He really got into some details of slicing up a skin and using those elements in an HTML5 / CSS3 skin design. There were some good tips like how to override the local browser CSS settings and when to use clearfix.

DotNetNuke 6 UI/UX Patterns - Brian Dukes

A very good session on the Design Patterns for DNN v6.0. Brian talked about how a developer can tie into these new methods to create a consistent user experience in DotNetNuke. It was an in depth look at the code in Visual Studio and how it works and plays in the browser. A very detailed presentation that was full of good useful information for developers.

A Candid Look at Small Business E-Commerce and DotNetNuke - Robb Bryn

I was only able to attend about 1/2 of this session due to a conference call that I had scheduled, but Robb was doing a great job highlighting what E-Commerce really is, how DotNetNuke interfaces to Authorize.Net and PayPal gateways. He was running through various third party solutions talking about Pros & Cons for each solution. He had a great list of 20 questions to ask your potential customer about their E-Commerce needs before you agree to take the project. I can’t wait to get my hands on that list and see the rest of the slide deck.

Maximize Your DotNetNuke Installation Performance - Ernst Peter Tamminga

For me, this was the standout session of the show. Ernst is on a mission to improve the performance of websites and eek out every ounce of speed and optimization that he can get from websites. His own website scores an impressive 97 or out 100 on Google’s PageSpeed and he is working on ways to claim those last three points by influencing changes in the DotNetNuke core system. His passion for performance was evident from the very first moments of the presentation and never stopped. He gave out excellent advice about what to do to improve performance of your DotNetNuke installations and his goal was to have at least two things that you do when you get back to your installations. I have four or five things that I intend to do to Sprocket’s Website. An excellent balance of presentation and demo with a logical flow, good summary and very knowledgeable speaker made this my #1 session. Thanks Ernst!

Community is Your Friend... but it Could Be Your Ally - Scott Willhite

Well to end the sessions on a high note, Scott talked about some very cool enhancements coming to the DotNetNuke Eco System (aka Community) Enhancements in v6.2 of DNN that will bring with it changes to the DotNetNuke Corporate Website. Not only is Snowcovered going to be overhauled, Extension Forge is making a strong comeback, and best of all DotNetNuke Exchange is coming. What is that you ask, well it is a Stack Overflow type Q&A board, that will let people ask questions and have the answers be rated for completeness and accuracy. This is gonna be cool to see this in action. Oh, and the best part is that new module is going to be available on the Extension Forge. #Bonus! Gonna have to go in and check out what is in there as I haven’t been there for a while. There was also mention of a new community team strategy that is going to include MVP’s. So we are waiting to hear more and get our hands on some of these great tools.

So that ends the sessions and the whole event wrapped up after a Q&A session where all kinds of questions were asked. Don wanted to know about when the next #DNNWorld would be and when the next Day Of DotNetNuke would be. We learned that the next #DNNWorld would be next year around the same time and probably same location, but there was no mention about the next Day Of DotNetNuke. There was also a good question that was asked about when we can purchase some DotNetNuke stock, but they were very elusive on that one...

All in all the #DNNWorld 2011 Convention was a success for Sprocket Websites. We met some good new friends, we rekindled some old friendships and we put some new faces with names. I’ve got several business cards of people that I want to follow up with and I’m hoping that some people will follow up with us on some issues as well.

Thanks for reading along, please let us know if you enjoyed our series and if there are other things that you would like to see Don and I blog about.

Keep those Sprockets turning...

James NagyJames Nagy

Co-Founder and Managing Director of Sprocket Websites, Inc.; Co-Founder Chicago Area DotNetNuke Users Group; Co-Founder and Managing Partner of J&S Tech Designs, LLC

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Contact author Full biography

Full biography

I am an entrepreneur - and there is nothing like being your own boss and owning your own business. I own a Consulting business, J&S Tech Designs, LLC with my wife and business partner Susan. I also own a Website Design, Development, Services & Marketing business, Sprocket Websites, Inc. with my partners Susan, Don and Kate. My passion is in helping businesses grow and prosper through use of technology and creative innovation.

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