After nearly 7 months, the finish line is finally in sight. With the final touches applied to the product over the past few weeks, we are confident that we are on track for an exciting new product release.

As a bit of a refresher on the release terminology that we use in the DotNetNuke community, I would encourage you to read the blog written by Joe Brinkman last year titled "What's In A Name?".  The blog explains that by the time we hit a Release Candidate, the product is pretty much frozen.  We have gone through all the major test scenarios and are just running through a final set of regression tests and verifying the packaging.  In the absence of any major show-stopping bugs, this is the product which will be released.  At this point we only have a week or two until the anticipated release date and are really just taking one last look before we release the product.  Any issue found at this stage will likely just be logged in Gemini and be scheduled for correction in a follow on maintenance release.

So I have been a smartphone user for a few years now, and it continues to astound me how much I rely on my device on a daily basis. People who know me well will tell you I am generally not an early adopter of technology, so it took me longer than most of my technophile contemporaries before I jumped on the bandwagon. And the real tipping point for me was when I realized that I could replace a number of single-purpose devices with an “all-in-one” solution.

In a practical way I could get rid of my cell phone, my MP3 music player, a GPS, an antiquated voice recorder, and a low resolution point-and-shoot digital camera in favor of a single smart phone. And sure, some of those devices had a few more bells and whistles than what was available on the smartphone, but those were typically features which I did not use or care about. And even better, most smartphones were designed with extensibility in mind… which means that I could easily enhance my smartphone with additional capabilities that matter to me, over and above what comes installed on the device.

In thinking some more about this topic, I realized that the convenience of  “all-in-one” solutions have always appealed to me...

Last week Website Magazine published their June issue which contained a list of the Top 50 Content Management Solutions available in the market. The list included both open source as well as proprietary content management systems and the ranking was based on a custom formula of website popularity based on average daily unique visitors and page views.

Aside from the list itself, Website Magazine also tried to explain in layman’s terms the definition of a content management system and how they add value to a business. The high level description of a “system that helps digital Web workers manage content in whatever form or type it is available” was fairly good, but the elaboration of “Content management systems act as the skeleton for a Web presence, providing a framework — if you will — for the future growth of a company’s digital assets” was even better, in my opinion. And in terms of evaluating CMS systems, I really liked the statement that “The best content management system is the one that provides features that match the demands and growth projections of your enterprise”.

DotNetNuke made the list at the #13 position, behind a number of very successful enterprise software systems and widely deployed open source projects.

Almost exactly one year ago I posted a blog which highlighted the three most pervasive technological trends in the software industry and predicted that the Content Management market was in for a significant disruption in the coming years as it attempts to get comfortable with these new technologies. This same blog was republished with Bryan Ruby’s permission on the CMS Report website.

This morning I kicked off Day 2 at CMS Expo in Chicago, IL with a mini-keynote on this same topic. But rather than just talking about what cloud, mobile, and social represent from a technology perspective, I also tried to explain WHY these trends have come to the forefront in recent years.

At a fundamental level I believe they are actually driven by globalization. And globalization would not have been possible without some critical infrastructure, specifically Internet connectivity, access to broadband, and affordable mobile devices. These innovations provided the basis for a global distributed workforce. However, they alone were not enough to generate the expected return on investment in terms of increased business efficiency and productivity. Rather, this required the emergence of collaborative business networks – networks which could provide the necessary collaboration, coordination, and communication to forge deeper business relationships and more meaningful interactions. And these collaborative business networks rely on those three industry trends which we are all very familiar with now: cloud, mobile, social – also known as systems of engagement. Systems of engagement are critical for getting the most out of a global economy.

In the context of Content Management, we firmly believe that your CMS will continue to be the central hub of your business. However, we also believe that in order to adapt to the changing landscape, your CMS will need to be fully and deeply integrated with systems of engagement. The resulting solution is a perfect marriage of content creation and content delivery. And in looking at the innovation adoption lifecycle, we believe that the cloud, mobile, and social trends have already jumped the chasm and are well on their way to gaining mainstream adoption in the mid-market.

In summary, we believe the future of C.M.S. is already being redefined as Cloud, Mobile, and Social. And we are taking steps to ensure DotNetNuke is ready for this transformation.

The slides for my mini-keynote can be dowloaded here.

On Friday, May 4th I am excited to travel to sunny Florida and present to the Sarasota .NET Developers Group ( SarasotaDev ). The presentation will take place at the Sarasota Community Foundation located at 2635 Fruitville Rd in the afternoon from 2:00-4:00 PM. I plan on covering a couple of topics related to DotNetNuke which I think the audience will find highly engaging. The first topic being a presentation and demo of the highly anticipated DotNetNuke 6.2 release which fully integrates the ActiveSocial functionality and transforms the application into a powerful Social CMS. And the second topic being an exploration of technology trends as they relate to Microsoft developers and how DotNetNuke intends to adapt to these trends to ensure it remains a highly relevant web platform for the future. I want to shout out a special thank you to Stan Schultes for arranging the venue and logistics for this event. Following the presentation, the group is invited to attend a great party with awesome pizza, appetizers and drink tickets at the Broadway Bar where we will help kick off the BarCamp Sarasota weekend starting at 5:30pm.

On Saturday, May 5th I am excited to participate in my very first BarCamp conference. The BarCamp Sarasota Spring Conference 2012 is taking place on the weekend of May 5th & 6th at G.WIZ – The Science Museum at 1001 Blvd of the Arts in Sarasota. The 2 day event is full of interesting speakers and sessions, great roundtables and workshops, open-space conversations, and killer parties. I plan to present two topics on Saturday: “C.M.S. Redefined: Cloud. Mobile Social”, a session which highlights the three most disruptive technology trends in recent years and how they will influence the future of Content Management; and “The Business of Open”, a journey through the history of the DotNetNuke project as it evolved from an organic open source project to a venture-backed commercial enterprise.

A few weeks ago Microsoft surprised many folks in the industry by announcing a new wholly owned subsidiary known as Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc. The stated goal of the new enterprise is to advance the company’s investment in openness – including interoperability, open standards and open source.

"The subsidiary provides a new way of engaging in a more clearly defined manner. This new structure will help facilitate the interaction between Microsoft's proprietary development processes and the company's open innovation efforts and relationships with open source and open standards communities," said Jean Paoli, who becomes president of the subsidiary after serving as Microsoft's general manager of interoperability strategy.

Since Microsoft chose to trickle out the announcement without much fanfare and without any detailed specifics, there has been a lot of speculation by industry analysts and media in the weeks since. Depending on their level of paranoia for the software giant, people seemed to fall into one of two camps, those who think that Microsoft created the subsidiary because of a desire for greater interoperability and compatibility, and those who feel they were looking for ways to protect their extensive patent portfolio. I actually think that neither of these conclusions were the primary driver. Instead, I personally think it has to do with IP governance.

TIOBE Software has maintained a Programming Community Index for more than 10 years. Updated on a monthly basis, it is an indicator of the popularity of programming languages in use around the world. The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers, courses, seminars, and third party vendors actively using the various technologies determined primarily through search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube and Baidu.

The April 2012 edition was recently released and highlighted some interesting market trends…

Last week I travelled to Copenhagen, Denmark to participate in the kick-off meeting for the Web Experience Management Interoperability (WEMI) technical committee (TC) which was recently formed by OASIS ( Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards). OASIS is widely respected as a leading web standards consortium which drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society. OASIS is also the home of CMIS, a Content Management Interoperability Services standard that originated in 2009, which in fact served as the catalyst for the new WEMI initiative.

Where CMIS is focused on an open standard that defines an abstraction layer for controlling diverse document management systems and repositories using web protocols, WEMI is more focused on the exchange of unstructured content between web publishing systems. The name “Web Experience Management” was chosen purposely so that the standard is applicable to the broadest audience possible and is not specific to a specific web publishing system architecture, as this initiative is intended to be applicable to Content Management Systems (CMS), Web Content Management (WCM), Web Engagement Management (WEM), Portals, Site Builders, and many others. The founding members of the WEMI TC include many of the world’s leading authorities on web publishing including Magnolia, Acquia (Drupal), Hippo, Sitecore, SDL, Liferay, TYPO3, Jahia, TerminalFour, Adobe, Telerik, Enonic, GX Software, and of course, DotNetNuke.

With mobile device usage expected to eclipse traditional desktop usage by 2015, companies worldwide are looking for ways to adapt and to provide personalized, relevant experiences to site visitors on all types of devices. In response to this market demand, in November 2011 we introduced an exciting new platform capability as part of DotNetNuke 6.1, mobile device detection and redirection management. This announcement was made at our annual user conference, DNN World, and it generated a ton of excitement within our ecosystem.

Device detection provides the ability to determine the type and characteristics of a device being used to browse a website. Once the device is identified, it is possible to make intelligent decisions to provide an optimized experience to the site visitor. This could be as simple as redirecting visitors to an optimized landing page or mobile-optimized site, or it could involve more sophisticated adaptive rendering or responsive design where the website customizes the content being served based on device characteristics.

Device detection is made possible by a Device Description Repository (DDR) which is basically a database of all known devices that provide connectivity to the Internet. In DotNetNuke 6.1 we included a DDR known as WURFL which at the time was available under a compatible open source license. However in the months since, the founders of WURFL decided to change its licensing model, which meant that we were forced to find an alternative. We evaluated a variety of solutions and ultimately concluded that the DDR offering from 51Degrees.mobi provided the highest quality device information while at the same time providing the flexibility to accommodate our business needs.

51Degrees.mobi is based in the United Kingdom and has over 25 years management expertise in developing and managing mobile web services. Their services are used by thousands of websites and currently support over 170 million device visits every month. Through strategic relationships with device manufacturers and other mobile data providers, they are able to maintain an extensive database of device and mobile browser characteristics. 51Degrees.mobi has distributed an open source version of its Lite device data and APIs on Codeplex.com for the past 2 years.

In the upcoming DotNetNuke 6.1.5 release, we will be delivering a fully integrated DDR solution based on 51Degrees.mobi. As part of this integration there are some exciting new features which will be available to both Community Edition and Professional Edition users of the platform.

Also known as a “sunset” or “end-of-life” policy, an obsolescence policy describes the terms and conditions for phasing out support for older versions of a software product. This does not mean the software will no longer continue to function; however, it does mean that the product will no longer be actively maintained by the software provider and some forms of technical support may no longer be available.

When we released DotNetNuke 6.0 in July 2011, we made a decision to focus all of our software development and maintenance efforts on the 6.x product line. This meant that we were no longer actively improving the 5.x product line through bug fixes or enhancements. There were many reasons for this decision; with the most obvious one being the fact that the entire platform had undergone a language conversion from VB.NET to C# in version 6.0 which made the task of sustaining the two platforms in parallel highly challenging from a technical perspective.

That being said, we recognized that we absolutely needed to ensure the confidence and safety of our users, so we made a public commitment that we would continue to provide security patches to users of the DotNetNuke 5.x product line for a period of 1 year. This gave the new DotNetNuke 6.x platform time to mature and provided our users and customers the opportunity to make plans to upgrade their web sites and applications in a controlled manner. Over the past 8 months our Security Team has worked very hard to successfully mitigate all vulnerabilities discovered in the platform. And in the cases where those vulnerabilities also affected the 5.x product line, we were diligent in mitigating the public disclosure risk and timing issues by issuing 6.x and 5.x maintenance product releases in parallel. This resulted in four security releases to the 5.x product line ( 5.6.4 – 5.6.7 ) over the past 8 months.

As the one year anniversary of the DotNetNuke 6.0 release draws near I want to again remind our users and customers that we will no longer be providing patches of any sort to the DotNetNuke 5.x product line after July 20, 2012. So in order to ensure that you get the optimal product experience, while at the same time ensure the integrity of your critical website assets, I encourage you to plan your migrations to DotNetNuke 6.x as soon as possible.

I should also mention that our obsolescence policy is focused on our internal development support for various versions of the core DotNetNuke platform. For customers of our Professional or Enterprise Editions, our professional obligations are outlined in the Support Services Addendum to the standard terms and conditions of the DotNetNuke Software License and Service Agreement and are valid as long as a customer has an active subscription license.

When the DotNetNuke project was started way back in late 2002, the combination of the terms “Open Source” and “Microsoft” were widely regarded as an oxymoron. In those early pioneering years we really had an uphill battle to fight in terms of gaining credibility and convincing people that open source was a viable development model for the Windows platform. In 2005 I wrote a blog titled “No Respect for Windows Open Source” which called out the hypocrisy in the non-Microsoft community when it comes to open source ideals. The blog got Slashdotted and generated more than 500 comments which polarized the extreme opinions on this topic at the time. Later, in 2008, Redmond Developer News ( now Visual Studio Magazine ) ran an article titled “Open Source .NET Projects Getting Cold Shoulder?” in which editor Michael Desmond questioned Microsoft’s lack of support for their own developer ecosystem and suggested that open source projects are treated as second-class citizens.

Well I have to say that the tide has really turned in recent years. The signs are everywhere that Microsoft is now truly embracing open source as a fundamental part of its business strategy. From Codeplex.com for managing open source projects, to the Web App Gallery to help provide a high volume distribution channel, to the Outercurve Foundation to assist with open source governance and IP management, to Microsoft officially shipping and supporting organic third party open source projects such as jQuery, to Microsoft utilizing open development practices with its ASP.NET MVC framework, I think it is very clear that open source is now a first class citizen in the Microsoft ecosystem.

So it should really be no surprise that Microsoft went one step further today by announcing that ASP.NET Web API and ASP.NET Web Pages ( including the Razor parsing engine ) are now available under an open source Apache 2.0 license. And taking a page out of the playbook of the ASP.NET MVC project, Microsoft has spun up a new “ASP.NET Web Stack” project on Codeplex where they plan to increase the development transparency for these projects going forward by enabling a more open development model which encourages community participation.

So the results are in for the PackT Press 2011 Open Source Awards… and DotNetNuke has been recognized as the best .NET Open Source CMS!  We want to thank PackT Press for running this annual contest, and supporting open source communities through the publication of high quality books and reference materials. We also want to recognize all of the other open source CMS products that participated in the awards this year, and congratulate the various winners in each category. And last, but not least, we need to thank the DotNetNuke community for its passion and enthusiasm - we greatly appreciate your support!

Visual Studio Magazine recently posted the results of its annual Readers Choice Awards for 2011 and I am proud to announce that DotNetNuke has been recognized as a Merit Award Winner again this year in the Web Design and Development Tools category.

For the second year in a row, Adobe Dreamweaver took top spot in the category. Second place featured a three-way tie between Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection, DotNetNuke Professional Edition, and Telerik Sitefinity.

It is great to be included in such esteemed company. We appreciate your support.

Gartner's Magic Quadrants provide a graphical competitive positioning of technology solution providers in markets where growth is high and provider differentiation is distinct. Professional organizations use Magic Quadrants as a first step to understanding the technology providers they might consider for a specific investment opportunity, as the graphical representation and research material provides them with a wide-angle view of the relative positions of the various competitors in that space.

I am proud to announce that DotNetNuke has achieved representation on a Gartner Magic Quadrant for the first time in 2011!

Water & Stone ( a full service digital agency located in Bali, Indonesia ) is once again in the process of conducting their annual Open Source CMS Market Survey ( formerly referred to as the CMS Wire Open Source CMS Market Survey ). The survey is intended to measure the rate of adoption and brand strength of the most popular open source web content management systems and provide consumers with important information relevant to selecting a CMS for their organizations.

Last year at around this time, I posted a blog which was focused on increasing awareness of the survey and encouraging community members to participate in hopes that we would get better representation amongst the other CMS systems and improve on our results from the 2009 survey so that they were in closer alignment with our actual standing in the CMS market.

I am happy to report that our efforts paid off, as DotNetNuke received a very favorable review in the 2010 survey. The Rate of Adoption was analyzed using a variety of different techniques including downloads, surveys, third party analysis services, developer support, and books in print, and DotNetNuke was consistently ranked in the top 5 of all open source CMS systems included in the survey. And from a Brand Strength perspective, we also made the top 5 in terms of project site popularity, brand familiarity, conversion rate, and product preference – but most important of all we significantly improved our brand sentiment score, moving from position #20 in 2009 all the way up to #7 in 2010! The full report can be reviewed here.

Anyways, as I mentioned earlier, Water & Stone recently announced that they are running the Open Source CMS Market Survey for 2011. Based on our strong showing in 2010 and the fact that surveys like these can have tremendous influence on consumers and customers in the market, I highly encourage everyone in the DotNetNuke community to take a few minutes and complete the questions located at the link below:

2011-OSCMS-Survey

Your ongoing commitment to the DotNetNuke product is appreciated and helps demonstrate a high level of confidence in our ecosystem. The release of DotNetNuke 6 this summer has pushed our Rate of Adoption to new heights, and if we can complement that with a solid demonstration of Brand Strength I think it will definitely cement our position amongst the top 4 open source CMS systems in the world today.

I would like to congratulate DNN Outsourcing, this month’s DotNetNuke Site of the Month winner! Thank you, Ivan Strigo for submitting the Club Seat Web Site (www.clubseat.nl).

Club Seat will now be our final entry into the DotNetNuke Site of the Year Contest. The winner of the Site of the Year Contest will be announced at the DNN After Dark Party at DotNetNuke World on November 10, 2011. The Site of the Year Contest is now open on the...

Last year at around this time, I posted a blog announcing the fact that DotNetNuke Corporation had achieved the distinction of being recognized by Business in Vancouver (BIV) as one of the Top 100 Fastest-Growing Companies in B.C. for 2009. At that time I also made a bold prediction that we would make the list again this year… I even went as far to say that we would would crack the Top 10!

Well, I am very pleased to reveal that we have been recognized as one of the Top 100 Fastest-Growing Companies in B.C. for 2010 ( announced this week in BIV Issue 1142, September 12-20, 2011 ). This year we improved our ranking by 7 positions to come in at #17 overall, with a 5 year revenue growth rate exceeding 1800%! This distinction places us in the Top 5 fastest growing Technology firms in B.C., a substantial accomplishment given Vancouver’s booming high-tech industry. So in this respect, my prediction did come true ;)

The Microsoft BUILD conference ( formerly PDC ) is going on this week in Anaheim, California. Promoted as “a new event that shows modern hardware and software developers how to take advantage of the future of Windows”, BUILD included a detailed preview of the next major release of Windows, code-named “Windows 8”. As previously reported, Windows 8 offers support for ARM-based chipsets which means that it is intended to work across a spectrum of devices, including mobile phones and tablets. Microsoft also detailed new tools for developers to help write applications for the more than 1 billion people around the world who use Microsoft Windows every day. These items were the focus of a USA Today article published earlier today where I was provided with the unique opportunity to share my opinions on Windows 8 with respected journalist,  Byron Acohido.

Congratulations to the August DotNetNuke Site of the Month Winner, Piedmont Community College (http://www.piedmontcc.edu/). Thank you Kevin Tyburski for submitting the Piedmont Site. Piedmont Community College will also be entered into our Site of the Year contest. The winner of that contest will be announced at DotNetNuke World in Orlando on November 10th



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On Tuesday, September 20 at 6:00 PM I will be doing a presentation of DotNetNuke 6 at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT). This event is a joint partnership between the .NET BC User Group ( special thanks to Medhat Elmasry for arranging the venue and logistics ) and the Vancouver DotNetNuke User Group (VANDUG). DotNetNuke Corporation will be providing pizza and refreshments, and I am sure a variety of DotNetNuke Corporation employees will be on-hand to provide commentary and answer your specific questions. Mark your calendars so that you do not miss the opportunity to learn about the sexy new UI improvements in DotNetNuke 6 or to hear about how a company originally founded in Abbotsford, BC ( DotNetNuke Corporation ) has leveraged an open source business model to become one of the Fastest Growing Companies in BC and was recently recognized at position #288 on this year’s Inc. 500 list. Please RSVP at the .NET BC User Group site… I look forward to seeing you there…

Every year the readers of the DevProConnections magazine vote for their favorite products and services from across the software industry. This year DotNetNuke has been nominated in the Content Management System category – a category which is highly competitive based on the wide variety of CMS products on the market today. To show your support of the fact that DotNetNuke is the most widely deployed CMS that is native to the Microsoft platform, we would be extremely grateful if you took a moment to vote for DotNetNuke in this years contest. And if you are scratching your head for a killer quote please use the very catchy tagline created by our very own Gilles Chalon: “DotNetNuke 6 is Sexy!” ( it sounds much better with his French accent ). Thank you for your support.

Late last year I published a blog about the PackT Press 2010 Open Source Awards where I congratulated the winners and explained the reasons why DotNetNuke had chosen not to participate in the 2010 contest. At the conclusion of my blog, I explained that we were encouraged with the recent changes Packt made in the contest format; therefore, I left the door open for our participation in future contests.

With the anticipation and excitement around the recent release of DotNetNuke 6, I believe we have firmly cemented our position amongst the largest, most popular open source CMS systems in the market ( ie. Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal ). Let’s demonstrate this fact by nominating DotNetNuke in the the Best Open Source CMS category of the 2011 awards. Nominations opened August 1st and continue through to September 9th, when the top 5 projects in each category will be announced for the final stage of the award process. Submit your nominations today… we appreciate your support!

Way back in 2004 I was vacationing with my family on Savary Island, a remote island off the coast of British Columbia near Powell River which is known for its white sand beaches and unusually warm ocean water. Before leaving for my vacation, I had picked up a copy of the Inc. 500 magazine and I spent many evening hours poring over the list of companies – especially those in the Software industry category.

This month we had a tie for the winner of our July Site of the Month Contest! So both sites will be considered winners and both will be entered into our Site of the Year Contest. The winner of the Site of the Year Contest will be announced at DotNetNuke World in Orlando on November 10th

Congratulations to our two winners!

City of Brantford Web Team for submitting myBrantford.ca – The City of Brantford eServices Portal DotNetNuke...

Since late 2006 the DotNetNuke application has offered an integrated Update Service that provides users with a visual indicator when new versions of our software are made available. When a user clicks the visual indicator they are immediately directed to a location on the web where they can safely download the latest version of the specified software.

In 2009 the Update Service was enhanced to include integration with our Security Center, which is the system we use internally to track known vulnerabilities...

I am happy to announce that the June 2011 Site of the Month winner is Spry New Media for the Dockside Green Website (http://www.docksidegreen.com/). Congratulations to Lance Long of Spry New Media!



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This month’s winner in our DotNetNuke Site of the Month Contest is the “Initiative for Agricultural Development of Kosovo” (http://www.iadk.org/) which was submitted by Rexhep Kqiku. Congratulations Rexhep!



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A few weeks ago I attended the CMS Expo in Chicago, Illinois. This conference was focused on CMS applications for business users and included representation from the majority of the most widely deployed open source content management systems. To kick off the conference, I was privileged to be included in a panel discussion hosted by John Coonen ( founder of CMS Expo ) and Tony White ( founder of Ars Logica, a vendor-neutral...

Back in December I participated in a podcast with Alan Shimel from Network World where I was also joined by Kathleen Reidy, Senior Analyst from The 451 Group and Todd Barr, Chief Marketing Officer for Alfresco. The topic of the podcast was “Open Source CMS” but we also talked about “crystal ball” predictions for the CMS market in general for 2011. In the podcast, I mentioned that from DotNetNuke’s perspective, innovation in the Content Management market for the next few years will all be centered around 3 major disruptive industry trends… Cloud, Mobile, and Social.

I am happy to announce the winner of the April 2011 DotNetNuke Site of the Month Contest – Power Web Marketing headquartered in Cascais – Portugal. José Sebastião!  submitted the website of Chinese Medical Clinic Clinic Meihua.



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