We just had the first Bay Area DotNetNuke User Group (BayDUG) meeting after having a break for over a year now. It was a great presentation. Chris Hammond did an overview of the features that DotNetNuke now offers to people that enable them to being rolling out their mobile-friendly websites. As great as the overview was, it was missing something… Why would you use one feature over another? What should I think about before deciding the “best way” for my website when building my mobile-friendly site?

Language Packs for DNN 5.6.3, 6.0.2 and 6.1.1 and all bundled modules are not available for download.

Last Wednesday we had a Swiss DotNetNuke Usergroup get-together in Zurich around DNN 6. It’s not that we are somewhat slow in Switzerland (although evil tongues would have it that we are) that the DNN 6 Launch Party only took place now. It is more due to the fact that this was the earliest possible opportunity and we really wanted to get DNN 6 across the footlight to folks here. “Hey, remember that DotNetNuke thing we had a UG meeting about a couple of...

Last week, I had the pleasure of visiting with and giving a presentation to the Queen City DotNetNuke User Group (QCDUG) in Charlotte, North Carolina. Clint Patterson had been asking me to visit the user group for the better part of a year now, so I decided to finally make that a reality. Last Thursday, I joined many others in attending their meeting – but I also had a presentation to give…

I love to see success in any shape in the DotNetNuke community and ecosystem. I especially love the successes that we see in user groups. I blogged about an up and coming user group in Charlotte, NC not too long ago. They have been experiencing incredible growth for a niche topic user group (as all DNN user groups are). I knew then that it wouldn’t be long before I would find myself in Charlotte presenting at the Queen City DotNetNuke User Group (QCDUG).

Next week I'll be presenting what's new DotNetNuke 6. Here's some of the topics.

• Folder Providers: Azure, and Amazon, move it to the cloud.
• The new UI of course and how you can use the features in your development.
• DDR Menu, who wants flat menus anymore?
• And all the great stuff you can do creating your own modules.

It’s been a month since I first announced the user group contest for DotNetNuke World.  This is actually two contests in one.  First, all DotNetNuke user groups are encouraged to compete to get the most members to register to attend DotNetNuke World.  The other contest involves the members of the ODUG trying to get the most referrals to register for the conference.  Both contests have some amazing prizes.  Here is an update of who is in the lead right now.

Have you ever had one of the co-founders of DotNetNuke Corporation speak at your user group?  How about the founder of DotNetNuke itself, Shaun Walker?  Not many user groups can say that they’ve have a co-founder present a session at their user group.  With the contest I am announcing, any user group can make this happen!

As you may have read here, I recently visited the Orlando DotNetNuke Users Group, and Dallas DotNetNuke User Group to show them the latest and greatest version of DotNetNuke – version 6!

The image above is from a Geico Insurance commercial.

It’s been a long time.  It’s been a long time since the DotNetNuke community was this excited about anything, much less a new release.  The community hasn’t been sleeping or anything by any means, but the passion and amount of activity over the past few months has been incredibly higher than usual.  As it turns out, this is for a good reason.

One of the great things about being in the DotNetNuke community is meeting new people.  I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a couple of folks from all over the world.  Recently, I finally met a couple from North Carolina that are co-leading a DNN user group there.  I’d known them for a long time, but never met them in person until the Day of DotNetNuke in Orlando.

Hurry up now and register now for Web Connections 2011, the European DotNetNuke Conference!
Two days, packed with information about DotNetNuke 6 and the DNN eco system and speakers from Europe and the U.S.

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to speak at a user group meeting.  I think the last time was December of 2010.  While that doesn’t sound like a long time, it was nearly 6 months ago!  I am attempting to make up for it next month with two DotNetNuke user group meetings in June.

If you are in the Chicagoland area, or are up for a trip to Chicago, you should check out the CMS Expo coming up the 2nd through the 4th of May, 2011.

What is CMS Expo?

“CMS Expo is a 3-day learning and business conference designed to help content pros get the facts, find the support and make the contacts needed to help them succeed. Hosted by the CMS Association, CMSX delivers timely, relevant and actionable insights to help leaders make informed decisions for business.” – http://cmsx.us/

Where is CMS Expo?

The CMS Expo is being held at the Hilton Orrington Hotel in Evanston, IL

Who is going?

Shaun Walker, Joe Brinkman and myself (Chris Hammond) from DotNetNuke will be presenting sessions, and we will have Richard Dumas along for the ride as well. We have a number of sessions that we are providing, as well as prizes that will be available at our booth. You can see a full listing of our sessions from the DotNetNuke page of the CMS Expo website.

 

Just a short general commentary on the state of QA at DotNetNuke as we march toward DotNetNuke 6.0 Release

Time is passing by quickly - only a few days left to submit your session for the European DotNetNuke Conference 2011...

We proudly present the new Event for our Community:

The next Live Meeting of the German DNN User Group will take place in Stuttgart on Saturday March the 26th. More info to follow.

Occam’s Razor is an often referenced heuristic that basically states that the simplest explanation is more likely to be the correct one.  This principle has many corollaries in computer science as we often strive to find the simplest solution to a problem in order to keep the complexity of our applications under control.  The new ASP.Net Razor view engine embraces this philosophy and certainly shows that even simple solutions can be very powerful.  Charles Nurse has a recent series of blog posts which discuss how you can even use Razor within DotNetNuke, with the focus being on lowering the barrier for creating DotNetNuke modules.

In keeping with this focus on simplicity, On December 6th, the Seattle DotNetNuke User Group (SEADUG) will be hosting the DotNetNuke Razor Hackathon.  Like previous Hackathons, we’ll be live streaming the kick-off event on DotNetNuke.com. 

There have been significant updates to the User Group Wizard module on the DotNetNuke site this year.  Many of the updates that are there are nothing short of monumental in terms of helping to better support DNN user groups world wide.  However, one of those features has flown under the radar… until now!

There are literally DNN user groups all over the world.  Some of the most active...

Orlando was home to me for most of my life – from grade school to high school, and the my adult life after the military.  Then, DotNetNuke Corporation snagged me up earlier this year, causing me to move to San Francisco in June.  Oh, darn! :D  December will officially be the 6th month that I have been away from the Orlando DotNetNuke Users Group (ODUG), but I WILL BE BACK!

When you think about presenting any topic to an audience, there are quite a few things that are common to presenters, no matter what the topic or type of presentation it is.  You want to be well-prepared.  This sounds super simple, and even trivial enough to not have to mention, but it’s not.  Not even for the most seasoned presenters out there.

Hopefully you have all already heard that the long overdue DotNetNuke facelift was rolled out today.  Go ahead and check it out if you need to, but clear your schedule when you do, because it’s simply too fun to play with now!  This is the update that I have been hinting around in some of my recent blog posts, especially those that centered around adding your user group events to the DNN site.

2 conference days packed with 12 great sessions in total, meeting numerous DotNetNuke enthousiasts, community members and other profesisonals from pretty much all over Europe have ended today.

As a member of the organising staff I can honoustly say it has been the best OpenForce Europe we ever had! The "new names" among the speakers in the DotNetNuke track were very well received. Cuong Q. Dang,...

The next meeting of dnn-Europe, European Network of DotNetNuke Professionals, will be held on October ²⁴th, in Leusden (NL) - this time with special guests!

This blog entry is cross-posted from my personal blog site.

Hopefully, by now you know that there’s a new and improved area on the DotNetNuke website for you to find and maintain your user group information. ...

I have been blogging about and involved in user groups for a long time.  During this time, I have had the pleasure of seeing all kinds of things happen – some bad, but about 99% of the things were overwhelmingly good.  Great, in fact.  I want to talk about why and how the good comes about now.

I feel a bit overwhelmed right now.  I haven’t presented at any community events in at least a couple of months, and I have somehow found myself committed to 7 different public presentations at 4 different events in 4 different cities over the next 2 months – and that’s not including 2 huge presentations that are not public.

I am not complaining though.  I wouldn’t agree to any of them if I didn’t enjoy it.  I just didn’t realize how quickly they all sprung up on me!  :)

I see user groups of all kinds and types, all over the place.  They all serve a purpose.  Typically, that purpose is to gather like-minded individuals together in one place, to network and learn about whatever it is that brought them together.  For pretty much anyone that reads my blog, this common thread is probably DotNetNuke.  However, I could just as easily be talking about SQL Server, .Net, PHP, Java, etc.  Name the technology or cause, and that’s the only thing that changes.  The principles remain the same.

The date of the event is fast approaching and I hope you all have your schedule straightened out to attend the Day of DotNetNuke Chicago conference coming up. If not, go ahead and get your hotel booked using our list of hotels with speacial rates on our site.

We’ve been getting great submissions from speakers across the country and even from the neighrboring countries. This event is going to be an awesome one with great content, respected speakers, and wonderful networking opportunities!

I apologize for not being able to publish the details about speakers and sessions just yet, along with my day job and other approaching deadlines I’m working hard on it. Realizing there isn’t excuse for it (plus there are too many speakers and sessions to review), I’ll be able to get together with the team and publish the details early next week on our site.

When you run a user group, or any other event that has one or more people presenting topical information to others, you know that your presenter is coming prepared with some great information.  Otherwise, you wouldn’t have asked them to come, right?  At the very least, your speaker is knowledgeable in a specific area, has real-world expertise, is able to communicate to others, and will come prepared with a slide deck, or other visual presentation tools.

Last night we held the kick-off for the third in our DotNetNuke Hackathon...

...

… The Dashboard was introduced to DotNetNuke sometime ago.  It details information about the Web Server, Database Server, Host, Portals, Modules and Skins.  It can also be extended.  Well I always thought that this was useful information but when would I need to refer to it.

A few weeks ago I was having some issues with my hosting provider.  My DNN solutions had been migrated to another platform.  This all being said, :

I was not notified My Email was not working as it did before My...

This blog post is cross-posted from my personal blog site.

Running a user group has many responsibilities.  You’re recruiting and creating speakers, recruiting attendees, finding sponsors, getting venues, finding topics, managing attendance, and more.  One of the least trivial of these tasks is getting a website hosted for the user group.  Sure, you might work at a company that’s willing to allow you to host it, but what happens when you leave that company? 

If you haven’t been reading my blog lately (what’s the matter with you?) you may have missed the couple of blog posts about the upcoming St. Louis Day of .NET that is going on in St. Louis. If you’ve missed those posts, check them out.

In conjunction with that event (which is on a Friday the 20th and Saturday the 21st) we’ve been planning another event more specific...

This blog post is cross-posted from my personal blog site.

As part of one of my overall themes in my blog, I want to once again speak about user groups.  User Groups are excellent resources.  If you’re interested in any technology, like DotNetNuke as an example, then user groups can be an...

While running a DotNetNuke user group for quite a while, I did all of the management of it myself.  Right or wrong, I wanted to set a tone, a precedent, and basically know everything around how it was going to work before adding on more help.  In doing so, I learned a great deal that rounded out my leadership experience in terms of user groups.

Am I saying that you need to do that?  Absolutely not.  I am simply giving you a bit of background about how I began.  Everyone is different and handles tasks...

Part of running any user group is to hold regular events where the members of the user group can gather at a single location to learn something new about the topic at-hand, and to network with each other.  The value of the user group meeting increase each time you return, until you reach a kind of snowball effect.  Eventually, user groups will become part of your routine – something that you just have to make sure you do and plan your vacations around.

Well, that doesn’t always happen, but believe it or not, it really does happen to many people out there.  But how did they get to that point?  What made them come to that first user group meeting?  I will speak to one of the first areas that answer that question in this post.

...

This begins the first of hopefully a long segment entitled, “UG News,” where I highlight or announce something cool that a DotNetNuke User Group is doing somewhere in the world.  Please send me any UG news that you might have, and I will try to include it into a newsletter for you, but I will also highlight it here as well.

Ever since I first found the DotNetNuke community, I have fallen “in love” for a lack of better words.  (Perhaps those are the right words though…)  Now, I get to give back to the community I have fallen in love with more than ever before, and in a much more influential way that I’d ever thought was possible.

...

A few weeks ago we launched a new version of the User Groups module on this site, which Will Strohl blogged about here. As he noted, there had been a long period of time which had passed since it was last updated. Not wanting this to happen again, when designing the last version (the one launched a few weeks ago) we decided it was best to limit the scope and shoot for a follow-up update...

You spoke, and the folks at the DotNetNuke® Corporation have listened.

In May, Nik Kalyani traveled to the Orlando DotNetNuke User Group to present the first DotNetNuke Hackathon event.  The Orlando Hackathon was very well attended and focused on teaching developers about the new MVP design pattern and the WebformsMVP framework that was included in DotNetNuke 5.3.

What is a Hackathon?

A Hackathon is a developer event that occurs over a short period of time.  Hackathons are informal events aimed at teaching developers some new technology which the developers then use in the development of a new project.  Because of the immersive nature of the events, developers are able to get a good jumpstart on using some new technology or development technique.  These events are designed to encourage participation by people who may not be familiar with a particular technology or concept.

We are in the final stage of getting everything ready for the upcoming event in Paris...

The list of speakers and topics for the first European Day of DotNetNuke, held on May, 28th in Paris, is available now...

The European Day of DotNetNuke will take place on MAy, 28^th in Paris, which is approaching quickly - so soon there is the deadline for session proposal.